A federal judge on Wednesday blocked an Ohio law that wouldn’t have allowed abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
According to Reuters, the law doesn’t allow abortions if fetal heartbeat is detected. The law was signed earlier this year by Republican Governor Mike DeWine.
The ban was scheduled to take effect this month; however, U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett issued a preliminary injunction.
“Today the Court has upheld the clear law: women in Ohio (and across the nation) have the constitutional right to make this deeply personal decision about their own bodies without interference from the State,” said Freda Levenson, legal director for the ACLU of Ohio.
Barrett wrote in his ruling that the law places an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to obtain an abortion before the fetus is viable, violating Supreme Court precedent
The law would have been one of the strictest in the nation because there are no exemptions for cases of rape or incest, Reuters informs.
Five other states have also passed “heartbeat” abortion bans this year.
A federal judge this year blocked a similar ban in Mississippi, while challenges to bans in Kentucky and Georgia are pending.
The bans are part of a strategy devised by anti-abortion groups and Republicans to force the Supreme Court to revisit and potentially overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that established a woman’s right to an abortion.
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