COLUMBUS — The Ohio Senate will consider a bill that would redefine the medical complications a woman would have to experience to legally get an abortion under state law, Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman told reporters Wednesday.
“There are going to be hearings the week after Thanksgiving on that bill or on that issue in the Senate,” said Huffman, a Republican from Lima.
The bill is coming during lame duck, the frenetic days between the November election and the end of the year, when the two-year legislative session ends, many lawmakers leave the General Assembly and a flurry of bills get passed in a short amount of time.
In 2019, the legislature passed a bill that prohibits abortion as soon as a fetal heart tone is detected, around six weeks. There is an exception in the law when the woman’s life or health is in peril. The bill went into effect on June 24, hours after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
But on Oct. 7, a Cincinnati judge put the law on hold while larger constitutional issues surrounding it are debated in his court, which could take the better part of a year. Abortions are now allowed in the state up until around 22 weeks of pregnancy as measured by a doctor.
The Cincinnati judge granted the preliminary injunction in part because he was convinced by abortion rights advocates, and physicians who testified on their behalf, that Ohio’s exemptions for the life and health of a woman were not clear.
The so-called fetal ‘heartbeat’ law allows women to get an abortion, even if a cardiac activity has been heard, when there is a medical emergency or a medical necessity. Ohio lawmakers previously defined medical emergency because it was used in an exception to other abortion bans. The term describing a “medical necessity” was new in the heartbeat law.
Ohio law defines “medical emergency” as a condition that in the physician’s good faith medical judgment, based upon the facts known to the physician at that time, complicates the woman’s pregnancy as to necessitate the immediate performance or inducement of an abortion to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to avoid a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.
“Serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function,” under that same law, can include pre-eclampsia, inevitable abortion and premature rupture of the membranes that may include but is not limited to diabetes and multiple sclerosis. It does not include a condition related to the woman’s mental health.
“Medical necessity,” according to the heartbeat law, is a condition of a pregnant woman that a physician with reasonable judgment believes would complicate the pregnancy and necessitates the immediate performance or inducement of an abortion.
In the Cincinnati court hearings over the heartbeat law, abortion providers shared the story of an Ohio cancer patient whose oncologist wouldn’t provide a letter saying she should get an abortion, so she had skipped a chemotherapy appointment. They also mentioned the now notorious story of the 10-year-old Columbus girl who got pregnant as a result of rape. The girl traveled to Indianapolis to obtain an abortion, apparently because a fetal heartbeat was detected in her pregnancy, which was at six weeks and three days.
Whether the coming Ohio Senate bill will contain an all-out abortion ban, which many conservative lawmakers want, remains to be seen. Ohio Sens. Terry Johnson and Stephen Huffman, who are both physicians, are working on the bill, Matt Huffman said.
The bill is expected to contain support for crisis pregnancy centers, which have received over $13.5 million since Gov. Mike DeWine entered office, and other issues surrounding pregnancy, Huffman said. Shortly before his reelection, DeWine said he wanted the medical exceptions to abortion to be clarified during lame duck.
“We think we can make the heartbeat bill better by getting better definitions, things I think that weren’t really contemplated when it was passed a few years ago, and we’ll also have additional action in that bill regarding foster care adoption, crisis pregnancy centers, a whole number of other things,” Huffman said. “How far we get with that with in our discussions with the House, and certainly the governor’s office is, you know, remains to be seen.”
