Ohio Democrat Proposed Amendment to Heartbeat Bill to Allow ‘Slavery’ Exemption for Black Women

A black Ohio state representative proposed an amendment to the state’s “Heartbeat” abortion ban that would have exempted black women from the law because their “history includes rape and forced birth imposed on enslaved women and black women after slavery.”

Last week, state Rep. Janine R. Boyd of Cleveland Heights proposed the amendment to SB 23 that would have allowed only black babies to be aborted once a fetal heartbeat is detected.

The amendment ultimately failed in both committee – with all seven Democrats voting in favor of it – and on the state House floor. Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, signed the Heartbeat legislation into law Thursday.

Boyd, the highest ranking Democrat on the state House Health Committee, introduced amendment 0291, that read, “African-American women shall be exempt from the requirements” of the revised code.

“I consider the slave trade and how black slaves were once treated like cattle and put out to stud in order to create generations of more slaves,” Boyd said Tuesday, adding:

I consider the how many masters raped their slaves. I consider how many masters forced their slaves to have abortions, and I consider how many pregnant slaves self-induced abortions so that they would not contribute children they had to this slave system … And so I ask you, with all of your values, to consider that and vote yes to this amendment.

Pro-life organization Created Equal tweeted Boyd’s reasoning amounted to “moral myopia.”

“To reference owning humans as a defense of dismembering them is moral myopia,” the group posted. “If is wrong to own humans, it is also wrong to intentionally kill them.”

Upon the failure of her amendment and those of other Democrats, Boyd said in a statement:

I submit to citizens that this bill is not about “life.” It proposes that the state will force nearly all pregnant women to carry their pregnancies to term, regardless of how that might threaten her health and her economic security, and it erodes the fundamental freedom we all have as Americans to make important medical and health decisions.

“This amendment was absolutely heartbreaking and it is proposing eugenics, plain and simple,” Jamieson Gordon, director of communications and marketing at Ohio Right to Life, told Breitbart News. “It’s sad to see the lingering legacy of Margaret Sanger in the pro-abortion movement. Ohio Right to Life promotes and defends the dignity of all human life, from conception to natural death, without regard to race.”

Ryan Bomberger, chief creative officer at the Radiance Foundation, told Breitbart News Boyd “reveals her willingness to cast a warped revision of history to justify a present genocide in the black community.”

The black pro-life leader continued:

The institution of slavery profited from the dehumanization and destruction of black lives that were deemed less than human. Today, the industry of abortion profits from dehumanizing and disproportionately destroying black lives (at rates up to five times higher than the majority population) that are deemed less than human.

Imagine if Ohio Republicans presented a Heartbeat bill that only banned the abortion of white babies. Boyd and her confused fellow Democrats would be crying “White supremacy!” But since Ohio Dems demanded exempting only black abortions, it’s “reproductive justice.”

In Ohio, although people of my complexion are only 12.9% of the population, they comprise 40% of (residents’) abortions in the state. So I ask the Party of Slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, voter suppression and, now, limitless abortion: How many more times does the Democrat Party need to be wrong? How many more black babies need to be aborted for us to achieve this fake “equality”?

Abby Johnson, president of And Then There Were None, posted a comment to Facebook about Boyd’s amendment:

“This amendment would have made an exception for African-American babies … because apparently a 38% national abortion rate in the African-American community isn’t enough,” she said.