Some Ohio Republicans are planning legislation to overturn the state’s 2023 constitutional amendment that assures the right to reproductive health care, including abortions.
The Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act would ban all abortions, making it a crime. While it would not include exceptions for rape or incest, as proposed, the measure would consist of exceptions “for a spontaneous miscarriage or to save the life of the pregnant woman,” ABC News reported.
Austin Beigel with End Abortion Ohio told News 5 in Cleveland that a pair of Republican lawmakers are introducing a bill to overturn Issue 1, the Ohio Reproductive Freedom Amendment, the constitutional amendment Ohio voters approved in November 2023.
“All it does is simply identify the preborn human being as a person under the law,” Beigel told the station. “We are currently denying human beings of their personhood of the equal protection of the law.”
Beigel said he is working with state Reps. Levi Dean, R-Xenia, and Jonathan Newman, R-Troy, on a total abortion ban. The Ohio measure would reportedly supersede Ohio’s constitutional amendment by using the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause.
In response to ABC News' question about whether he was worried that the bill may go against the voters' will, Beigel said he was not because “the will of the voters was evil.”
“In many times in our country’s history, the majority of people have desired evil things. We have discriminated horribly against the Black man and woman, and people wanted that,” ABC News quoted Beigel. “So, I have no qualms about saying I oppose the majority of the will of the people when the people desire something that is evil.”
Representatives for Dean and Newman did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment. The Columbus Dispatch reported that the measure could also affect in vitro fertilization.
Democrats were quick to criticize the push, even tying it to the political shootings in Minnesota, where a suspect targeted state lawmakers earlier this month.
“Mere days after an anti-abortion fanatic targeted and killed reproductive rights advocates, Republicans in the Ohio legislature have decided that women who receive abortions are the actual threat,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement.
“Ohio Republicans intend to charge women who receive abortions with homicide, ban IVF, and even some forms of contraception, as they proudly go against the people of Ohio,” Martin added. “Nearly three years ago, Donald Trump opened the door to these extreme anti-choice policies through the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Now, with Trump’s blessing, the far-right has declared war on women’s rights.”
Should lawmakers pass the Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act and it be signed into law, it would spark a legal fight.
“I mean, we knew on Nov. 7, 2023, that there would be plans to undermine the will of the Ohio voter,” WJW-TV/FOX 8 quoted Jordyn Close, deputy director of the Ohio Women’s Alliance, as saying.
“This bill does not account for any special circumstances,” Close added. “It does not account for any real-life realities for Ohioans who need abortion care.”
Separately, state Reps. Mike Odioso, R-Green Twp., and Josh Williams, R-Sylvania Twp., introduced the “She Wins” Act. It would affirm abortion is a health procedure under the state constitution, requiring that it meet the “informed consent standards” that all medical care does.
Informed consent is generally defined as “a process in which a healthcare professional educates a patient about the risks, benefits, and alternatives of a given procedure or intervention.” Proponents said the legislation’s goal is to ensure that women are fully briefed on the “physical and psychological risks” associated with abortions.
