Ohio Dems try to repeal laws conflicting with reproductive rights amendment during lame duck

By: Susan Tebben – Ohio Capital Journal

Ohio Democratic lawmakers are asking the state legislature to undo laws on the books that they say conflict with the reproductive rights amendment passed by voters in 2023 that’s now part of the Ohio Constitution.

Several of those laws have been struck down by judges, either temporarily as a lawsuit continues or in official court rulings, but the laws remain part of the Ohio Revised Code.

Sponsors of the bills say the constitutional amendment passed last year negates these laws, therefore necessitating the repeal of regulations that require 24-hour waiting periods for abortions and transfer agreements of certain distances for physicians and hospitals who work with abortion clinics, for example.

“We, the legislature, should not be making choices for all women in the state,” said state Rep. Beth Liston, D-Dublin. “The people of Ohio have said they want these decisions for themselves.”

Republicans hold a 67-32 majority in the Ohio House and a 25-7 majority in the Ohio Senate, and state Republican leaders opposed the amendment.

Liston and fellow state Rep. Anita Somani, D-Dublin, both of whom are physicians, brought House Bill 343 to the House Public Health Policy Committee in hopes of “simply ensuring that all of our state laws are now in agreement with that amendment.”

“Removing these barriers to care will reduce delays in care and actually allow health care providers to serve their patients properly,” Somani told the committee on Wednesday. “We have a health care access problem in Ohio and restrictive laws like these are part of the problem.”

H.B. 343 wasn’t the only bill Somani presented to the Public Health Policy Committee in an effort to protect reproductive rights.

House Bill 502, which also saw its first hearing in the committee on Wednesday, would protect access to “assistive reproductive technology,” which includes in-vitro fertilization. Fertility treatments were also listed as one of the rights covered by the constitutional amendment approved by 57% of Ohio voters last year.

But an Alabama Supreme Court case from this year has caused nationwide concerns about the future of IVF and embryos saved by individuals going through fertility treatments. State supreme court justices in that case ruled that frozen embryos could still be considered children, an issue that has come to be known as “personhood” as federal and state-level entities debate fetal viability and regulation as a whole.

The “personhood” issue is not foreign to Ohio, which saw a 2022 bill in which state Rep. Gary Click, R-Vickery, said “the unborn” is a “class of people” who have “erroneously been denied their constitutional rights.”

Click said his legislation would consider a “zygote, embryo or whichever depersonalizing term you choose” a “human with potential” from the moment of fertilization.

That bill died in the previous General Assembly, though Click has not ruled out bringing the idea back in a future GA.

Back in March, after the Alabama decision came about, Senate President Matt Huffman, who will soon become Ohio’s House Speaker, said there hadn’t been “any discussion by any member of my caucus or anybody else as far as in the state of Ohio as far as I know” regarding “personhood” or IVF regulations.

But Somani said protection of the technology around IVF “should be explicitly stated in state law so that there is no confusion about the legality of the practice.”

“We don’t want to make the same mistakes as other states,” she told the committee on Wednesday. “Equating embryos with people confuses those who practice evidence-based medicine and the reproductive care that they can provide.”

The sponsors cited CDC statistics which showed 2,226 births in Ohio in which IVF was used in 2021. In that same year, more than 86,000 births nationally were attributed to IVF, with 42% of adults saying they have used fertility treatments or know someone who has, according to the CDC.

“Experiencing infertility can be a mentally, emotionally and physically exhausting journey and we as lawmakers should not be doing anything to increase that stress,” Somani said.

H.B. 502 would also prevent health care providers from “being compelled to release patient records to third parties, including out-of-state entities or law enforcement,’ and allow lawsuits from individuals who feel their privacy rights are violate with regard to medical information.

The bill’s co-sponsor, state Rep. Beryl Brown Piccolantonio, D-Gahanna, acknowledged the tight timeline the bill is now under with less than a month before the current General Assembly ends, and all unapproved bills must be reintroduced in the new year. But, she said she hoped the committee would allow supporters of the bill to speak on IVF’s importance, especially with the possible impact of the Alabama Supreme Court ruling.

“This decision has significant implications for reproductive rights and the legal status of embryos, influencing legislation and public policy across multiple states, including Ohio,” Piccolantonio said.

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Susan Tebben

Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

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