The Ohio House of Representatives today passed one of the nation’s strictest abortion restrictions. But even if the Senate passes it as well, it could face a veto by Gov. John Kasich.
House Bill 258, sponsored by Republican State Reps. Christina Hagan and Ron Hood, would make it a fifth-degree felony to administer an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected. That can be as soon as six weeks after conception. The legislation doesn’t make exceptions for rape or incest, a fact opponents pointed to in order to illustrate their stance that the legislation is too extreme.
The bill passed 58-35 — just shy of the 60-vote margin to protect it from a Kasich veto.
If Kasich doesn’t veto it — or if it comes up again next year — the law could become part of a much larger battle around abortion access. Under the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, women have a right to abortion access prior to fetal viability, generally accepted to be the point at which a fetus can live outside the mother’s womb. But abortion opponents have argued — so far unsuccessfully — that an earlier milestone — a heartbeat — should be the cutoff for terminating a pregnancy.
“It gives a more consistent and reliable marker for the courts to use to determine the validity of a human baby,” Hagan said today. “We know that when a heartbeat stops, we’ve lost a human life.”
Recent federal court decisions have blocked laws that ban abortions simply because a heartbeat has been detected.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich vetoed a heartbeat bill in 2016, saying it likely violated the U.S. Constitution under Roe v. Wade. Instead, Kasich signed a law banning abortions after 20 weeks.
In the years prior, Arkansas and North Dakota lost federal court battles over similar laws to the one currently before the Ohio House. In the Arkansas case, a federal appeals court struck down the law banning abortion after 12 weeks because it would “prevent a woman’s constitutional right to elect to have an abortion before viability.”
A federal court in North Dakota issued a similar ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up appeals from both states on the lower courts’ rulings.
But all that was prior to the election of President Donald Trump, who has appointed two conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court whom some experts say may be willing to overturn or significantly amend Roe v. Wade.
Past fights over the heartbeat bill in Ohio were also prior to the Nov. 6 election, when current Republican Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine won the governorship. DeWine has indicated he would sign a heartbeat bill when he takes office in January. In the meantime, it’s unclear if Kasich will veto the current legislation.
A similar law passed by the Iowa state legislature this summer is tied up in legal battles — ones that some of the measure’s supporters actually hope ends up with the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The science and technology have significantly advanced since 1973,” said Republican Iowa State Rep. Shannon Lundgren about the state’s law. “It is time for the Supreme Court to weigh in on the issue of life. It has taken decades for the science to catch up to what many have believed all along: that she’s a baby.”
Supporters of Ohio’s bill have expressed similar sentiments.
“This legislation is aimed at the heart of Roe v. Wade,” Hagan said of an attempt to pass a heartbeat bill through Ohio’s House last year.
Democrats today blasted the bill.
“It’s shameful that Ohio Republicans continue to try to dictate, control and direct the lives of women and their families,” said Democratic State Rep. Catherine Ingram of Cincinnati in a statement. “Women should be able to make their own healthcare decisions with their doctors, not politicians at the Ohio Statehouse.”
This article appears in Nov 14-20, 2018.
Killing babies is not healthcare.
Once again, for the zillionth time, a fetus is neither a baby nor a child.
With every passing day, I grow more and more disgusted and ashamed to be a resident of this backward-moving, regressive, benigted state. We are at the bottom of all the right lists, and at the top of all the wrong ones. Ohio used to be in the middle of most lists, but we are rapidly sinking into the ooze at the bottom, thanks to the Bible-thumpers in Columbus. I am becoming more and more ashamed to have to tell people elsewhere that I am from Ohio.
For the zillionth time, manipulating language does not change the act. Forceps are used to dismember the thing (baby, fetus, whatever) while it’s inside the woman and then it is pulled out in pieces. The process is the same in Canada where you’re threatening to move to.
Will those against abortion adopt all of the babies born once it’s outlawed? Will they stop trying to block access to financial and food assistance to those babies born into desperately poor families? Will they stop shaming unwed mother’s and provide emotional and social support instead? Will they stop trying to block expanded Medicaid so the babies can get and mother’s can get healthcare? Will they stop trying to block women’s access to birth control? If not, you’re pro-birth not pro-life.
If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one…and don’t stop anyone else from controlling their own destiny. And stop yammering about freedom while you deny others the most basic freedom of all, the freedom to control what happens within their own bodies.
iTs a ChOiCe NoT a ChILD!
Maybe you should go to another state where you can kill your fetuses at your pleasure. Killing anything, whether or not it’s inside your body is not a basic freedom. These arguments are so typical and so vague and rely on manipulated language. It’s the same argument Jordan used before he roundhouse kicked that woman in the head. You abortion advocates can’t even handle the reality of what you are advocating for.
Abortion is one of the many things that contiue to divide us. It is more and more likely that all these divisions are going to result in another Civil War, in which adults will kill each other in vast numbers in order to decide the question of whether or not pregnant women can terminate their pregnancies. Or, to put it another way, we’re going to kill and kill and kill over the right to kill. Are you ready for that? It’s coming. Maybe not tomorrow, or the day after, but soon. You are on one side and I am on another. See you in the streets and in the fields and on the roads and in the hills. Best of luck to you.
Let’s us take your guns or we nuke you.
Let us destroy our fetuses or we go to war with you.
Got anymore? No one is afraid of you immature, violent people. You’re not a real threat except to anyone except your own unborn offspring.
I’m retired. I can fight full-time until you finally kill me, but I hope to take as many fascists with me as possible before I get offed. I’m not ready to live in your nightmare world and you may not be around for it either. Watch your back and don’t forget to duck.
Please inform Ms. Hagan she is our hero!