Two pro-life laws in Ohio have been blocked by the same judge after complaints from pro-abortion organizations.
The first law is Senate Bill 27, which regulates how preborn remains are handled after a surgical abortion and allows women to decide if the preborn is buried or cremated. In addition, the state acknowledges in the text of the bill that each preborn child is a separate life and deserves recognition, despite being a “zygote, blastocyte, embryo or fetus.” The law would have gone into effect on Tuesday, April 6.
As with nearly all pieces of pro-life legislation, the abortion industry objects to this requirement and set out a legal challenge. Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Alison Hatheway has acquiesced to this request, arguing in part that the “state has not created forms, rules and regulations needed for clinics to follow the law,” as reported by News 5 Cleveland.
“Without the required rules and forms in place, plaintiffs will be forced to stop providing procedural abortions because of the real threat of severe sanctions and penalties independent from criminal prosecution,” Hatheway said in court on Tuesday.
Though the attorney for the Ohio Department of Health argued that there could be an “emergency rule exception,” Judge Hatheway argues that the law “substantially interferes with, if not denies” a woman her right to access an abortion under the Ohio Constitution.
Planned Parenthood argued, “There is a history of aggressive enforcement against abortion providers in Ohio, and this ruling ensures that abortion providers are not vulnerable to severe sanctions, fines and penalties, including potential license revocation, during this interim period as we await final rules and regulations from the Ohio Department of Health.”
A law like this supposedly creates “an impossible situation” since it goes into effect before an abortion business has the necessary procedures in place to ensure it follows all the requirements.
In reality, that really isn’t the case. It’s not that Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers can’t do it quickly enough, most likely they just don’t want to. Determining a burial location or hiring cremation services requires additional funding and time, eating into the abortion business’s profits. It also forces a woman to acknowledge the reality that the child she is aborting is a living human being whose remains should be treated properly.
There’s also a precedent for this type of legal requirement, as former abortionist Dr. Ulrich Klopfer, who operated out of neighboring Indiana but lived in Illinois, kept the remains of thousands of the preborn babies he aborted for an unknown reason. Indiana, after recovering the remains, laid these preborn babies to rest in a cemetery after an investigation.
If it can happen in Illinois and Indiana, it can certainly happen in Ohio as well. The state and its people are best served if it protects the remains of these babies from abuse by abortionists.
The same judge from Hamilton County has also halted the state’s ban on telemedicine abortion, which protected women by preventing abortionists from prescribing the abortion pill without physically examining the patient.
“It wasn’t ok to single out abortion care and say, ‘We’re ok with telemedicine except for this one case,’” Laurel Powell, who is with Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, said.
Ohio Right to Life President Mike Gonidakis said, “No woman deserves to be subjected to the gruesome process of a chemical abortion potentially hours away from the physician who proscribed her the drugs.”
The chemical or medical abortion process, also known as the abortion pill(s), can result in upwards of 20% of women contacting their providers about concerns over their side effects. Women are rarely warned of the potential pain they can experience or the debilitating and frightening complications that can happen as the abortion industry makes a concerted effort to hide the reality of the abortion pill from women.
It’s a shame to see such practical and necessary pro-life laws halted by a judge more interested in siding with the abortion industry than protecting women.
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