The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, Welcome, welcome. It’s Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Great to be together. I hope you had a great weekend and it is time to talk about Ohio, Ohio. We’ll talk about Ohio in a minute. One of my favorite places, I got a bunch of friends. Grew up in Cleveland. And Shaker Heights, actually outside of Cleveland. And we had the great convention. In Cleveland. Which was. A wild thing. Wonderful opportunity for the highlighting of a lot of issues. The late Phyllis Schlafly, that was sort of her last hurrah. We did a huge event in, in down on the at the football stadium, the Browns football stadium and. They were. They we we had, Lou Holtz, coach Lou Holtz, a Notre Dame coach. We had coach Jerry Faust, another Notre Dame former coach, Bishops, rabbis, others. It was the Life of the Party luncheon at the convention. The RNC, the Republican convention in 2016. And I don’t know. 2000 people. Huge crowd. It was extraordinary. So we celebrated that, that Phyllis Schlafly has done that for years on the pro-life front, but. We’ll talk about that in a moment.
And let me also highlight for you that we are going. To visit in a few moments with my friend Stan Casacio, who leads our Eagles, our Phyllis Schlafly Eagles in Pennsylvania, and he is having a big event up in Philadelphia on Thursday, May 11th. You wanna check that out –PhyllisSchlafly.com. But first, let’s talk about. I’ll get to him in a minute. We’ll talk with him live. But let me tell you about what’s happening in Ohio. And let me point you to an aspect of the situation that is so problematic.
So I was forwarded a video of a guy who was gathering signatures for the initiative. The ballot initiative that’s supposed to that’s going on the ballot in Ohio, that’s supposed to protect abortion rights. Protect abortion Rights. And the guy that’s gathering signatures admits that he came from Michigan, where he had done the same thing last year. In other words, in Michigan they passed a law by a ballot initiative. They gathered signatures, put it on the ballot, and spent fifty million, 100 million, whatever millions of dollars. It was all the left wing groups, and they basically deceived the voters. About what’s really in the ballot initiative, because sometimes there are two or three pages.
So in Ohio, the video is a man gathering signatures. He admits he’s from Michigan, so he’s not an Ohio citizen. He admits he’s getting paid to gather signatures and then the person who’s talking to this signature gatherer asks about the initiative and he the guy gathering signataures, his name’s Marco. Marco says Ohh yeah. Well, it’s to protect abortion so that you can really protect abortion so you can get. Abortion. And then people don’t they wanna limit your, you know, people’s rights to abortion. And then the person who’s talking with the video camera says to Marco, well, I’m reading the language. It looks like a child underage could get an abortion without the permission of their parents. Is that right? Marco admits yes.
Now let us pause and and rise in absolute, frankly. Hysteria against this.
We have 10s of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars being spent to change the law in the country to take away from you and me, if your parents, I am, our rights To have a say in our children and the the one of the leading groups in this is the ACLU, the ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union. Used to be sort of liberal, but they were focused on civil liberties. They’ve completely been transformed. Into an arm of the left, but more importantly, very specifically, they want to take away the rights you have as a parent. I have as a parent. They want to get to our children.
And you know the late Phyllis Schlafly I was mentioning to you, you know, she was famous for fighting the ERA she was famous for a lot of different things. One of the things she talked about. Was when it came to parents rights as to their kids and as to the problems, the questions that arise of kids, you have to protect the parents rights over schools. For example, in the 1980s there was an effort to try to make kids have to participate in all the kinds of sex ed stuff, and all the kinds of vaccinations all these kinds. There’s a bell going off here. All these kinds of vaccinations. That are taking place that were taking place in ’80s. Phyllis Schlafly organized a group that said, hey, we have to fight back against this. You as parents need to notify your school to not force your kids to have to be participating in that. They’re literally now, after all the COVID stuff, the ACLU of Ohio, and it looks like national money. But certainly the ACLU is focused on taking away parents rights. Regarding abortion.
But it doesn’t stop there because the initiative in Ohio appears to be written so broadly. And Marco, the signature gatherer did not dispute this. It’s written in such a way that you can get transgender drugs, transgender surgery without your parents approval. So you can go to school now and you can decide when you’re 13, 12, 15. That you wanna get ah transgender drugs, transitioning drugs, you can get an abortion and your parents, you can say I don’t want to tell my parents. And as the the the enquirer in this exchange, which I’ll post on social media, said, you know, most people in a tough situation like they have an abortion, they want abortion, they’re Not gonna they’re not necessarily gonna talk to their parents. In fact, they’re pretty vulnerable to not talk to their parents.
I will tell you my son who’s 16, he got in an a fender bender in our driveway. He bumped into one of the other cars. He’s brand new driver and he didn’t – He finally confessed three or four days later because he didn’t want. He didn’t wanna get in trouble. Take it to the next level, take it to the level where you’ve been convinced by your teacher or your friends that you’re gonna change, change gender. You’re gonna tell the parents? In Ohio, the ACLU is One of the leaders in taking away parents rights. To know about medical procedures. Drugs, all. These other things.
It is not hyperbole to say that they are, in Ohio. They are targeting your children.
And they’re doing it, again, with massive amounts of money from all over the place. I remember last Christmas. I think it was Christmas. Somebody famous was it Sheryl Crow. Somebody like that gave a a gazill – no. Cheryl, I know that Sheryl Crow I wrote down Sheryl Sandberg, Sheryl Sandberg from the from Facebook. She gave the ACLU $3,000,000. But, well, not even it was this year, I guess whenever it was. Yeah, 2023. I’m Looking at it right here, in order to help. Fight these efforts. And have, no, help fight FOR these efforts, Sheryl Sandberg. I mean again. The ACLU is funding an effort to take away parents rights.
When I talk to folks in Ohio, I mentioned Pennsylvania. We got a big event, Missouri. Other places, parents think to themselves. Well, there may be things going on crazy in the community, but I I got my kids, I’m going to work on protecting my kids, you don’t realize – They’re targeting the law. They’re saying the law is about abortion. They’re saying the law is about this and that. But what it is in Ohio is the ACLU and others. Targeting using the law to target our families.
Now you have to walk through this with me, if you don’t mind. Let me let. Me tell you about something that I believe we’re seeing fairly dramatically and it is this.
There is a shift in our communities and for about say 25 or 30 years, the law was used. It was being manipulated to to attack businesses, so maybe it started with with, you know, the kind of effort to to to stop The the car companies you know, to there there was a series in the ’60s where people would, you know, kind. Of say oh. Hey, the the Pinto blew up. Therefore we should be able to sue everybody else, you know and. But the reality is, there became a problem from the ’80s into the ’90s of massive amounts of lawsuits of massive efforts, and it was it became a racket, right? It became a racket where you you were had people, had a a trial bar. The the trial bar was utilized against We the people. It was raising our costs of of insurance. It was raising the cost of businesses. It was raising, you know, all those kinds of costs and and that was happening and it was an abuse.
And so lots of people, including myself, were saying to themselves, hey, how do we limit the how we limit the the growing problem of said it was sort of Ralph Nader, right? Ralph Nader had this movement he started and and and it was using the law against business, using the law for things then we had crony capitalism using the law. To pass money to certain things. Then we had, in my opinion, we had movement in the last 10 years or so. You started to see government being used against media. And then of course, in the Trump era, you had Mike Flynn, you had the Trump the way they did Trump. Ultimately, the the the January 6 cases, the law became so it was first you used lawsuit Crazy America against we the people. Then you used what I took all crony capitalism, the use of the law passed a law of fund things. And now I think you’re you’re seeing Abuse of prosecution.
But here’s the thing. The ACLU and others just admit it. That they’re using the law to take away from parents their rights. Watch this clip. What you need to know is they’re not going to stop in Ohio, just like they didn’t stop in Michigan.
They’re they’re on the move, and they’re coming. They’re coming. You know, Ohio’s not really a a purple state. It’s really a red state now. It’s it’s a red state. Michigan was really not a totally blue state. Certainly looks like it now, but then I gotta stop there because with hundreds of millions of dollars, you can persuade the voters that ohh, this is about some sort of extremist healthcare rights. Stop religious people. When it’s really about control and breaking yet another connection to our kids. So that’s what you need to know.
We’ll take a break. We’ll be back. We got ah. We got some great guests today, including, as I mentioned, Stan Casacio, our Philadelphia leader, be right back. Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report back in a moment.
