Two pro-abortion coalitions in Ohio submitted a ballot measure on Tuesday for a constitutional amendment that would guarantee access to abortion in the state.
Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights joined Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom in sending the proposed amendment to Attorney General Dave Yost. In the measure, the groups call for “a fundamental right to reproductive freedom.” Abortion is currently legal in Ohio up to 22 weeks while the state’s 2019 embryonic heartbeat law protecting preborn children from abortion once a heartbeat can be detected is held up in court.
“The abortion lobby is wildly out-of-step with Ohio values, and their language is a Trojan horse for taxpayer funded, late-term abortion on demand,” said Ohio Republican Party Chair Alex Triantafilou.
The amendment would ensure that “[e]very individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion.” It adds that the “State shall not, directly or indirectly, burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against either an individual’s voluntary exercise of this right or a person or entity that assists an individual exercising this right, unless the State demonstrates that it is using the least restrictive means to advance the individuals’ health…”
In other words, abortionists will be protected by the amendment.
While the amendment states that abortion can be “prohibited after fetal viability” it also states that viability is “determined on a case-by-case basis.” It defines viability as the ability of a child to survive outside of the uterus “with reasonable measure” yet ensures that an abortionist can still commit an abortion after “viability” if he deems it necessary to protect the women’s health — despite the fact that the baby was deemed “viable” which means the child can survive outside the womb and could therefore be delivered alive, negating the so-called ‘necessity’ for abortion after viability.
However, Dr. Lauren Beene, executive director of Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, called the measure a “common sense amendment.”
The decision to create the amendment came after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in its June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, which said states could restrict abortion at any point in pregnancy. In addition, as reported by the Associated Press, state lawmakers are attempting to make it more difficult to amend the Ohio Constitution, with a measure on the 2023 ballot to increase the number of votes necessary to approve changes from 50% to 60%.
Ohio Right to Life has stated it will launch “the largest grassroots initiative to protect women and children in Ohio’s history.”
