Last November, Republicans won every statewide office in Ohio and the majority of seats in the Ohio House and Senate, too, after vowing to focus on jobs, jobs, jobs and reducing the role of government in our lives.

As of Friday, this new "small government" majority has introduced six bills that would dramatically expand the government's intrusion into women's private lives, and cost the state potentially millions of dollars in court and litigation fees to defend them.

The only jobs I see coming out of this bait-and-switch will be the ones held by lawyers hired to challenge the constitutionality of any of these bills signed into law. I also expect to see a new statute by June requiring all female Ohioans of reproductive age to wear chastity belts with brass buckles embossed with the seal of the Buckeye State. To make it clear who owns them, you understand.

I am a mother and a grandmother who is unequivocally pro-choice because I trust women to make the right decisions for their own lives. But my personal narrative is irrelevant. It does not matter to the rest of the world what I would do if I became unexpectedly pregnant.

What does matter is that every woman retain her constitutional right to weigh the benefits and the risks -- physical, psychological and financial -- of an unplanned pregnancy, and the option to end that pregnancy if that is what she decides is the right choice for her.

So, let's consider the circus unfurling its tents in Columbus.

One Democrat also sponsored an anti-abortion bill. Every large family has a kid who acts out for attention, and the publicity-starved child of Ohio Democrats appears to be Lorraine Fende, whose bill would ban already rare late-term abortions at 22 weeks.

House Republicans Kristina Roegner and Joe Uecker trumped Fende's bill by sponsoring one that would ban the late-term procedure at 20 weeks. Republican Peggy Lehner sponsored a similar bill in the Senate. The bills carve out exceptions for when a woman's life is in danger and medical emergencies, but narrowly so. The woman would have to be facing permanent loss of a bodily function.

Two other bills -- sponsored by House Republicans Ron Young and Lynn Slaby and Republican Sens. Karen Gillmor and Tim Grendell -- would make it even more difficult than it already is for minors to get a Juvenile Court judge's permission to get an abortion without parental consent. They want to require a judge to ask a girl already traumatized by an unplanned pregnancy whether she understands the potential physical and emotional complications of abortion and whether she has been coached into successfully avoiding parental consent.

What these bills don't require is that the judge inform this pregnant child that most studies show the overwhelming majority of women who have abortions do not regret their decisions. They also don't require the judge to ask the pregnant girl if she's prepared for the potential physical and emotional complications of childbirth.

As NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio's Kellie Copeland pointed out in a phone interview, "There is no post-abortion syndrome, but post-partum syndrome is well-documented."

As for the "coaching," one can only hope that a girl who has been raped by a relative or family friend has somebody helping her circumnavigate the parents who did not protect her.

Another house bill, sponsored by Republican Danny Bubp, would prohibit abortion coverage in health care plans administered by the state under the new federal health care law -- even if women pay for their entire coverage.

Finally, there's the so-called heartbeat bill, which would ban abortions in the first trimester, often before most women know they're pregnant. This bill, sponsored by Republican Lynn Wachtmann, is so bad that even Ohio Right to Life's executive director, Mike Gonidakis, opposes it. He made it clear the bill has no chance of being upheld in federal court.

Gonidakis also wasn't keen on bill supporters' inflated red heart balloons bobbing in the air at a news conference last week.

"You know when a young woman finds herself with an unintended pregnancy she's not looking for a red balloon or gimmick," he told the Ohio News Network. "She's looking for help."

On that, I couldn't agree more with Ohio Right to Life.

Which just goes to show you how crazy it's getting here in Ohio.