Ohio State Representatives Levi Dean and Jonathan Newman, both Republicans, have introduced a bill that aims to abolish abortion in the state.
The legislation, called the Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act, recognizes the “sanctity of innocent human life, created in the image of God, which should be equally protected from the beginning of biological development to natural death.”
According to the bill, abolishing abortion fulfills the constitutional requirement of protecting life and further protects “pregnant mothers from being pressured to abort by repealing provisions that may otherwise allow a person to direct, advise, encourage, or solicit a mother to abort her child.”
“We have a mandate from God to protect human life, which is of higher authority than any constitution,” Newman said in a statement. “Proverbs 24:11 commands us to ‘rescue those who are being carried off to death.’ Proverbs 17:15 says it is an ‘abomination’ to God for those who are guilty of doing harm to be called innocent.”
Dean similarly noted that the legislation “only does what the U.S. Constitution requires and what we are already doing in Ohio and across the country.”
“In numerous cases where someone has been prosecuted for and convicted of killing a pregnant woman, the charges and conviction were for two counts of murder: one for the mother and one for her preborn child,” he said. “Our laws and the courts do this because it is acknowledged that taking innocent life is wrong regardless of whether the victim is born or preborn.”
