#Preterm Cleveland v. Yost

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Victoria Bekiempis at The Guardian:

An Ohio judge has decided that the state’s ban on most abortions was unconstitutional and could not be enforced. Judge Christian Jenkins of the Hamilton county common pleas court also granted a permanent injunction in his ruling on Thursday. Jenkins said that Ohio’s abortion prohibition flouted language in a voter-approved amendment to the state constitution that protected reproductive healthcare. “Ohio voters have spoken. The Ohio constitution now unequivocally protects the right to abortion,” Jenkins said in his ruling. Jenkins’s decision stems from a law that prohibited doctors from performing abortions after the detection of fetal cardiac or embryonic activity. This activity can be as early as six weeks into pregnancy, the Columbus Dispatch reported. While Republican lawmakers in Ohio passed this law in 2019, the legislation did not go into effect until June 2022 – when the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade.

Jenkins temporarily paused the law less than three months after it went into effect. Healthcare providers in Ohio filed suit to permanently end the legislation, as it drove patients to seek reproductive care outside of the state and imperiled several clinics. A young girl who was sexual assaulted in Columbus, Ohio, even had to travel to Indiana for abortion care, spurring still more anger over the measure. Advocates launched a ballot initiative to ensure that reproductive healthcare rights, including abortion, were protected by the state constitution. This campaign passed in November last year, winning 57% of voting Ohioans’ support, the newspaper said. “This is a momentous ruling, showing the power of Ohio’s new Reproductive Freedom Amendment in practice,” Jessie Hill, cooperating attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, said. “The six-week ban is blatantly unconstitutional and has no place in our law.”

In Ohio, Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Christian Jenkins ruled that the Buckeye State’s abortion ban is unlawful due to the fact that the state’s voters last year voted to put abortion rights protections in the state’s constitution.

[fullspectrum-cbd-oil]

U.S. judge blocks Ohio ‘heartbeat’ law to end most abortions

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked Ohio from enforcing a new law that critics said would effectively ban most abortions in the state, starting as early as six weeks into pregnancy.

U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett in Cincinnati issued a preliminary injunction against enforcing the “Heartbeat Protection Act,” saying it imposed an unconstitutional “undue burden” on a woman’s right to obtain a pre-viability abortion.

The law was signed by Republican Governor Mike DeWine in April, following passage by the Republican-controlled state legislature, and was slated to take effect on July 11.

It was designed to stop doctors from performing abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. This can occur six weeks into a pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant. Under the law, violators could face up to a year in prison.

“Governor DeWine has long believed that this issue would be decided by the United States Supreme Court,” spokesman Dan Tierney said in an email following Wednesday’s decision.

Several other states have also passed “heartbeat” laws, betting that a solid conservative majority on the Supreme Court could eventually overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision declaring abortion a constitutional right. Judges have blocked similar laws in Kentucky and Mississippi.

In May, the state of Alabama went further, when Republican Governor Kay Ivey signed a law effectively banning nearly all abortions in the state. That law is also being challenged in court.

Ohio’s law was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood, which said it could end 90 percent of abortions in the state.

The Ohio law includes exceptions for when a woman’s life or health is at risk, but not for rape or incest. Alabama’s law also has no exception for rape or incest.

“Today, the court has upheld the clear law: women in Ohio … have the constitutional right to make this deeply personal decision about their own bodies without interference from the state,” Freda Levenson, legal director for the ACLU of Ohio, said in a statement.

In his ruling, Barrett said enforcing Ohio’s law would cause irreparable harm to patients by undermining their “well-settled” constitutional right to abortion access.

“To the extent that the State of Ohio is making a deliberate effort to overturn Roe v. Wade and established constitutional precedent, those arguments must be made to a higher court,” he wrote.

The case is Preterm-Cleveland et al v. Yost et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Ohio, No. 19-00360.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis, David Gregorio and Leslie Adler)

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