Dewine: If Roe falls, Ohio will act to get the abortion ban in effect
In a call with Ohio Right to Life members on Friday, Gov. Mike Dewine said he wants to “go as far as we can” to prohibit abortion based on what the U.S. Supreme Court decides in the coming days.
A leaked U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion indicated the justices plan to overturn legal decisions that protected the procedure up to about 23 or 24 weeks into pregnancy. The draft opinion comes in a case about the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that prohibits most abortions after 15 weeks gestation.
Anti-abortion groups are hoping for a complete overturn of the 1973 landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade that said women had a constitutional right to privacy when deciding whether to terminate their pregnancies.
“If Roe is overturned, all it means is it comes back to each state and you still have a situation today as you know, where more and more abortions are taking place. Not surgical abortions, they’re taking place because of pills,” Dewine said in the call on Friday. “Those options are still going to be out there for people one way or the other ... You’re also going to have people traveling to other states.”
Dewine, a lifelong opponent of abortion, said depending on the ruling, he plans to ask the courts to lift a legal stay that has kept the heartbeat abortion ban law from taking effect. Dewine,
a Republican, signed it into law in April 2019.
He also noted that when lawmakers return to Columbus in November, they’ll discuss “how we want to craft that legislation to go as far as we can to protect human life based upon whatever that decision is.”
Abortion is currently legal in Ohio until 20 weeks post-fertilization. There were 20,605 abortions performed in Ohio legally in 2020, and most of those (62.3%) occurred before nine weeks gestation, according to an Ohio Department of Health report.
Laura Bischoff is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.