Abortion

Ohio Republicans Go After ‘Roe’: ‘Abolish Abortion in Its Entirety’

The GOP bill would allow physicians and those who undergo the common medical procedure to be charged with murder, which is punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty. 

[Photo: A doctor sitting at her desk looks off in the distance]
The bill is part of a trend among GOP state lawmakers to pass legislation that would challenge the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, with the goal of creating a case allowing the Supreme Court to revisit legal protections for abortion care. Shutterstock

Ohio Republicans are once again proposing an unconstitutional ban on abortion care, as lawmakers have introduced a bill that would lead to the “abolition of abortion in the state of Ohio.”

The bill is part of a trend among GOP state lawmakers to pass legislation that would challenge the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, with the goal of creating a case allowing the Supreme Court to revisit legal protections for abortion care.

Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, said in a statement that the legislation is part of an effort by “anti-choice extremists” to target Roe. 

“For those who doubt the seriousness of this attack, let me remind you that President Trump said that a woman who has an abortion should be punished, Vice President [Mike] Pence allowed Purvi Patel to be imprisoned in Indiana for a miscarriage, and both GOP candidates for governor of Ohio have pledged to outlaw all abortions with no exceptions,” Copeland said.

HB 565, sponsored by state Reps. Ron Hood (R-Ashville) and A. Nino Vitale (R-Urbana), would prohibit the termination of a pregnancy by “any method, including, but not limited to, chemical methods, medical methods, and surgical methods.”

The GOP bill would allow physicians and those who undergo the common medical procedure to be charged with murder, which is punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty. The lawmakers circulated a co-sponsor request for the bill in September, in which they criticized the legislation for passing abortion restrictions as “regulating evil” and that it was time to “abolish abortion in its entirety.”

Hood was the co-sponsor of a bill introduced last year that would have prohibited an abortion if the physician detects a fetal heartbeat. So-called heartbeat bans, which constitute a total ban on the procedure, have been introduced by Republicans several times in Ohio.

Gov. John Kasich (R) in 2016 vetoed a similar bill after the legislature passed both a 20-week ban and the total abortion ban.