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Toledo
Blade
Both sides of debate find Ohio
abortion law decision to be
historic
New
budget puts restriction on access
By
Jim Provance
COLUMBUS
— Texas Sen. Wendy Davis (D., Forth Worth) made national
news when she recently filibustered on that state’s Senate floor for 11
hours
until the clock ran out on passage of a sweeping anti-abortion bill.
Hours
later, Democratic women stood on the floors of the Ohio
House and Senate to make many of the same arguments that Ms. Davis
made, but a
budget bill similar to what was blocked in Austin made it to Ohio Gov.
John
Kasich’s desk and was signed into the law.
“This
isn’t about one bill or about one state,” one of those Ohio
women, state Sen. Nina Turner (D., Cleveland), said. “It is about the
unrelenting obsession with regulating a woman’s womb. Over 700 bills in
42
states in just the last few months have been introduced to regulate a
woman’s
constitutionally guaranteed right to choose.
“Texas
lit a fuse,” she said.
Several
provisions that critics argue restrict access to abortion
in Ohio made it into the state budget. One was added in conference
committee at
the last possible moment that any changes could be made to the $62
billion,
two-year spending plan.
With
Republicans controlling both chambers of the Ohio General
Assembly, abortion-rights advocates placed their last-ditch hopes on a
Kasich
veto. The Republican governor had taken on members of his own party
before by
promoting expansion of Medicaid eligibility under President Obama’s new
health-care law and by refusing to endorse efforts to make Ohio a
right-to-work
state.
But
Mr. Kasich sent signals that lightning probably wasn’t going
to strike a third time. “Just keep in mind that I’m pro-life,” he said.
He
exercised his line-item veto pen 22 times last week but left all of the
abortion provisions intact.
They
include:
-
A
prohibition against public
hospitals or the physicians affiliated with them entering into written
agreements with ambulatory surgical centers that perform abortions to
accept
their patients in case of emergency. The clinics must have such
agreements in
place as a condition of their licenses.
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A
requirement that doctors test for
a fetal heartbeat, then inform the patient seeking an abortion in
writing of the
presence of that heartbeat, and then provide statistical likelihood
that the
fetus could be carried to term. The doctor’s failure to do so would be
a
first-degree misdemeanor, carrying up to six months in jail, for the
first
violation and a fourth-degree felony, carrying up o 18 months in jail,
for
subsequent violations.
Read
the rest of the article at the Toledo
Blade
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