Ohio Senate passes Heartbeat Bill that could effectively ban abortions

Ohio senators voted Tuesday for a bill that could effectively outlaw abortions.

The Heartbeat Bill bans the procedure once a heartbeat can be detected - usually about six weeks into pregnancy.

Okay, so if the governor signs this bill, this would make the law the most restrictive in the nation on abortions. But, since there have been similar laws passed, then challenged, then struck down by the SCOTUS, it's a question as to whether or not this bill would remain law or even be activated before it is challenged and struck down.

However, some abortions foes, including Kasich and Ohio Right to Life, have said the bill would not survive a constitutional challenge. Federal courts blocked similar laws in Arkansas and North Dakota. The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld those lower-court rulings.

source for above two quotes

The actual text of the bill is relatively hard to find (but probably not for someone who knows how to navigate the state's website), but this PDF provides what appears to be the official analysis of the bill by the Ohio Legislative Service Commission, and discusses what the bill will do if signed into law.

A few things of note concerning the bill are as follows (taken from the above PDF directly):

Performing an abortion prior to fetal heartbeat determination
• Prohibits a person from performing an abortion on a pregnant woman prior to determining if the fetus has a detectible fetal heartbeat, except when there is a medical emergency.
• Requires a person who intends to perform an abortion to determine if there is the presence of a fetal heartbeat of the unborn human individual according to standard medical practice.
• Authorizes the Director of Health to promulgate rules for the appropriate methods of performing an examination for the presence of a fetal heartbeat of an unborn human individual based on standard medical practice.
• Provides that a physician who performs an abortion prior to determining if the fetus has a detectible fetal heartbeat is subject to disciplinary action by the State Medical Board.

Prohibition against performing an abortion when there is a fetal heartbeat
• Generally prohibits a person from knowingly performing an abortion with the specific intent of causing or abetting the termination of the life of an unborn human individual whose fetal heartbeat has been detected.
• Provides that a person who violates the above prohibition is guilty of performing an abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, a felony of the fifth degree.
• Provides that a person is not in violation of the above prohibition if that person performs a medical procedure designed to or intended to prevent the death of a pregnant woman or, in that personʹs reasonable medical judgment, to preserve the life of the pregnant woman.
• Provides that a person is not in violation of the prohibition if that person has performed an examination for the presence of a fetal heartbeat in the fetus and that examination does not reveal a fetal heartbeat or the person is informed by a physician who has performed the examination that the examination did not reveal a fetal heartbeat.
• Provides that the prohibition does not repeal any other provision of law that restricts or regulates the performance of an abortion by a particular method or during a particular stage of pregnancy.

Informed consent
• Requires a person who intends to perform an abortion on a pregnant woman after detecting a fetal heartbeat to provide the woman, no later than 24 hours prior to the performance of the intended abortion, with certain specified information regarding the statistical probability of bringing the unborn human individual to term.
• Requires the pregnant woman, no later than 24 hours prior to the performance of the intended abortion, to sign a form acknowledging that the pregnant woman received the above‐described specified information and that the pregnant woman is aware of the statistical probability of bringing the unborn human individual to term.
• Authorizes the Director of Health to define and promulgate by rules based upon the available medical evidence the statistical probability of bringing an unborn human individual to term based on the gestational age of an unborn human individual who possesses a detectible fetal heartbeat.

Other provisions
• Provides that a pregnant woman upon whom an abortion is performed in violation of the prohibitions under the bill is not subject to criminal or civil penalties.
• Provides that nothing in the bill prohibits the sale, use, prescription, or administration of a measure, drug, or chemical designed for contraceptive purposes.

I highlighted some things using italics because I have seen a few concerns mentioned over those particular things, so I wanted to call them out for ease of reading by anyone who actually reads this instead of taking a stance based on the title of the thread alone.

Also, this analysis of the bill from the Akron Journal of Constitutional Law & Policy has a good discussion about the potential ruling of it being unconstitutional, and also notes that:

H.B. 125 does not have a rape exception, which means that a woman who conceived through violence would be required to proceed to term as long as the fetus was older than just a few weeks.

This is something that concerns many people, so is worth noting as well.

So, dare I say it?

DISCUSS!

Please, please, please keep it civil. Name calling and abusive language has no place in intelligent discussion. Keep it intelligent, people.

a reply to: SlapMonkey

Yes the governor may sign the bill but like it said it will never pass the constitutional challenge of right to abortion.

The reason is that no state, no even congress can challenge the decision of the supreme court.

In order to ban abortions is to go and have the supreme court take the issue, that is never going to happen.

You can pass bills to restrict, but never those restrictions can ban abortion or eve come close to ban it.

a reply to: marg6043

That's the thing, though--it doesn't ban it, although it does tend to come relatively close, limiting it to only being possible within the first five weeks for an elective abortion, or only medically necessary ones thereafter.

I'm trying really hard not to interject my opinion on abortion in this thread, so I'll end my comment there. I'll save the other threads for my opinions on the matter.

Thanks for staying on topic



ETA: At least this law does absolve the woman from legal punishment if a doctor were to perform an abortion outside of the legal measures contained within the law, so at least that's a good approach, IMO.

a reply to: SlapMonkey

What this bill is aimed to is to have the supreme court take the issue, those behind the bill do not care if the bill passes or not, what they want is to bring the issue to be taken by the supreme court as a challenge to the wade vs roe, ruling.

The only way abortion can be banned is if the supreme court take a challenge, that happen before and with not success, or that congress try to amend the constitution and we know that even with majority senate of Republican over Democrat it will come to a stand still.

The bill its an attempt to have the issue address in the courts as a constitutional challenge.

a reply to: SlapMonkey

so if some pervert decides to molest a 11 year old and they become pregnant, this law will ban them from getting an abortion unless the parents discovers what has happened in the first couple of months after the incident and the girl is pregnant??? that's the first problem...
then after it is finally discovered they can all sit by and wait till the pregnancy becomes a life threatening emergency so they can do something to help her....

maybe they will spend that time debating on weather or not the pregnancy is truly a risk to her life...
what if a pregnancy isn't really that much of a threat to the life of the mother, but has a 99% chance of causing permanent disability? should a women be force to endure blindness, or organ damage against her will?

even if the supreme court were to accept this law as being unconstitutional, the first mainstream news story about a women ending up with lifetime suffering because she was denied an abortion, people would be outraged enough to force the supreme court to backtrack. especially if the doctors were claiming that there was a high chance of her health being severely affected and an even higher chance that the fetus wouldn't be able to survive outside of the womb... another think that I think this law forgot about... fetal abnormalities.

a reply to: marg6043

Yes, I fully understand that. But what we must remember is that the SCOTUS opinions change as the individual justices get replaced. We have a wholly different SCOTUS body than we did in the Roe-V-Wade, and it's even different now than other challenges, and will change even more in the coming years.

SCOTUS rulings don't survive forever unless that ruling is made law--there is no law at the Federal level that specifically says that abortion is a woman's right. There can, however, be that law created in Congress, but with the make-up of the current Congress and upcoming presidency, I don't see that as being likely. I do, however, see the possibility that new SCOTUS rulings on the topic may negate and supersede previous rulings, and the noose that restricts states ability to put limitations on abortion legality may be loosened up quite a bit.

I see the latter as being a much bigger possibility in the future than things just remaining the same status-quo, whether it's for better or for worse in the end.

originally posted by: dawnstar
a reply to: SlapMonkey

so if some pervert decides to molest a 11 year old and they become pregnant, this law will ban them from getting an abortion unless the parents discovers what has happened in the first couple of months after the incident and the girl is pregnant??? that's the first problem...
then after it is finally discovered they can all sit by and wait till the pregnancy becomes a life threatening emergency so they can do something to help her....

maybe they will spend that time debating on weather or not the pregnancy is truly a risk to her life...
what if a pregnancy isn't really that much of a threat to the life of the mother, but has a 99% chance of causing permanent disability? should a women be force to endure blindness, or organ damage against her will?

even if the supreme court were to accept this law as being unconstitutional, the first mainstream news story about a women ending up with lifetime suffering because she was denied an abortion, people would be outraged enough to force the supreme court to backtrack. especially if the doctors were claiming that there was a high chance of her health being severely affected and an even higher chance that the fetus wouldn't be able to survive outside of the womb... another think that I think this law forgot about... fetal abnormalities.

They should add a clause for rape/incest/child abuse.

Granted abortions for rape/incest account for less then 2% of all abortions.

I'm so sick of this.

It's simply NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS.

a reply to: dawnstar

It does sounds like it, that is why is no such much the bill but the results of the bill.

Many states have tried bills like this before, mostly Republican states, so this tells that is a Republican effort to restrict more abortions, that is what look like it.

The reason is now back in the table by another state is because Republican majority in congress, is a political move more than just the "save the unborn rhetoric".

They want this again to be challenged.

Now if they go for constitutional amendment I believe things will go down the hill from there, that is why they want the supreme court to look at it first once again.

What people don't see is that if the citizens were so much against abortion why not do a referendum in the states first.

I know that answer the same way that the states knows the answer, because people at the end do not want the intrusion that such a bill brings on the life of woman, taking into consideration the demographics when it comes to voting.

Women do vote in America.

Still for the states that successfully had passed more restrictive abortion laws many have been overturn by higher courts on the base of the rights to abortion.

Most laws try to go over the Wade vs Roe decision.

In Roe and later decisions, the Supreme Court said that women have a right to an abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb — at about 24 weeks of pregnancy with current technology — and that any state regulations must not place an “undue burden” on that right.

As long as the bills do not trample this later decision they can pass bills, once it does they are challenged by higher courts.

originally posted by: dawnstar
a reply to: SlapMonkey

so if some pervert decides to molest a 11 year old and they become pregnant, this law will ban them from getting an abortion unless the parents discovers what has happened in the first couple of months after the incident and the girl is pregnant??? that's the first problem...

Not really--molestation is not the same as rape, and it's highly unlikely that molestation will result in a pregnancy unless a rape was involved. But, since you asked the question--in general, yes, that's the assessment of this bill as it stands.

then after it is finally discovered they can all sit by and wait till the pregnancy becomes a life threatening emergency so they can do something to help her....

Well, if the pregnancy became a potentially life-threatening scenario, it appears that an abortion would be legal to perform, yes.

maybe they will spend that time debating on weather or not the pregnancy is truly a risk to her life...
what if a pregnancy isn't really that much of a threat to the life of the mother, but has a 99% chance of causing permanent disability? should a women be force to endure blindness, or organ damage against her will?

Well, to be fair, I italicized the portion of the bill that mentions that the threat to the life has to be a reasonable judgment--I would think that if there is a chance of permanent disability, the argument could be made that it could also be a life-threatening scenario.


But that is a problem with many laws like this that seem to have loose language--how does a physician prove the life-threatening issue? To whom do they report it? How much ability does the agency to whom they report have to overturn the physician's judgment and claim that he performed an illegal procedure? How much of a deterrence would that threat be to doctors willing to do the procedure and make that judgment, but afraid that they will be second-guessed and then face judicial punishment?

All are valid concerns, and these are issue that I also have with the law as written.

a reply to: Annee

I agree, Annee I agree as a woman and mother, but with Majority Republicans in congress the anti abortion foes has been very hell bound to challenge wade vs roe once again, they have been working hard at it, since 2014.

a reply to: SlapMonkey

It won't stand up to the challenge of Roe v Wade, which guarantees a woman's choice from conception to viability. A heart beat doesn't define viability. The State has no right to interfere in a woman's decision to terminate her pregnancy during the 1st Trimester.

Sorry, this is NOT the case that will overturn Roe V Wade.

a reply to: SlapMonkey

Most of the supreme court appointees are from the democrats, I will be getting worry once the Republican appointees will get there, and that will be in the next few years.

a reply to: marg6043

the major problem with most of these laws is that the MEN that make up the majority of these state lawmakers writing them have never been pregnant and never will have to worry about being pregnant... not are the experts on the subject when it comes to the medical fact. so, the health and life of the mother is like an after thought for them. I would liken laws like this one to the old laws that drafted sent men into war zones... since both are claiming that the gov't has the right to demand a person risk sacrificing their health and life for another person. only once a sacrifice is forced onto a person, is it still a sacrifice or is it closer to being murder?

a reply to: windword

I never claimed that it would overturn the SCOTUS ruling in Roe-V-Wade, all I ever said was that, with the changing of the guard of justices being an imminent inevitability, the opinion on the matter may change with it.

a reply to: dawnstar

Oh I know and then people think that we are better than countries where women have no rights whatsoever and their lives are at the mercy of the males in society.

I wonder sometimes.

In this time and age, men still wants to restrict, control and submit the females of the species specially in our so call free nation.

a reply to: SlapMonkey

I agree, I am sure of it, that this new bill that actually is not as new as we think is a challenge to the existing ruling.

a reply to: SlapMonkey

To each their own decision. I think we are over populated and under-resourced. This seem like a hidden agenda is in play.

a reply to: marg6043

I wonder if the lawmakers coming up with some of these laws are even seriously trying to put a dent in roe v wade or just putting a show on to gain the pro-life, religious right support...
because one thing is for sure, they aren't gonna do squat if they fail to put some protections in those laws that protect the basic right of life and health to the females (both adult and young children).