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What’s the Matter With Ohio?

The Nation

June 20, 2006

Well, for starters, there’s that stolen election people are finally talking about. But now the far right is attempting an additional travesty on the good people of Ohio. A bill being pushed by a gang of American Taliban in the state’s House of Representatives would criminalize all abortions, with no exceptions, even to save the mother’s life. (Go to Planned Parenthood’s website to help fight this ).

Not all today’s Ohio news is bad, though. An excellent article in this morning’s Wall Street Journal chronicled, through ample data, the dramatic successes of a Cincinnati-area program (optimistically dubbed Every Child Succeeds) in reducing infant mortality among the city’s very poor. Of course, this is wonderful, and the folks doing this work are to be commended. As the sometimes sleep-deprived mother of an infant, however, there was one detail in the story I found disturbing. The social workers call young mothers and wake them up at 6:30 AM. I’m surprised they haven’t increased the city’s murder rate by doing that. If anyone, other than my baby, woke me up at that hour, I would definitely have to kill them. As slowly and painfully as possible. But that’s what being poor in America is all about: either you’re ignored, or the nosy nanny state is all up in your grill.

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