May 2023: Decline to Sign and Victory for the Babies: SJR1 Passed!

I was sitting at a table with a few girls from church, telling them about an experience I’d just had the day before with my friend Corinne.  I was feeling the weight of this amendment (read April’s newsletter for more about that), and one of the girls reminded me to put on the armor of God.  He is my strength!

Corinne and her sister Hannah and I did Decline to Sign together!

Corinne and I had gone to do Decline to Sign (D2S for short) – the campaign to urge people to decline to sign to get the pro-abortion amendment on the ballot on November.  At the location Corinne and I chose to go to, there was a folk festival going on, which means there were a lot of people, and 99% of them were pro-abortion.

I was shocked at how many said outright that they are fine with abortion all the way up to birth.  One man said jokingly(?), “even after birth!”  It makes me sick.  It was very discouraging and I felt like crying when we were out there (my eyes did get wet), but God decided to use us anyway, and 7 people declined to sign while we were out there.

Yes, I was still wearing a winter coat until recently!

And more good news!  I didn’t ask y’all to pray about this in my last newsletter, but God answered anyway!  Senate Joint Resolution 1 passed in the House, which means Ohioans will now be able to vote in a special election in August to raise the threshold to 60% in order to amend the Ohio constitution.  (Right now we only need 50% plus one vote to amend the Ohio constitution.  Isn’t that crazy?!)

As long as we get enough votes and the threshold goes up to 60%, the pro-abortion side will not be able to get enough votes to change the constitution.  If you are a resident of Ohio, make sure you are registered to vote by July 10^th and vote on August 8th to raise the threshold to 60%!  This has been designated as “State Issue 1” so vote “yes” on 1.

Created Equal celebrated its 12th anniversary recently.  Hence, I got to hold Willow, the adorable daughter of two of my co-workers!

Because our big focus for the next couple months will be to get pro-lifers to vote in August, I wondered if it’s even worth it to continue to do D2S, but it is.  We still want to educate people about how extreme this amendment would be if it passes.  We do that by handing out our red pen versions of the amendment language (which you can find here).  Many people who have already signed tell me they haven’t yet read over the whole amendment(!!!), so they are interested in taking the language home to read.  Maybe they will realize how problematic it is and vote “no” in November.

Prayer Requests
- Continue to pray that their efforts to collect signatures will be thwarted.
- Pray that enough pro-lifers will vote in August to get the threshold is raised to 60%!
- Our summer interns arrive in early June!  Pray for a fruitful summer.

From the front lines of the battle for equality,

Maggie