A judge temporarily blocked Ohio’s six-week abortion ban on virtually all abortions, again pausing a law that took effect after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion at the federal level.
The decision means that abortions through 20 weeks can continue, for now, keeping in line with the state law that was in place before the new ban.
The ban was passed in 2019. It took immediate effect when the Supreme Court handed down its ruling. The law bans abortions after the six-week period before many women know they are pregnant, except in extreme medical emergencies.
It was among the strictest in the country and does not include any exceptions for rape.
The judge’s ruling means that abortions can resume up through 20 weeks, but only for the next 14 days. The plaintiffs have requested a preliminary injunction while a case plays out.
On September 2, Ohio abortion providers filed a new challenge against the ban, SB 23, stating the ban violates the state constitution. The groups said they withdrew their initial challenge to the law that was before the state Supreme Court, which denied their request for an emergency hold.
The sweeping abortion ban came into international focus earlier this year when a 10-year-old rape victim was forced to travel to neighboring Indiana to get an abortion. The ACLU has sued, arguing the law is vague and goes against state constitutional rights.
Now, the judge has agreed — and paused the ban for two weeks before another hearing.
In the meantime, abortion is now legal in Ohio through 20 weeks of pregnancy. It‘s a win for abortion rights activists, who’ve filed suits in dozens of states. Ohio is not the only state where women are being forced to travel away to other states for an abortion.
In Louisiana, a woman carrying an unviable fetus was forced to travel to New York for an abortion. She was carrying a skull-less fetus that would die almost immediately after birth.
She had to travel about 1,400 miles to New York City to get an abortion after her local hospital denied her an abortion amid uncertainty over the procedure’s legality.
The trek was necessary because Louisiana outlawed abortion with very few exceptions after Roe was overturned. New York is among the states where abortion remains legal.
Even though the fetus was diagnosed with acrania — a rare congenital disorder in which its skull doesn’t properly form that often leads to a stillbirth or the baby dying within days of birth — she was still denied because a heartbeat could still be detected.
The author of the law says the woman could’ve obtained an abortion in the state because there’s an exception for when fetuses can’t survive outside the womb. But acrania wasn’t explicitly on that list of exceptions and hospital officials reportedly feared penalties, jail time, and having their licenses revoked.
Across the states, women and girls are being forced to take gut-wrenching actions in the aftermath of the elimination of nationwide abortion rights.
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