In 1862, a soldier of the 20th New York State Militia, posted to the shore of the Rappahannock, marveled at the crowds of black slaves making their way away from their plantations to Union lines and freedom. In a letter home, he mused, “Is not the negro a man? Warmed with the same sun, hurt with the same weapons, having the same feelings, affections, aspirations that the white man has? Why then should he be a slave to his fellow man?”
I’ll tell you why, Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, declared a year earlier. There is, he said, this “great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”
For decades and before, the pro-life movement in Ohio — as in the rest of the county — has asked, like the soldier on the Rappahannock, Is not the child in the womb a human being? Does she not have a heart? Can he not feel pain? Does not her humanity move toward a future?
Ohio has long been the protector of the unborn. In 1834, the Ohio General Assembly passed a law banning abortion, save to “preserve the life” of the woman. In 1913, the Ohio Supreme Court affirmed that protection. After Roe v. Wade destroyed the protections of the unborn in all 50 states, Ohio and many of its municipalities attempted to pass limited protective legislation.
But following the shock of the United States Supreme
