By Billy Cunningham, the great American of courtly assumed that come on November,
you and I we've been voting on the putting partial both abortion in check,
saying sex change operations in the Ohio Constitution. But now there's been a wrinkle.
As you may know Kurt Hartman as a former judge and a constitutional scholar
and lawyer who's now filed a lawsuit against the Secretary of State and all others
saying that this constitutional amendment may be unconstitutional. It's vague and Kurt Hartman,
welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show. Can you give us the headline of
your lawsuit, which may means we may not vote in November for this thing.
Yeah, it's a simple question, really, Williat's did these petitioners trying
to put abortion, sex change operations, etc. As a constitutional right?
Did they simply follow the law when they did their petition, and we say
they didn't. You know, they're trying to amend the constitution to really create
a very broad, ill defined right. It's not just on abortion. It
says, you know, the right to make and carry out one's own reproductive
decisions, which, as you said, that runs the gamut but they're trying
to hide really the effect of what's going on. And state law says,
hey, if you want to do this type of petition, if you want
to propose an amendment to the Ohio Constitution by a petition, you have that
right. And that's absolutely they have that right. But the law says you
have to put in your petition what existing laws are going to get thrown out,
what existing laws are going to be repealed, and they put none of
that in their petitions. So you look at it, and I mean,
we don't even get into most more radical stuff. It's a simple stuff.
You know. We have the heartbeat Bill in Ohio, which is law that
says, you know, when there's a detectable fetal heartbeat about six weeks,
you know, generally speaking, doctors cannot perform abortions. We have a law
that says if a doctor knows his his or her pay, if the doctor
knows that his or her patient wants to get an abortion because the woman thinks
that the baby may have down syndrome, the doctor cannot perform an abortion.
We have laws in Ohio that says, hey, parents, you have a
right with respect to your minor daughter. You know, if you're if a
minor woman becomes pregnant, they have to get consent. They can get consent
from their parent, they can get consent actually from an adult sibling, or
they can go to court and get a and bypass that. But there's a
process why or by You know, a woman under eighteen years of age who
is pregnant cannot just walk into an abortion mill and get an abortion. There's
some standards to protect that that interest, and all those laws will go away
and other laws will away. Do we know which laws, Kurt Hartman,
do we know which laws are going to be taken away? In which laws
are not going to be taken away? And the second part is does the
Constitutional Amendment have to state on the in the print of the law which laws
will be eliminated? First of all, do we know which laws will now
be invalidated and which laws will not be invalidated? The answers, no,
we know, Well, we know some of them, and we've identified some
of them. That's that's the basis of our lawsuit. You know, this
heartbeat bill will go away, the parental consent law will go away. You
know, the prohibiting of a deportion because the baby has down syndrome that will
go away, that will go away. There's other things that may be questionable
will or will or not go away. So there are some laws that will
go away. So that's the issue. And so the question, your second
question of do they have to put it in the amendment. They don't have
to put it in the amendment. But what they have to do is include
those laws on the petition at least, so though when they walk up to
somebody say hey, you want to sign this partition, you know, and
you know, the person circulating a petition gives some little spin. They have
to have in that petition what laws are going to go away so the person
can make a fully informed decision. And I can tell you I've the heart.
I was at my dog park and somebody was circulating a petition there.
They weren't explaining the whole thing to people, you know, that they were
doing this short short of hey, you know you want to support abortion,
you want abortion to be legal here or signed here. And so the what
state law says, the petition itself has to include the laws that will go
away. And because they did not, because they did not follow the law,
that's all we said, you should have you the petitioners should have followed
the law. You should have put in your petition that which was going is
going to go away if this amendment is approved. They did none of that,
and they didn't do it because they want to keep hiding the true extreme
nature of this proposal. In fact, this is so extreme, this is
to the left or rover his weight. I think eighty percent of Americans believe
that if you've been rape. Incest is of course a form of rape because
it's non consensual. But if you've been raped, you have six weeks or
so to make a decision to have an abortion or not. And I think
most of Ohio wands say not Bill Cunningham, because it's a terrible way that
life was created, but nonetheless it's still a human life. But a lot
of Ohio Wands believe that about six to eight to ten weeks that's it.
Now, this law if passed, and I have in front of me and
I'm reading it, that you could be eight and a half months pregnant and
because your financial health is affected by having a baby, you could have an
abortion, a planned parenthood if this law passes. Is that the truth?
Yeah? It is. You look at that definitive law has a definition of
what they call fetal viability, but that's not the standard definition of fetal viability.
It is so far extreme and it's got an option. You know,
if the in the doctor's opinion, you're the mother's health, you know,
or welfare is that issue, can do an abortion at any time. And
you and I know doctor Haskell, the you know, the abortionist you know
who lives in Indian Hill, works out of Dayton, will find every time
at nine weeks he will say the mother's health or her welfare, her mental
welfare, I'll do this partial birth abortion and that will be legalized because he
will give the doctor basically a blank checked to do do those extreme abortions that
of people find a port. So if passed from day one to day two
eighty anywhere along the line the Constitution, a member would say a woman's life
or health, and health has been interpreted to mean emotional health, financial health,
psychological health, whatever it might be. NFA planned parenthood. Doctor says
that this woman's financial health would be effected if shares a baby. The abortion
could take place from day one through the ninth month. Is that correct?
That is correct? It's a mac track. It's so wide anything will it
will legalize abortion basically on demand at any time, because you know how those
abortion doctors think and operate. It's you're right, it's the mental health,
emotional health, financial health, all that play comes into play, you know.
And and and that's not us. That's one. It's it's not a
moral stance, but it's not us. I think a majority of people in
Ohio. And I'll tell you, I've talked to people who are kind of
inclined to support it, you know, people I know, And I said,
you know, what's really in this thing. It's not just you know,
restoring Roby Wade even it's going far extreme beyond Rogy Way. And when
they sat down and actually looked at it, they were shocked at how extreme
it was. That was That was enlightening to me. But that's getting the
message out. You know, we're right now saying you didn't tell that people
anything about what's going to be taken away if this thing passes, what laws
are going to be repealed, and therefore you were obligated to do so under
the law. So we followed the lawsuit. We got to follow our brief.
Tomorrow, busy working on that. You know, we'll get a decision
by August fourteenth. There's a hard deadline for the Supreme Court to make a
decision by August fourteenth. You know, we've got justices there. Hopefully they
just simply follow the law and say you didn't full you the petitioners did not
follow the law. Your petitions invalid. It can't go on the ballot.
Did the Secretary of State Frank LaRosa already decide that, or they decides strictly
on the petitions, not upon the substantive law. Because Frank L. Rose
is not an attorney, so as a Secretary of State, I know he's
against these kinds of abortions. But nonetheless, did anyone at this point decide
that the language of the ballot amendment? Is anyone decided that is it being
constitutional? No. The only thing that's been decided thus far is, and
we challenge this previously, the only thing that's been decided before to be start
fact of a language is that the language only proposes one constitutional amendment. Whether
or not that they should have included what their petitions included has never been addressed.
Frank LeRose, his duties a secretary of State, made the determination that
there were enough valid signatures statewide for this thing to go on the ballot.
But it's interesting in his letter that he wrote saying Okay, I find a
sufficient number of signatures, he says, unless otherwise directed by judicial decision,
I'm going to order it placed on the ballot. So it's like Frank and
frank LeRose is a party in this case. He had to be named as
one of the parties in the case. It's going to be interesting to see,
you know, when he files his brief on Friday, what position does
he take. Does he say the petition is fine, don't worry that these
things weren't in there. Or is he gonna say, yeah, we agree,
he agrees with what the plane is and that yes, they should have
been included it. Supreme Court, you need to invalidate it. So no
less people transgender rights in Ohio as it stands. Now, let's say Mom
or Dad, unbeknownst to them, are they suspicious that Michelle goes to school
and she wants to become Michael or vice versa. What is the current law
if Lakota schools or Mason schools or Deer Park schools, public schools, or
even most private schools who get state money. I have a student who want
to transition, do they have to notify their parents presently? At present,
No, there is no. You know, basically it's a school district by
school district, school building by school building determination. I know there are efforts
in the General Assembly to address that, and I think appropriately. So you
know, it gets into again, it gives back to parental rights. Right,
what is the role of the parents and what you have in that situation?
And you've seen it across the country is where schools and these radical leftist
teachers are trying to push the parents out of the equation and say, we
the state, we the government, we the teachers, the liberal anya union
know what's best for your kids. Parents, you don't get it. You're
these awards of the state, you know, and that's not our country,
never has been. I'm sorry. That may be a Soviet Union type mentality,
but I'm sorry. We're in the United States. We have freedom and
liberty here, we have parental rights and that's where it needs to go.
And the General Assembly is looking at it. They need to move on and
I agree with you on that. But you know, like I said,
there's amendment that we're looking at this abortion amendment in November. It wants to
move parental rights out of the picture as well. Yeah, that's how dangerous
this thing is in November. All right. Now, lastly, the High
Supreme Court rules, and if they rule against you, Kurt Hartman, and
think the language is sufficient as it is written, is at the end of
the matter that would be Yeah, this is a state law matter. It's
not there's no federal law question involved. So we could not take it to
the US Supreme Court. You know. It's it's basically we got seven justices
on the Ohio Supreme Court, four of them or you know, came to
the Republican Party, three through the Democrats. Yo. But like I said,
the Republicans came out and said, hey, we believe him following the
law. It's not our personal decision one way or another. I said,
this is a question of simply following the law. The law says you should
have included this information on your petition. They did not include any of it.
Therefore the petitions invalid. So if it's invalid, what do they do
then? Did they go back at seven hundred thousand more signatures put it on
the ballot next November or some other time. That will be their option.
That you always have an option. Anybody has the option in the right to
try to propose an amendment. But they go back to square one. It
would be off the ballot this November. All your money, all the stuff
that you dumped into the state to try, you have these outside influences.
They could try it again, or they could say we're moving on to the
next state. You know, it'd be great if we voted on these things,
knowing what we were voting on. And someone came up to me to
sign the petition, and all the person said to me was this is about
the abortion making sure that reproductive rights are protected. I said, no,
I should have engaged in a conversation with him, because I'm sure it would
have been explained to me differently than reality. But I said, I just
said no. Do the circulators have a duty to notify those who sign what
the petition says? They did not have a duty, an affirmative duty to
explain everything to them. There is a summary on the petition that basically says,
here's a summary of what this is proposing, and the Attorney General said
that summary is fair and accurate, but what circulators do have a duty to
do is to not misrepresent. So somebody starts asking questions about it and they
start misrepresenting what's in the petition. You know that, then go challenge that.
But the problem is you only challenge that petition itself. You could get
you twenty twenty five signatures thrown out, which when you're dealing with four hundred,
five hundred thousand signatures, becomes a drop in a bucket. So no
affirmative duty, but they do have a duty to be honest in terms of
circulation. Are you confident, Kurt Hartman, Are you confident or not?
Is this a flyer or do you think you're gonna win? I think there's
a strong case here. I really do you know previous case when we challenge
the one ballot language, I knew that was kind of a toss up.
This one, it's it's a simple case. Like I said, it's a
simple case. Simply follow what the law requires everybody. If you're going proposing
a constitutional amendment, the wall says you have to include the text of any
existing law that's going to be repealed, And of course that was what I've
seen the text. It doesn't include that no, you know, And the
thing is, I know what they're going to complain, Well, you know
this petition one was a ten page petition. They're going to complain, Well,
if we have to put the text in of every statue that's going to
be repealed, the thing would be one hundred pages long. I say,
that's your own fault was doing such a broad sweeping, so radical proposal.
It wasn't an isolated issue they were trying to do. When you do something
in such a broad sweep that they're looking to do by this amendment, yeah,
you're going to impact a lot of existing laws. That's your fault for
how you want to do this amendment when you want to try to sneak it
by the voters. Because that's what they're doing. They're trying to sneak it
by all. This is simply about Rob Wade and abortion rights. No,
it's not. It's much more, much, much more than that. I
don't I wish you success, of course, but I'm not sure what because
it comes back again and again and again. But the more people know,
the less likely is they're going to vote yes. They want this thing to
be done quickly and quit. About a minute remaining I hear all these spots
and ads about it takes away democracy one man, one vote. Can you
refute that, well, that that's the August election, That the August state
election, that's on the commmend of the constitution. Yeah, but it's basically
setting a standard to make our constitution what a constitution is supposed to be,
not a super legislature, you know. And so just like the federal Constitution,
you need a supermajority to amend the federal Constitution, just like the I
think the Demostate Democratic Party and all these liberal organizations their own constitutions require a
supermajority to amend. They're simply saying we should keep a constitution as a constitution
which deals with the big picture, that thirty thousand foot level of government,
not the minutia of detail of law. I mean, I point out because
some couple of years ago there was an effort to put in the constitution a
regulation of puppy mills in the constitution. I say, you know, it's
important, Yes, puppy mills need to be addressed, but not in the
constitution. That's just legislation goes to the legislative process. But when you can
do it just by a simple majority. They say, hey, we'll put
it in a constitution. We won't pass the law, we'll try to cram
it through a constitution. That's not what a constitution is for. And so
that's really what it's doing. It's consistent with the Federal Constitution. It's consistent
with most constitutions out there that you need a supermajority to change something that's significant.
Kurt Hartman, good luck, You're good. The result when about August.
I expect the decision on Monday, August fourteenth. That's the constitutional deadline
by which the court has to make a decision. I expect the decision that
day. Kurt Hartman, thank you very much for coming on the Bill Cunningham
Show. Thank you, Kurt. Bill always glad to be with you.
God bless America. Let's continue with more Bill Cunningham News next A News Radio
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