DeWine was right to protect trans youth, but why did he attack Ohioans’ access to reproductive care? [COMMENTARY]

^{This commentary was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and appears here with permission.}

By Marilou Johanek

The last straw. A headline in America’s premier newspaper read: “A Midwestern Republican Stands Up for Trans Rights.” The essay underneath lauded Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s recent veto of an anti-trans bill and gushed over him as a throwback to “mainstream” heartland Republicans of yore who embraced a core party principle to keep government out of people’s lives.

That was it. My breaking point. To be clear, for the tiny, vulnerable minority of transgender Ohio kids and their families — who have endured a merciless onslaught of state Republican bills attacking their safety, dignity and freedom — the governor’s veto of one of them was indeed welcomed relief. But also, to be very clear, Mike DeWine is no champion of trans rights and, despite the national media’s misinformed exuberance at finding a “mainstream” Republican willing to live and let live, he is anything but.

DeWine waited until the absolute deadline to approve, reject or let Ohio House Bill 68 go into effect without his signature. This was a no-brainer. But he went through the motions of “taking a hard look” at the pros and cons of banning gender-affirming care for minors and transgender athletes in girls’ sports as if the pros had any factual or credible medical basis for overriding parental decisions or attacking trans athletes.

‘Huge win’: Gov. DeWine Vetoes Anti-Trans Bill

DeWine waited until reelection was no longer a political concern to declare that government shouldn’t decide what is best left to trans kids, parents and physicians — while immediately proposing government regulations to decide what is best for trans kids, parents and physicians. Then he went out of his way to praise the fundamentalist zealot behind HB 68 who aggressively stoked fear and hate against human beings already bullied and ostracized. 

A Statehouse supermajority of fearmongers, bent on exploiting the trans community as a MAGA punching bag, is firing back at DeWine and threatening override. Don’t expect the governor to counter their ugliness with a public pressure campaign to save Ohioans who just want to live as they choose. He’ll roll over, just like he did in 2021 when he “enshrined LGBTQ discrimination into law” by refusing to line item veto a last-minute budget provision that allowed doctors to deny LGBTQ health care on moral grounds.

Make no mistake, I’m glad DeWine did the right thing on a hateful anti-trans bill. But his rank hypocrisy was rich with assertions that private medical decisions should not “be made by government, not the state of Ohio.” This so-called “mainstream” Republican was all for government and the state of Ohio making the private medical decisions of women instead of deferring to their best judgment for themselves.

Before the Supreme Court rescinded half a century of abortion rights, DeWine vowed he would “go as far as we can” to ban abortion outright in the state. Immediately after Roe was repealed, the governor reinstated the draconian measure he signed into law in 2019 which nearly outlawed the procedure. It infamously forced a 10-year-old pregnant rape victim to flee the state for emergency medical care she and her family were denied in Ohio. 

This year the governor and his wife shamelessly lied about a constitutional amendment to protect abortion access in a TV ad that depicted reproductive freedom as a bridge too far. Next year DeWine will endorse a GOP candidate for U.S. Senate who is open, if not committed, to a national abortion ban that overrides Ohio’s law. A moderate Republican he is not. 

A bought and sold politician is more like it. A day before he vetoed HB 68, DeWine quietly signed another bill into law that essentially raised taxes on natural gas customers (in the form of added surcharges on their bills). It’s another favor to the oil and gas industry, courtesy the governor. This time he put Ohioans on the hook for tens of millions per year to subsidize speculative utility projects.  

Earlier this year he gave natural gas conglomerates the green light to drill baby drill in Ohio’s treasured state parks by signing a bill that also (absurdly) declared fossil fuel “green energy.” A reasonable Republican on progressive energy policy DeWine is not. Months into his first term he signed “the worst energy bill of the 21st century” into law that was notoriously tied to the worst public corruption case (involving utility subsidies) in Ohio history.

A Republican centrist on commonsense gun safety DeWine is not. After the horrific Dayton mass shooting he promised to “do something” to curb epidemic gun violence. He signed every gun lobby bill that hit his desk. He loosened Ohio safeguards on firearms and caved to gun absolutists who reject any gun restrictions to protect the public. 

The worst slap in the face to Daytonians was DeWine’s capitulation on concealed carry (without permit or training) that police warned would make Ohio less safe. More extreme gun legislation is moving through the General Assembly that DeWine will undoubtedly bless despite the overwhelming demand of Ohioans for sensible gun reform. This isn’t a mainstream Republican throwback to balanced conservatism — no matter how badly the national media wants him to be. 

And DeWine doesn’t stand up for anything that risks political capital. We know how he rolls under one party extremist rule in Ohio: Over. 🔥