(LifeSiteNews) — The Ohio First District Court of Appeals has restored some secondary provisions of an Ohio pro-life law that had previously been invalidated, ruling a lower judge had overreached in striking down parts of the law that had not been challenged under the state’s abortion amendment.
In November 2023, Ohio voted 56 percent to 44 percent to add the so-called “Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety Amendment” to the Ohio Constitution. It asserts a “right” to make “personal reproductive” decisions, “including but not limited to decisions on contraception, [so-called] fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion,” which the state “shall not, directly or indirectly, burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against.”
Ohio Republican Attorney General Dave Yost had warned that the amendment would go far beyond even the Roe v. Wade and block prohibitions on partial-birth and dismemberment abortions, allow abortionists to target disabled babies, and end parental consent requirements for abortion as well as minors’ contraception, sterilization, and “gender transition” decisions.
Following its passage, he stipulated that the core element of Ohio’s heartbeat-based 2019 law, the abortion ban, was unenforceable, but sought to preserve 14 other aspects of it, among them requiring abortionists to look for a fetal heartbeat first, notify women when their babies can survive outside the womb, and a 24-hour waiting period before abortion.
In October 2024, Cincinnati Judge Christian Jenkins ruled that the heartbeat law was invalid in its entirety and that all of its lesser provisions were also invalid under the amendment’s language that the state cannot “burden” abortion choices “directly or indirectly.”
The state appealed, and on January 7 issued a ruling that Jenkins had gone too far in striking down portions of the law that plaintiffs were not challenging.
“Statutory provisions whose constitutionality have not been challenged – like the disputed provisions here – are presumptively constitutional, and should continue to be presumed so for purposes of a severability analysis,” Judge Candace Crouse wrote. “A court’s power of constitutional review comes into play only as an incident of the need to resolve a dispute between parties.”
Specifically, the ruling restores provisions concerning “documentation requirements for doctors for abortion services they perform, and civil and criminal enforcement mechanisms,” Courthouse News reports, while leaving legal abortion unaffected.
“We are thankful that Attorney General Dave Yost and his team saw that Jenkins had erred in his ruling and put the effort into successfully challenging that decision,” responded Ohio Right to Life Executive Director Carrie Snyder. “While it’s sad that our law protecting babies as soon as a heartbeat is detected cannot be enforced, we are hopeful that other sections of SB23 can now take effect, including the provision allowing the pregnant woman to have the option to view the ultrasound of her baby before an abortion takes place. Statistics show that a simple ultrasound showing a moving, growing baby – not just some clump of cells – can often change the mind of mothers who initially seek an abortion.”
Pro-abortion state constitutional amendments have been one of the abortion lobby’s most potent tactics to preserve abortion “access” without Roe v. Wade. Up until 2024, it had consistent success since the overturn of Roe v. Wade using false claims that pro-life laws are dangerous to stoke fear about the issue among the general public.
After 2020, pro-lifers either failed to enact pro-life amendments or stop pro-abortion ones in California, Kentucky, Michigan, Vermont, Kansas, and Ohio, prompting much conversation among pro-lifers about the need to develop new strategies to protect life at the ballot box as well as consternation within the Republican Party over the political ramifications of continuing to take a clear pro-life position.
10 states had such amendments on the ballot in November 2024. Pro-lifers defeated pro-abortion ballot initiatives in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota, breaking the abortion lobby’s two-year winning streak, but amendments to embed abortion “rights” in state constitutions prevailed in the remaining states.