The abortion industry in Ohio filed a new legal argument against the state’s telehealth abortion laws last week.
In their complaint, the ACLU and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America contend that the state’s laws prohibiting telehealth abortion pill distribution violate the recently-enacted amendment that placed a “right” to abortion in the state’s constitution. The plaintiffs also asked to include an argument in the suit against a state law that prohibits non-physicians from distributing the abortion pill; the lawsuit was initially filed in 2021. Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Alison Hatheway has twice placed an injunction on the telehealth abortion law, keeping it from being enforced.
“Individually and collectively, the challenged laws ‘burden, penalize … interfere with, (and) discriminate against’ both Ohioans who seek to exercise their fundamental right to abortion and plaintiffs who assist Ohioans in exercising that right by providing abortion care, by delaying, impeding and restricting access to medication abortion,” court documents stated.
“Using telehealth to provide medication abortion allows patients to access care in their local community without having the burden of traveling long distances and/or taking additional time from their jobs and families to access the health care they need and deserve,” Dr. Sharon Liner, medical director of the Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region, said in a news release.
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Live Action News has reported many times on the dangers of telehealth abortion pill distribution using the “no-test” protocol. Without an ultrasound, women can’t undergo proper gestational dating, so if she is wrong about how far along she is, it can have serious consequences. There is also no way to confirm that she doesn’t have an ectopic pregnancy, which could be life-threatening. The abortion pill has already been found to be four times more dangerous than first-trimester surgical abortions; allowing a woman to receive the drug without an in-person examination and without a doctor’s oversight puts her increasingly at risk.
The abortion industry’s push to allow non-physicians, like nurses or physicians’ assistants, to prescribe the chemical abortion pill directly contradicts a recent statement by FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf who claimed that doctors are the only ones writing the prescriptions.
In a congressional hearing last week, Califf denied that non-physicians are prescribing the abortion pill. “Companies can’t write prescriptions. It’s doctors,” he told the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee. “Remember, we don’t regulate the practice of medicine. It has to be a doctor that writes the prescription.”
Ohio abortion businesses have previously used the constitutional amendment to request that the state overturn other pro-life laws, including its law protecting preborn children after an embryonic heartbeat is detected.
