Final Call on Ohio Issue 1

Mark Harrington (00:00):

Issue one is just four days away and our volunteers are hitting the doors in Ohio, making phone calls. We’ll have an update on the campaign with my friend and colleague here and campaign manager for Created Equal Seth Drayer. So stick around Activist radio, the Mark Harrington show brought to you by Created Equal and you can give to our ministry by going to create equal.org/donate. And we still need money because we are still hitting the doors. And we’ve got ads on the air right now and we’re going to be talking about that today. We’re going to be talking about the ads that are finishing out the arguments for both sides, and we’ve been privileged enough to put a couple of ours up. In fact, we’ve had three ads, both of them, all of them dealing with some of the core messaging that we feel is the most persuasive when it comes to issue one.

(01:00):

That is to defeat it. The first ad was dealing with late term abortion. We had abortion survivor, Claire Calwell on the ads. We also did the woman who has, well, several women that actually died during an abortion procedure. And so that ad’s currently running. And then finally we finished up with this ad that deals with the issue of the 10 year old rape victims. So we’re going to get to those today on the program. You can pick up the program on all the podcasting platforms and you can follow us on social media. So Seth, let’s just dive in here. The ad wars. As the campaign continues on, we understand that generally we get outspent and that’s going to been the case here in Ohio, unfortunately. And we know going in, that’s typically the case where our strong point is typically on the ground game. We’re going to talk about those numbers and what we’ve been able to accomplish. But let’s talk about the current ads these are running this week. The one from the other side. And let’s just be honest with folks, we knew it was coming

(02:10):

The 10 year old rape victim who during the 82 days that the heartbeat bill is in effect in 2022. The mother, I apparently took the young girl to Indiana to have the abortion. This story was national news. We heard about it then, and we knew they would create an ad and they did. And they released it last Saturday. And so what we want to do, we’re going to play this ad and then I’m going to have Seth respond to the ad and just generally give some talking points as how do we converse with other people when they bring up the issue of abortions. In the case of rapes, go ahead and play the clip.

Ad (02:55):

This is a true story. A 10 year old girl raped in Ohio, after which her doctor said they could not terminate the pregnancy because it would break the state’s ban on abortion. Government should never force a rape victim to have their attacker’s child never, especially a 10 year old. But that’s the law in Ohio, and that’s why voting yes on one is so important. Yes. Stops the ban and gets government out of the way. Vote yes on one.

Mark Harrington (03:25):

Well, there you go. We knew it was coming. First of all, a couple things. First, there is no ban at six weeks or the heartbeat bill, it’s actually being held up in the Ohio Supreme Court. The only law in the books that bans abortion in Ohio is the 22 week ban, or 21 weeks in six days. And in that law, there is actually exceptions for rape and incest, but the heartbeat Bill does not have those. Right? And for those 82 days, it was in effect in Ohio. And that’s what they’re playing on here. They’re saying, because that ban was in effect, this young girl had to go to Indiana, have an abortion after being raped. So we knew it was coming, and I think it caught some people off guard, didn’t catch us off guard. We knew it was coming. So how do you respond, first of all to the ad itself and then how do we deal with the rape question? Because it seems like pro-lifers just run for cover when they hear about the issue of rape and abortion, they’re like, uhoh, let’s just avoid it and not deal with it. We can’t do that. But go ahead and just give me your take on the ad and what you think about it.

Seth Drayer (04:35):

Yeah, I mean, I think it’s critical to note what you said that it’s false, right? So currently you don’t need a rape exception for abortion through 22 weeks for any reason whatsoever. Abortion is legal in Ohio through 22 weeks. So that’s just facts are wrong. But you’re right. We were on the ground door knocking at a super Saturday last weekend. I was at a door as ad dropped, and one of the first people I talked to said, what about the 10 year old? Now, I hadn’t heard about her for a while, but they

(04:58):

Brought her back and they waited till the last minute. Now interestingly, I have someone I know on X, formerly known as Twitter, right? A pro-abortion leader in Ohio. She was decrying this saying, it’s wrong for them to use this story. This girl’s been already used too much. They shouldn’t be using her. I find that kind of interesting that even some P Pro choice people find it kind of gross.

Mark Harrington (05:16):

Now

Seth Drayer (05:16):

We have they’re exploiting exploit the girl. Absolutely.

Mark Harrington (05:18):

For political reasons.

Seth Drayer (05:19):

Absolutely. They’re now clearly because they’re using false information with her story. So because they do it, we have to respond it. So I think it’s in that ad. It’s so interesting, the word choice. They say no one should force a child to have her rape victims rapist. Rapist child. They said child in there, which I think is very interesting, the choice of words. And that’s why I think the direct response is always this. When a child has been raped, 10 year old, we hear this on campus a lot. My point is, you are bringing up this story for a very critical reason because, and I know it’s wrong to rape a 35 year old. There’s something about the 10 year old that just strikes at our heart because we have more compassion, the more vulnerable you are. But let’s be consistent, who’s even younger, more vulnerable than the 10 year old, her 10 week fetus, or her 10 day emry in her womb. So I’m not saying that baby matters more, but I’m saying why would we stop compassion for someone even younger? So my response is, I have all the compassion for that 10 year old.

Mark Harrington (06:12):

If the

Seth Drayer (06:12):

Abortion was not the solution for her, now we’ve compounded trauma for her. We cannot unwrap her. That rapist is still alive. And so now she will know one day I was victimized, I turned to victimize someone else. That bandaid is not going to be a solution for her.

Mark Harrington (06:24):

Agreed. Agreed. So the ad is running and it’s having an impact. And the campaign was debating what to do. And thankfully we came up with an answer to that. And so I want to go ahead and play that ad if we would. But first of all, I want to make this point. A lot of women who get pregnant because of rape, they have the child about half of them. By the way. It’s not an automatic that you’ve got to have an abortion because people understand that that unborn child deserves the same rights whether they were conceived in love or in violence. And if people understand that we make the baby real, send some people reason to the more humane conclusion. I

Seth Drayer (07:03):

Would add in there just that our good friend, Stephanie Gray Connors tells a story of a woman who was pregnant after rape and wanted to commit suicide. The only reason she did not, she had a baby inside of her and wanted to not kill herself because of that child. And now she is glad she’s alive. That baby saved her life.

Mark Harrington (07:17):

And politically, I know republicans and pro-lifers want to run from this topic. We see that in campaigns all the time. There’s a push now to backtrack, especially on the heartbeat Bill, there’s even discussion about going back into the legislature, including rape and incest exceptions, to kind of soften the impact of the law. That’ll be a mistake. I mean, we’ve got to take this on friends, and if we’re unwilling to take it on, we’re just seeding ground to the other side. That said, we responded with this ad, which our point in this ad is this issue. One protects predators and it wipes out parental consent and notification. That means that mothers and fathers, if their child were to get raped and they didn’t know about it, it’s the rapist that’s going to be taking them to Indiana or somewhere else to have an abortion. So go ahead and play the clip. This is our ad again, that’s currently running in the state of Ohio, all over the place on TV and digital and also in streaming services. Go ahead and play the clip.

Ad (08:21):

This is a true story. A 10 year old Ohio girl raped, pregnant, driven away for an abortion, a cruel tragedy. But if issue one passes, it could have been her rapist behind the wheel, not her mother issue. One erases important parental notification laws. A sexual abuser could drive your daughter to an abortion and you’d be left in the dark. Vote no on one. Protect our daughters, not predators, vote no on issue one.

Mark Harrington (08:52):

So this is a way of responding to or reacting to their ad, which we know is hurting us

(08:59):

In a way that doesn’t play into their narrative. It flips the narrative by making it about the predator, not about rape, abortions in the cases of rape. And just so you know, I mean, we’re not saying that those should be legal, right? We’re not agreeing with that, but we’re saying that this rapist would be the one taking them to have an abortion, not their parents. Their parents would not be involved. And I know it’s a thorny issue, parental notice, parental consent. We all understand that. But we do believe parents should be involved in their children’s lives, obviously, and this would wipe it out. So I mean, it’s a way of getting at it, flipping the narrative and then pivoting to the parental rights issue. So I mean, what is your reaction to that ad?

Seth Drayer (09:43):

So at the doors we talk about this, right? And some people say, well, that’s just not going to happen. That’s why this ad pairs so well with the true story that you’re, what viewers already know about. In Cincinnati 2004, where a soccer coach in his twenties got a 13 year old eighth grader pregnant, what’d he do at statutory rape? Drove her quickly to Planned Parenthood poses. Her parents’. Parents never knew about it. He killed the fetus, try to destroy all the evidence. And so his parents never knew. And that’s thankfully they were able to prosecute this, would actually take that away by taking their rights away, giving him rights as they want, assisting her,

Mark Harrington (10:15):

Right? By the way, just interrupt. There’s an ad run by PW in Cincinnati, right to life with that coach ad. So that’s another way of getting at this issue without directly taking on the 10 year old rapist situation. Yeah, but that ad’s good too. And this ad’s playing, but I don’t know, Seth, who knows? We’re doing what we can to try to blunt that ad out there. Let’s just pivot to the campaign. Alright, these are the ads running friends, you can support us. We still need funds to continue the ad, but let’s get to the ground. Game created equals been privileged. And I think that is true. I mean, we have really been very fortunate to run the Volunteer Door-to-Door campaign and phone banking. And we’re getting close to the finish line here and the numbers are coming in and I think we’ve reached our goal. But if you would give us kind of an update without getting too far into the weeds, but this has been quite an effort, friends. I mean, it really has. And we want to thank everybody that’s been involved. So if you would give us the numbers currently.

Seth Drayer (11:24):

So currently we started in late September, so it’s been a month and a bit, right? We’ve been going after this, I mean a little over a month and a half, but so our goal was at least a hundred thousand doors. We are at 93,000 right now. So we’ll cross that tomorrow morning, no problem. And we’ll go beyond that goal. And what’s important is that maybe your viewers know or don’t know, we are working in tandem with Susan B. Anthony List, who has paid Canvasers. So we’re volunteer, we’re augmenting what they do. So we’re easily reaching well over 600,000 doors with our two combined efforts. And we’re adding on top of that with phone banking, texting, and voicemail dropping. We are going to be our own organization, our volunteer effort with volunteers across the state now working for Create Equal, but partnering with us. All the volunteers together are going to reach about 750,000, three quarters of a million people through our door, knocking, phone banking, so on. And this is critical because we are targeting to reach people who must turn out the vote and it’s been effective at the doors. We meet people all the time, but they recognize when you talk to them how extreme this amendment really would be. I had a conversation with a man and woman yesterday. He’s against the amendment. She’s for them awkward marriage relationship, I would think. But he was seeing the reality. He has a pro-choice wife, very, and he agreed with me that there are more problems here. He’s not sure on abortion, but he recognizes at least parents should be involved. And I think no abortion should ever happen,

(12:51):

But at minimum, we can agree on the common ground that if a minor’s considering abortion, parents should have some involvement in this, right? Of course. And so we have seen people flipping because of that, but it’s not just door knocking. We’re phone banking calling to people, we’re texting people and it’s not too late. We still need more help, not financially. Yes, of course, that as well. But also it’s not to join us. And you might think, well, I’m across the nation. I’m watching Mark from Mountain Colorado. It’s not a problem. We need your help phone banking. Now, if you go to create equal.org/phonebank, you can read about how to phone bank with us. We’re having a special push on election day 9:00 AM eastern to 7:00 PM right before polls close. We’re calling all day long at a phone banking marathon. So please join us, create google.org/phonebank. We need your help. I’ve got four ninety nine phone makers right now. I need one more to over 500. So come on, someone, get us over 500 please. We need as many people as can to help us reach as many voters as possible.

Mark Harrington (13:42):

And you can do that anywhere in the country, France

Seth Drayer (13:43):

Or across the globe. I have a filmmaker in Europe right now.

Mark Harrington (13:45):

Is that right? That’s cool. So listen, friends, let’s wrap this up. We’ve got the door to door, the phone banking, the ads are running, and we’re doing everything humanly possible here at Created Equal to change the outcome to defeat Issue one. We know it’s been an uphill battle since the beginning. We understand that. We knew the odds were against us, but we’ve been putting everything we can towards it, and it’s not too late. We have to press towards the finish line on November seven, and we’ll have a lot of time to go back and look at the after action reports and the lesson learned and all these things. And we have learned a lot, and hopefully we can export that out to other states that are going to be facing this in 2024. But it’s not time for that. It’s not time for that. And I know people want us to probably give our prediction.

(14:28):

I’m not going to do it. We’re just not. Let’s just say I think we’re in a dead heat. I think it’s that close, and it’s going to be a real barn burner towards the end. So we’re just going to keep pressing friends, and I hope you will as well. So the two ways you can get involved, you can still donate. That’s created equal.org/donate and created equal.org/phone. Phone bank Bank. Yep, join us. All right. Join us anywhere you can in the country or the world. We still need you here in Ohio. This is it. I mean, this is for all the marbles. This is a real bellwether test for the Pro-life movement. We need a win. Oh for six. We don’t want to go up for seven. So stand with us here in Ohio. Pray for us. Pray for our campaign, pray for our door knockers and our phone bankers, and we’ll be backed next week with a report.

Narrator (15:17):

You’ve been listening to Mark Harrington, your radio activist. For more information on how to make a difference for the cause of life, liberty and justice, go to created equal.org.org. To follow mark, go to Mark Harrington show.com. Be sure to tune in next time for your marching orders in the culture war.