Ohio's issue one
I've lived in Ohio my entire life. Growing up in a Catholic family, going to Catholic Schools. Having wrestled with my own faith over the 40(ish) years of my life I have a lot of varying and often contradictory opinions on abortion.
At times in my life when certainties seemed easier to come by I was staunchly against abortions of any kind. Even after having walked away from most of the tenants of the faith I grew up in, something about abortion continues to raise all sorts of ethical questions in my mind.
Having the benefit (or misfortune) of years of experience with the many tragedies that can befall a person in life, most of those comfortable certainties of my youth have been replaced by shoulder shrugs and an unwillingness to commit too far into any particular point of view.
One thing I've learned through years of joy, sadness, life, and death is that often life presents us with choices that suck. Choices that have nothing but tragedy at the end of them no matter what you do, or don't do. No amount of legislation will make life and death decisions any easier for any of us when we eventually face them. Make no mistake we will all face these horrible choices someday - some of us will face them more often than is fair.
Imagine for a moment, a woman who is ecstatic to learn she is pregnant. She has a family who can't wait to welcome the new baby into the world, they have a baby shower, paint a nursery, and pick out baby names.
Then in a matter of moments all that joy is torn away when they find out the baby is actively dying in her womb, the beautiful baby they have loved since they discovered was on its way has organs growing outside its body, its bones are breaking, and it's only a matter of time till it dies.
Now imagine that woman is told she needs to return to the doctor every couple of days so that they can monitor her and take the baby as soon as it dies so that she doesn't go septic and die herself. Leaving her other children without a mother, and her husband a widower. All because there is still a detectable heart beat and performing an emergency induction is illegal in the place she calls home.
She has to continue to carry the dying baby, being congratulated by strangers at the grocery store, constantly being pressed for updates from friends at work, and being a person of faith herself struggles with ethical questions for which there are no readily available answers from her church, other than "pray".
Imagine the emotional damage done to this woman and everyone who loves her and tell me that abortion is still unequivocally wrong. The shear cruelty of such a statement in light of the reality of the world we live in betray's a certain callous disregard for the well being of other's, or at best an ignorance that requires a ruthless willfulness to maintain.
While I used the word "Imagine" several times in these last few paragraph's I can assure you that this story is not imaginary. It is reality for many women in the State of Ohio, and it's a moral stain on this State and this Country that we allow it to continue.
On November 7th of this year I will vote yes on Issue 1, and I sincerely hope a majority of my friends and neighbors do as well.