Ohio’s Abortion Bans Are Fucking Stupid

New laws could get women killed

by JANET JAY

Ohio women must feel like they’re watching the most patronizing tennis match ever, as bills regulating what they can do with their bodies fly back and forth and — mostly — men debate their fate.

First came the so-called “heartbeat bill,” which — as the name implies — uses fetal pole cardiac activity as the cutoff for abortion. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a heartbeat can be detected in an embryo at six weeks after fertilization.

But that could actually be eight weeks after the first day of your last period — which is another way to track it!

The bill would make it a fifth-degree felony, punishable by up to one year in prison, for a physician to perform an abortion without checking for a fetal heartbeat or performing the procedure after it can be detected. The doctor also could face a civil lawsuit from the mother and disciplinary action.

Gov. John Kasich vetoed the six-week fetal cardiac bill in favor of a 20-week ban. Now they’re saying that a woman doesn’t have the right to choose what’s best for herself and what’s growing inside her, regardless of how it got there or what major health problems either mother or fetus may have. The original bill didn’t even include exceptions for the life and life of the mother, but the final bill at least capitulated on that point.

However, here’s how they define it: abortions past this point are only legal if the mother has a “medically diagnosed condition that constitutes a ‘serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” [that]includes pre-eclampsia, inevitable abortion, and premature rupture of the membranes, but does not include a condition related to the woman’s mental health.’”

(And then just to drive it home: “No abortion shall be considered necessary under division (B)(1)(b) of this section on the basis of a claim or diagnosis that the pregnant woman will engage in conduct that would result in the pregnant woman’s death or a substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman or based on any reason related to the woman’s mental health.”)

But though it sounds like good news, sort of, it’s really about which bill has the most potential to undo Roe v. Wade. This wasn’t the first heartbeat bill. Judges in similar Arkansas and North Dakota cases deemed similar legislation unconstitutional because it went against the “viability standard” the Supreme Court used in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The standard says abortions cannot be banned before a fetus can live outside the mother’s womb.

North Dakota’s bill was overturned by federal judge Daniel Hovland, who in 2013 wrote straightforwardly that he was bound to follow the law of the land, and that furthermore, “the state of North Dakota has presented no evidence to justify the passage of this troubling law.”

“The state has extended an invitation to an expensive court battle over a law restricting abortions that is a blatant violation of the constitutional guarantees afforded to all women.”

Predictably, some fundamentalists in Ohio want to override the bill’s veto. “Why does Ohio matter?” asked anti-choice activist Janet Porter, who has made herself a lightning rod of controversy from both sides of the aisle with some unsavory protest tactics. For the babies, of course — and “because this bill was crafted to be the arrow to strike the heart of Roe v. Wade.”

However, anti-abortion group Ohio Right to Life did a good job of recognizing the motivations behind the bill switcheroo. “The 20-week ban was nationally designed to be the vehicle to end abortion in America,” president Mike Gonidakis said in a press release.