Columbus, Ohio — The Ohio Supreme Court has rejected the state's appeal of a judge's order that has blocked enforcement of Ohio's near-ban on abortions for the past 14 months.
The ruling moves action in the case back to Hamilton County Common Pleas, where abortion clinics asked Judge Christian Jenkins this week to throw out the law after voters' decision to approve enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution.
The Supreme Court said on Friday that the appeal was “rejected due to a change in law.”
The justices agreed in March to review a district judge's order blocking enforcement of the abortion restriction and consider whether clinics had legal standing to challenge the law. Ultimately, they rejected Republican Attorney General Dave Yost's request to launch their own review of the constitutional right to abortion, leaving such arguments to a lower court.
The clinics asked Jenkins on Thursday to permanently block the abortion ban, following the amendment Ohio voters approved last month that guarantees access to abortion and other reproductive health care.
A law signed by Republican Governor Mike DeWine in April 2019 banned most abortions after the first detectable “fetal heartbeat.” Heart activity can be detected as early as six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.
The ban, initially blocked by a federal legal challenge, briefly went into effect when the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision was overturned last year. It was then put back on hold in district court, as part of a subsequent lawsuit challenging it as unconstitutional under the state constitution.
Yost's office pointed to a Dec. 7 statement that “the state is prepared to recognize the will of the people in this matter, but also to carefully review each section of the law for an orderly resolution of the matter.”
The abortion providers asked the lower court that initially blocked the ban to permanently strike it down. They cited Yost's own legal analysis, which was circulated before the vote, which argued that passing the amendment would invalidate the state's six-week ban, saying: “Ohio would no longer have the ability to provide abortions on limit any time before a fetus is viable. ”