President Biden slams cruelty of Ohio abortion law that forced 10-year-old girl to seek care in Indiana

Rotunda Rumblings

Abortion extremes: President Joe Biden on Friday blasted Ohio’s abortion restrictions as he as he signed an executive order aimed at protecting reproductive health care services such as abortion and contraception in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing states to outlaw abortion, Sabrina Eaton reports. He cited the case of a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim who had to travel to Indiana for an abortion because of the state’s ban on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. “I can’t think of anything … much more extreme,” said Biden.

Child support: The state is looking into problems at the Cuyahoga County children service’s center, Kaitlin Durbin reports.  Two employees of the Jane Edna Hunter Social Services Center testified last week before the county council about allegedly dangerous conditions for children and staff. They said children are sex trafficking other children outside the building, that children have assaulted employees who have been forced to provide childcare without training and that children are living in the building for weeks. Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish, a former Ohio House speaker, is promising change is coming, though employees are skeptical. 

Gray areas: Polling over the last decade has found that Ohioans support abortion rights, but at a lower level than in other states. The Dispatch’s Darrell Rowland dug into polling and also found that while Americans generally support abortion rights, most do not want unlimited abortion access. Most people believe that the state should impose restrictions at some point during a pregnancy.

Holding men responsible: A Democratic state senator who last year introduced a bill allowing a woman to sue a man who impregnated her – regardless of whether the sex was consensual – now is saying that she purposely kept the bill vague because she suspected abortion was to become illegal in Ohio. Sen. Tina Maharath said that any woman can file the civil suit to obtain at least $5,000, plus court costs and attorneys’ fees, to a man who caused a pregnancy, Ohio Public Radio’s Jo Ingles reports. 

Reunited and it feels so good: Columbus resident Afkab Hussein was reunited last week with his wife Rhodo Abdirahman and two sons after six years and a travel ban by Donald Trump. Hussein and Abdirahman met in a Kenyan refugee camp, but they’re both from Somalia, one of seven Muslim-majority countries the former president included in the ban, which delayed the reunification, the Dispatch’s Danae king reports. 

Presidential love: U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Toledo Democrat in a tough re-election battle after redistricting, is embracing President Joe Biden instead of avoiding him, as Ohio’s Democratic nominees for governor and U.S. Senate appear to be doing. “God love you, Marcy,” Biden said after taking the stage. “You are the best. She does it all — unions and foreign policy.”

Guilty: A federal jury found P.G. Sittenfeld, a former Cincinnati City councilman and rising star among Ohio Democrats, guilty of bribery and attempted extortion Friday. He was acquitted on four other counts, including honest services fraud. The federal corruption case involved a downtown property, a property developer who worked with the feds after getting in trouble himself, and Sittenfeld’s requests for campaign donations, report the Enquirer’s sharon coolidge and kevin Grasha.

Out of jail: David Riddell, 57, an Ohio man who led a trucker group that protested by driving slowly on Washington D.C. highways, was released from court Thursday and ordered to return in August. The Washington Post’s Keith L.Alexander reports  that the trucker convoys began to protest vaccine mandates but has broadened its protest to include a handful of rightwing grievances.

Lobbying Lineup

Five organizations lobbying on Senate Bill 242, which would require merchants to give customers the option to pay in cash. The Republican-sponsored bill has had just two hearings since it was introduced last Sept. 30.

1. Amazon

2. Apple

3. Cleveland Browns

4. Columbus Crew

5. Ohio Poverty Law Center

Birthdays

Emily Benavides, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman’s communications director

Ex-state Rep. Gil Blair

Straight From The Source

“I just cannot get out of my head the number of people who will be dead when they’re pregnant, who will die during their pregnancy, who will die during delivery. People who will die during the first year after their kid is born, who will die because of domestic violence situations.”

-Khadija Adams, cofounder of the breastfeeding support group Black Lactation Circle of Central Ohio, talking to the Dispatch  about how the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that abortion isn’t protected by the U.S. Constitution will disproportionately hurt Black women, who have higher maternal mortality and morbidity rates and generally earn less money than white women, making an out-of-state abortion harder to obtain.