I'll tell women what their options are.
"Kasich is a wolf in sheep's clothing. He's going out there trying to sell himself as a moderate, he's no moderate. He is an extremist," says Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, an abortion rights advocacy group. "He is—if not the worst—among the worst of anti-choice governors in this country's history."In the last couple years, Kasich has gotten more stealth in executing his anti-abortion agenda, often using budget bills as the main vehicle to restrict or deny funding in certain areas of reproductive health. But before he was eyeing a presidential run, Kasich was far more outspoken, like in 2011 when he enacted a law requiring doctors to test the viability of a fetus for women seeking an abortion 20 weeks or more into their pregnancy.Since Kasich entered office in 2011, he has enacted 16 anti-abortion measures. Some directly restrict abortion access, such as the 20-week late-term ban that he signed six months after entering office. Others limit the work of abortion providers. For example, in 2013 he signed the state's budget bill, which included one provision that prohibits state-funded rape crisis counselors from referring women to abortion services and another that stripped Planned Parenthood of an estimated $1.4 million in federal family-planning dollars. The measures have had drastic consequences for access to abortion and medical care for Ohio women: During Kasich's time in office, the number of abortion providers in the state has dropped from 16 to eight.
Kasich released a statement saying, "Life is a gift from God and one way that we express our ongoing gratitude for it is by respecting it. This bill does that in a very fundamental way and I'm proud to have signed it into law." In October 2012, Kasich appointed Michael Gonidakis, the Ohio Right to Life President, to the state medical board.John Kasich's no moderate when it comes to women's health. Like so many GOP lawmakers, he thinks he knows better than a woman and her doctor.