At least two Republican lawmakers want to ban all abortions in Ohio and make it a crime to have one − a direct challenge to reproductive rights protections that voters approved in 2023.
Reps. Levi Dean, R-Xenia, and Johnathan Newman, R-Troy, will introduce the “Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act” on June 18. The bill would treat abortion like homicide by granting criminal and civil protections from the point of fertilization.
The bill also seeks to end in vitro fertilization, where an egg and sperm are fertilized outside the body, and could affect some contraception.
“IVF thrives on its ability to treat human beings as something lesser,” said Austin Beigel, president of End Abortion Ohio. “When you do identify all human beings as people under the law, what will happen is IVF will effectively end itself.”
Abortion rights advocates say that’s not what Ohioans voted for.
“These out-of-touch anti-abortion extremists want to give legal rights to embryos and fetuses,” said Gabriel Mann, spokesperson for Abortion Forward, which helped pass the 2023 amendment. “This would impacts people’s ability to make decisions for their lives, health, and well-being, including banning all abortion care, banning some types of birth control, and denying IVF treatment that helps people build their families. These are the exact reproductive rights that voters protected when they created the Ohio Reproductive Freedom Amendment in 2023.”
How is this abortion ban different? Will it pass?
Ohio Republicans have a long history of passing abortion restrictions and bans. However, past legislation has focused on penalizing doctors who perform abortions rather than the Ohioans who have them. This bill would change that.
“The Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act acknowledges the personhood of the preborn and the sanctity of human life as created in the image of God,” according to a news release from End Abortion Ohio, which will gather at the Ohio Statehouse from 2:30 to 4 p.m. on June 18. WEWS was the first to report on the new bill.
The bill, if passed, would be a direct challenge to a reproductive rights measure Ohioans passed with 57% of the vote in 2023 to protect access to abortion. In the months since, judges have struck down a ban on most abortions and a 24-hour waiting period requirement as unconstitutional. This proposed law would go even further.
End Abortion Ohio views the 2023 constitutional amendment as a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and the law of God, writing in its news release: “We must obey God rather than men, and we call upon our governing authorities to follow in that obedience.”
The ultimate goal is to challenge Ohio’s abortion rights amendment in the U.S. Supreme Court, Beigel said.
The future of this new bill remains unclear. Ohio’s GOP-controlled Legislature has not passed an abortion restriction in recent years. Abortion opponents have focused on defending laws already on the books and trying to change the culture around abortion.
“We hope this bill will change the culture of the Republican Party in Ohio, which I think has been afraid to speak truly and openly about abortion,” Beigel said.
The Center for Christian Virtue, a prominent anti-abortion, Christian lobbying group, isn’t pushing the proposal. President Aaron Baer said in a statement: “This proposal is not a part of CCV’s efforts to overturn the abortion amendment and save lives.”
At least eight other states have considered bills to treat abortion as homicide, according to The 19th News.
State government reporter Jessie Balmert can be reached at jbalmert@gannett.com or @jbalmert on X.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: New Ohio Republican bill would treat abortion as homicide, ban all abortions in state
Reporting by Jessie Balmert, Cincinnati Enquirer / The Columbus Dispatch
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