As Ohio voters head to the ballot box Tuesday to vote on Issue One, which would legalize abortion on demand through birth and eliminate any legal protections for the unborn, they should remember two people: Carlin and Kermit.

Carlin was Carlin Holcombe. He died six years ago on Nov. 5, 2017. He was the victim of a mass shooting in a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. A gunman made his way into Sunday morning services and started killing people. Six members of the Holcombe family died.

John was the oldest, aged 60. Carlin was the youngest: he wasn’t yet born. He died in his mother’s womb. Crystal was eight months pregnant.

The State of Texas says that the gunman killed 26 people that Sunday morning. Those 26 included preborn Carlin.

When Texas did that six years ago, the pro-abortion establishment got all hot and bothered. In Texas, an unborn child can be a victim of a crime. 

How dare you call that a “child?” Think this just applied six years ago? On Nov. 5 Dr. David Hackney — one of the people pushing the abortion referendum in Ohio — wrote a screed in The New York Times because Ohio describes a fetus as an “unborn child” on the ballot question. The abortionists think that’s dishonest, or at least biased. Sure, Hackney admits: “Do maternal-fetal medicine specialists ever say ‘child’ in reference to someone’s pregnancy? Of course we do, informally, all the time, in concert with our patients.”

So, do “maternal-fetal specialists” lie when they say “child?” Are they simply going along with their patient’s wishes? After all, he admits he uses the term “in concert with our patients,” which suggests he doesn’t call the fetus a “child” if the mother doesn’t, i.e., if she wants an abortion. So, is a “child” a child only because somebody else says so? 

Or is it a word game to avoid admitting that abortion involves a child?
Let’s think of what Texas did when it listed Carlin Holcombe as a victim. How can you be a “victim” if you are not a “person?” And, if you use the word “victim,” aren’t you implicitly saying the victim is a person?

Now let’s consider if Issue One passes in Ohio. If (God forbid) there were a mass shooting in Cleveland and a pregnant woman were killed, would one person die or two? 

Under Issue One, it’s not clear. The child is not a “person,” at least in terms of having a right to life vis-à-vis his mother. Is he a “person” with a right to life vis-à-vis a shooter?

Because if he’s not a “person,” can he be injured? Because only persons can be injured. Property can be damaged. So, if the woman’s family makes civil claims against the shooter’s estate, are they suing for injuries to their grandchild or damages to their daughter’s “property?”

Ohioans, when you vote on Issue One, ask yourself: “Was Carlin Holcombe a child?”

Now for Kermit. Kermit was Kermit Gosnell. Kermit Gosnell is serving a life sentence in a Pennsylvania prison for his killing of three newborns (he killed a lot more, but those three involved the most complete evidence) and a refugee woman who died in the course of his botched abortion. He ran a Philadelphia abortion “clinic” in the 1990s and early 2000s.
What brought Kermit Gosnell to the authorities’ attention was not his abortion business (even though a county medical examiner had already flagged him for performing an illegal abortion on a minor who was 7 months pregnant). Pennsylvania hadn’t bothered to inspect Gosnell since 1993. It hadn’t bothered to inspect any abortion clinics since 1996.

What put Gosnell on police radar was his profligate prescribing of painkillers like oxycontin. In the course of investigating his pill business, they discovered his filthy abortion business: Blood on broken equipment, a cat roaming the premises, aborted fetuses stored in jars in his basement.

When Pennsylvania could no longer play “see no evil,” it discovered that one of Gosnell’s favorite ways of “terminating” late-term deliveries was delivering the child and then “snipping” its spinal cord. That got him on murder charges. His incompetence in anesthetic administration cost a Bhutanese woman her life.

Why mention Kermit? Because under Issue One, Ohio would have to prove any regulation of abortion procedures or facilities had to be justified as the “least restrictive” means of interfering with “reproductive decisions.”

Remember that Pennsylvania in 2010 was nominally a pro-life state. It had laws on its books to protect the unborn.

But those laws were unenforced. They weren’t enforced in bright blue Philadelphia, since Democrats have never seen an abortion they don’t like. They weren’t going to go after an African American doctor running his “clinic” in the poor part of town, handling populations “we didn’t want too many of,” to quote Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And Pennsylvania had a pro-abortion Republican Governor, Tom Ridge, who apparently thought his oath to enforce the law didn’t apply to laws he didn’t like. So Gosnell operated under the radar, to everybody’s contentment — except the babies whose spinal cords he snipped and the woman who died in his “house of horrors,” as his facility was subsequently called.

Please also note that, although Gosnell was a doctor, he was not an obstetrician or gynecologist. He had no specialized training in that field. But that’s okay, because the abortion establishment believes even nurse practitioners should be able to perform abortions. And they’ll probably use Issue One to argue that requirements that qualified specialist physicians perform abortions are unconstitutional interference with “reproductive decisions.”

Ohioans, remember that Pennsylvania had pro-life laws, even though they were not enforced. If Issue One passes, Ohio will not even be able to have those pro-life laws.

So, do you want Ohio to be a refuge for the Kermit Gosnells of the world?

When you go to vote Tuesday, remember two people: Carlin and Kermit. Then vote accordingly.