New Legislation: Prohibit State-Funded Death

Bills to prohibit state-funded death will soon be introduced in the Ohio Senate, led by Minority Leader Nickie Antonio (D-Lakewood) and Senator Steve Huffman (R-Tipp City), and in the Ohio House of Representatives, led by Representative Adam Mathews (R-Lebanon) and Representative Jean Schmidt (R-Loveland).

Both bills reinforce current law banning state funding for abortion, abolish the death penalty, and expand protections against assisted suicide by linking these prohibitions together. Uniting the state’s prohibition on funding any one of these practices protects current pro-life laws, especially from future litigation, by binding them to broader bans on state funding. The bill places each provision in the same category in the Ohio Revised Code.

While these issues have strong opinions on their own, the bills seek consensus that Ohioans’ tax dollars should not fund practices
that they believe immorally end a human life. 

The ACLU and abortionforward.com are unhappy and threatened by this legislation. “Our organization has maintained an anti-death penalty stance since our founding, but this ‘bait and switch’ bill is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, slyly designed to limit how public funds can be used for abortion care and coverage,” was part of the ACLU’s statement after the press conference on January 28 where the legislation was introduced by the Catholic Conference of Ohio.

Abortion Forward, formerly Pro-Choice Ohio, called the legislation, “wildly insulting and stigmatizing attack on the tens of thousands of patients who have abortions each year in Ohio.”

Once the bills are filed with the House and Senate Clerks, they will each be given a number and referred to committees. The committees will then hold public hearings to consider the bills (see the full legislative process here).