Seth & Aubrie Drayer

Below is the testimony I delivered before the Ohio Senate Health, Human Services, and Aging Committee on December 13, 2011 regarding House Bill 125, which would prohibit abortion after the medical detection of a fetal heartbeat. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, my name is Seth Drayer and I come before you interested in the fate of House Bill 125. In particular, I want to refer to Division E of the bill’s language, which prohibits the practice of abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat. Lines 1 and 5 of Division E give clarity to the thrust of this legislation—not merely to provide the opportunity for detection of a fetal heartbeat, but to prohibit abortion once that heartbeat has been detected. It is this portion of the bill in particular which I champion—for it is another step in our nation’s long march of civil rights. Civil rights means not only providing education of the humanity of the unborn but protecting them from death—just as veritable civil rights for the...

The Columbus Dispatch today ran a story about the Personhood initiative's arrival in the land of the Buckeyes. The article also referenced other recent Ohio efforts against abortion, such as the Heartbeat Bill . What leaped off of my screen, though, was the first comment following the piece: It's unfortunate with 9% unemployment, children and adults starving in the street, people losing their homes, crime rates increasing, and corporations buying our politicians, these people are fighting to make abortion illegal. We have freedom of religion in this country, but they want to impose their religious ideology on us, in this secular nation. People can't find jobs, and children go without food. The most important thing on their mind is making abortion illegal. Jesus would be appalled at these people. Don't believe me? Read the Holy Bible. Jesus never spoke about abortion. But he did speak a lot about helping the poor and the homeless. - Toni Goodman Here's an experim...

Do you ever wonder what role you might have played in the Civil Rights era? Here's a role you can play in today's battle for human rights. Join the Justice Ride.

This morning, after settling into my comfy office chair and firing up my laptop, I found myself stunned by the video below. Be warned. What you are about to see is truly terrifying. Watching the clip, I couldn't help but be reminded of the tragic tale of Hugo Tale Yax , the homeless hero neglected by New Yorkers last year as he lay dying. My first response: sheer horror. To watch a toddler's body crushed beneath large vans is terrifying, but to watch unconcerned citizens stroll by idly causes an even deeper dread of disbelief. I wanted to believe this was a hoax. I even checked Snopes.com to be sure. I didn't want to believe man has lost so much of his mannishness that he would treat the plight of a dying child with such cavalier coolness. But then I remembered: business as usual will continue in America today even though 3,000+ children like Yue Yue are crying out for help. This is not new. And this led to my second response: Why did I find myself cringing more and s...

It's nearing 7:00 a.m., and I've finally given up on the notion of returning to dreamland--a vain pursuit begun nearly two hours ago when I stirred awake for some unknown reason. Now I find myself in the soon-to-be nursery accompanied by a Turtle Twilight casting green constellations on the ceiling and other sundry baby paraphernalia. It is truly hard for me to believe that at any moment a newborn will be occupying this room. A third little person will come into our home not as a guest, but as a permanent member of the family. From this perspective of fatherhood--knowing my baby only via ultrasound images, doppler heartbeats, reading to him/her, and feeling him/her roll around with my hand as I did moments ago before leaving the bed--it can seem tempting to idealize my baby. I'm not only speaking of imagining this tot to be the most adorable, most intelligent (as most parents are wont to do), but I mean thinking that somehow the beautiful little face we're about to...

"Pro-choice" rhetoric leads to some dangerous places. When the preborn is disqualified from personhood because of her lack of self-awareness, intellectual honesty requires us to also disqualify newborns. Princeton professor Peter Singer knows this (check out this article by Scott Klusendorf ). And so does the young man in this video. Does the logical conclusion of this view terrify anyone else?

On our journey to the east coast a couple of months ago, I packed my bag with novels of mystery and cheap suspense thrill. Aubrie's selection: the current hot pick some argue is on track to hold its own among the library of American classics-- The Help , written by Kathryn Stockett . When I inquired into the plot of this supposed chef d'oeuvre , Aubrie explained: "It's about maids." Somehow that sounded less than riveting to me, though her fingers flipped the pages so madly that it was clear there was something about the book she couldn't resist. Thus, when her birthday rolled around last month, I decided to end our celebration with a viewing of the film version of this soon to be classic "about maids"---partially because I was confident she would enjoy it, partially because I was so curious to find out what could be so enthralling about such a storyline. And, I admit that I, too, became wound up in this tale of racial bigotry, rare compassion, an...