Ohio Judge Rules against Pro-Life Protections: A ‘Warning’ for Other States
By: Sarah Holliday, originally published October 28, 2024, The Washington Stand
Ohio Senate Bill 23 was designed to protect unborn babies from abortion after six-weeks and passed in 2019. In 2023, a constitutional amendment was passed by 57% of the voters in Ohio that made abortion a “fundamental right” in the state’s constitution. The contradiction in the two policies resulted in a multi-year, back-and-forth battle about the five-year-old “heartbeat” law — until state Judge Christian Jenkins of the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas permanently blocked the protections last week.
“Ohio voters have spoken,” the judge wrote. “The Ohio Constitution now unequivocally protects the right to abortion.” In addition to stripping the state of its six-week pro-life protections, the 2023 amendment also blocks other pro-life provisions such as ensuring a doctor checks the heartbeat of a baby before carrying out an abortion, informing the parents of viability, and having patients wait 24 hours after a doctor’s visit before moving forward with an abortion. “These are commonsense type measures,” said former congressman and guest host Jody Hice on Friday’s episode of “Washington Watch.” However, “now they cannot be applied … because a judge has determined all of these are unconstitutional in the state of Ohio.”
Jenkins’s ruling comes as 10 states have abortion-related initiatives on their November ballots. Considering this, Hice asked, “What kind of warning should be sent to those states as a result of what has happened now in Ohio?” According to the President of the Center for Christian Virtue (CCV) Aaron Baer, it’s important to understand that “this decision made by this judge is going to cost tens of thousands of lives in Ohio.”
He continued, “[I]t’s just heartbreaking. … [A]t the end of the day, all of us in the pro-life movement are involved in this fight because we care about the little ones that God has knit together in the womb.” But last week’s decision is “also frustrating,” Baer acknowledged, “because we spent last year fighting to educate voters about the true radical nature of a constitutional amendment that was proposed, and we were fighting millions of dollars from foreign backed entities and the media and all of their disinformation about the implications of this abortion amendment.”
Ohio’s constitutional amendment also put other “commonsense health and safety regulations” at risk,” Baer emphasized, such as “requirements that say that only doctors are allowed to do abortions” as well as the potential “stripping away [of] protections on chemical abortions.” Hice explained that the “potential domino effect” caused by enshrining abortion into a state constitution should be a “warning” to the states that have abortion on their November ballots. “Absolutely,” Baer agreed.
As part of that warning, Baer said his hope is that the “ugly and devastating truth of what’s actually happening in Ohio because of this abortion amendment can give those pro-lifers [in the states with abortion ballot initiatives] a little bit more ammunition to get the truth out there.” For pro-lifers in Ohio, Baer urged, it’s crucial to keep “telling the true story of this abortion amendment” so that voters will hopefully “see that they’ve gone down a dangerous and deadly path and that we need to pull back.” But this advice, he added, applies to all pro-lifers in states with abortion-related ballot initiatives.
“Focus on … the truth of these abortion amendments,” he emphasized. Help people understand “the really radical nature of what they do” and “continue to stand on principle about the value of every unborn life — the sanctity, the dignity, the beauty of children. That message is so important. We need to continue to carry it no matter what happens with these abortion amendments.” Additionally, pro-lifers need to pay attention to how “the Left tr[ies] to use the abortion issue to attack candidates” by getting “them to back off of their stance for their pro-life views.”
Baer also addressed how political leaders “need to hold fast to what you know is true.” And for all “pro-life activists out there, you need to continue to get out there and expose” the reality of the pro-abortion side, “because you can win these things.”
“Life is a winning message,” Hice concluded. “People just have to understand it.”
Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.