COLUMBUS, Ohio– Ohio’s most sweeping law imposing restrictions abortion was dismissed Thursday by a provincial judge who said last year’s voter-approved amendment enshrining reproductive rights makes the so-called heartbeat law unconstitutional.
Enforcement of 2019 law banning most abortions once heart activity is detected – from six weeks onwards in pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant – had been paused in anticipation the challenge beforehand Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Christian Jenkins.
Jenkins said that when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and returned power over the abortion issue to the states, “the Ohio attorney general apparently didn’t get the memo.”
The judge said Republican Attorney General Dave Yost’s request to leave all but one provision of the law untouched, even after a majority of Ohio voters passed an amendment protecting the right to abortion before viability “ dispels the myth” that the Supreme Court decision simply gives states power over the issue.
“Despite the passage of a broad and strongly worded constitutional amendment, in this case and others, the State of Ohio is not seeking to uphold constitutional protections for abortion rights, but to diminish and limit them,” he wrote. Jenkins said his ruling upholds the wishes of voters.
Yost’s office said it was reviewing the order and would decide within 30 days whether to appeal.
“This is a very long, complicated decision that involves many issues, many of which are issues of first impression,” the agency said in a statement, meaning they have not previously been decided by a court.
Jenkins’ decision comes in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Ohio, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the law firm WilmerHale on behalf of a group of abortion providers in the state, the second round of lawsuits filed to challenge the law.
“This is a momentous ruling that demonstrates the power of Ohio’s new Reproductive Freedom Amendment in practice,” Jessie Hill, associate attorney for the ACLU of Ohio, said in a statement. “The six-week ban is blatantly unconstitutional and does not fit our law.”
An initial lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2019, where the law was first blocked under the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. It was briefly allowed to take effect in 2022 after Roe was overturned. Opponents of the law then turned to the state court system, where the ban was again stayed. They argued that the law violated protections in the Ohio Constitution guaranteeing individual liberty and equal protection and was unconstitutionally vague.
After his predecessor twice vetoed the measure citing Roe, Ohio’s Republican Governor Mike DeWine signed the 2019 law into law after then-President Donald Trump’s appointments strengthened the Supreme Court’s conservative majority and raised hopes aroused among opponents of abortion.
The Ohio lawsuit has unfolded alongside a national unrest over abortion rights that followed the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe, including constitutional amendments in Ohio and a host of other states. Number 1, the amendment that Ohio voters passed last year, gives every person in Ohio “the right to make and exercise their own reproductive decisions.”
Yost acknowledged in court filings this spring that the amendment made the Ohio ban unconstitutional, but sought to preserve other elements of the 2019 law, including certain notification and reporting provisions.
Jenkins said retaining these elements would have meant that doctors who perform abortions would have been subject to criminal charges, fines, license suspensions or revocations, and civil wrongful death claims — and that patients would have to see their provider in person twice , have to wait 24 hours to go through the procedure and have their abortion registered and reported.