Ohio Heartbeat Bill Seeking To Impose Abortion Restrictions Advances

COLUMBUS (Reuters) - The Ohio House of Representatives on Tuesday voted to ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detectable, which can be as early as six weeks.

The House voted 54 to 43 for the ban, along party lines, with most Republicans voting in favor.

If enacted, the law would be a challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling which upheld a woman's right to an abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb, usually at 22-24 weeks.

Republican Ohio House Speaker William Batchelder said he knows this bill will face a court challenge.

"We're writing bills for courts," he said.

The bill now goes to the Republican-dominated Ohio Senate.

The Ohio House also passed two other abortion restrictions Tuesday, one that would ban late-term abortions after 20 weeks if a doctor determines that the fetus is viable outside the womb. Another bill excludes abortion coverage from the state insurance exchange created by the federal health care law.

The late-term ban already was passed by the Ohio Senate.

Neither bill was as contentious as the heartbeat legislation, which does not contain exceptions for rape, incest or the life or health of the mother.

Republican Representative Danny Bubp said the bill is the will of the voters. He noted that Republicans, who tend to favor anti-abortion laws, became the majority in the state house last November.

"We have to reflect on what Ohio did on November 2nd of last year," said Bubp. "And that is they voted. And they voted for change. Today, we have three pro-life bills on the floor and I'm happy about that."

Democrats in the Ohio House said the heartbeat bill goes too far.

"This bill gives the government the ultimate power, the ultimate power to intrude upon the most personal and intimate decisions of our lives, of women's lives, frankly," said Rep. Connie Pillich.

Ohio Right to Life also has expressed concerns about the heartbeat bill. The organization said the bill is unconstitutional and believes it is not wise to spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer's dollars defending it.

(Reporting by Jo Ingles; Writing by Mary Wisniewski; Editing by Jerry Norton and Peter Bohan)

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

Comments

[h0nebe12]

05:19 PM on 07/01/2011

Has anyone ever heard of SEPERATION OF CHURCH & STATE??? Obviously they weren't paying attention in government class. Cause they would realize that this is in violation of that. But it's not a violation in womens rights, cause appearantly we have no rights or any laws saying that we are equal to men. So I guess we are screwed either way. Cause all logic has been thrown out the window, along with our rights & privacy.

[Ben F]

03:44 AM on 07/01/2011

This bill is an attempt to outright ban abortion here in Ohio. On its face it is unconstitutional, and it conflicts with the Roe v Wade precedent. I doubt it will stand up to legal challenge, but this bill still scares me. It also may inspire a slew of other pernicious legislation aimed at the deterioration of people's health and rights. Personhood bills are expected to be pushed in all 50 states in the next 2 years. The war on women's health rages on.

Remember our fallen sisters, who died before the legalization of abortion. And all those whose restricted access to abortion resulted in death and trauma. We'll never stop fighting back. These are our sisters, mothers, friends, co-workers, aunts and heroines. They teach your children, fight in your military, work in your factories. They work for a living, raise families, and die without fame. They die of poverty, in modest homes and in our streets every day. It's a privilege to share my species with women. It is a crime not to stand with them on this.

[Rober]

01:19 AM on 07/01/2011

Banning abortion is a decision to take innocent lives. How many mothers have to die before the "right to life" side realizes that the issue isn't the taking of innocent life but who gets to decide when and if a life is taken.

[Ben F]

03:32 AM on 07/01/2011

Cheers and more cheers.

[cheo]

11:46 PM on 06/30/2011

Using the heartbeat for a criterion is a crude attempt to prevent all abortions. That is unconstitutional.

An embryo has a heartbeat before most women know they are pregnant, thereby assuring they won't HAVE the choice.

Yet according to the Medical Encyclopedia of The National Library of Medicine, at 4-5 weeks, "The heart, which is still outside the body, now beats at a regular rhythm. The embryo still has a tail and cannot be distinguished from a pig, rabbit, elephant or chick embryo by the untrained eye." The merest beginnings of a nervous system are there but real nervous system and brain development which can control organs won't develop until 3rd trimester.

Which is why Roe v. Wade's original criterion of "viability" is the most biologically accurate one.

As for those who believe in a soul, no one can answer that one.

[cheo]

11:34 PM on 06/30/2011

Testing.
I post a comment, then press "post comment" and it disappears into cyberspace. So I'm trying to find out if it's just this article or what.....

[Lynn1975]

09:20 PM on 06/30/2011

Ok, so I’m confused, ok granted I moved here 3yrs ago from Australia, so I’m missing the history here. But can someone please explain to me WHY abortion is a political issue?? What the heck does this have to do with jobs, the economy, infrastructure, etc… i.e. the stuff that I have no control over? You know, this would make sense if there were a whole bunch of kids being born into poverty and the welfare system in this country was not sufficient, oh wait ! That’s it! These anti-abortion people are SO upset because they have to care for SO many kids born into poverty, right? That’s what makes this political, they care SO MUCH for those already born, right? Is that it? (snark)

[LennyR]

12:04 AM on 07/01/2011

It's political because we believe our government should protect the rights of all those in its jurisdiction.
Other issues have no bearing on whether this should also be considered.

[squirrely girl]

06:54 PM on 07/01/2011

Because this country has a puritanical origin and some of the more fundamentalist folks seem to think they have the right to legislate their particular religious and moral views on others. It's what you get with a two-party system :/

[OGigi]

08:09 PM on 06/30/2011

Curious if those running for office in Ohio ran on this platform? Were Ohioans informed that this is the direction the candidates would go if elected?
Did they inform Ohioans who was gonna pick up the tab for a whole slew of unwanted children?

[cheo]

01:22 AM on 07/01/2011

Nope, most House Reps and all these Newthink Governors ran on "the economy" and "jobs", two topics they have not even touched in the House or as Governors. Unless you want to count opposing raising the debt ceiling tackling the economy--I don't think it qualifies somehow.

[OGigi]

01:06 PM on 07/01/2011

I suspected so. One poster answered yes and? Then another corrected them. First poster=no response. I would have asked for a link to back it up these guys ran on these issues but they were just another $ock puppet.
;)gigi

[aero56]

02:16 PM on 06/30/2011

Ponder this, when does life begin, according to the Bible, when the baby draws it's first breath. Genesis 2:7, when God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Person hood begins at birth. We are not a "soul" until our first breath is taken. In only one instance does the Bible say anything on a "miscarriage". The word abortion isn't even in the Bible. In Ex. 21:22-25 God speaks about a woman's fruit departing from her as a result of a fight. The culprit ends up having to pay a fine to the husband. However, if the woman is killed, then the culprit faces capitol punishment. No death penalty for the expelled fetus. There are so many opportunities when abortion could have been brought up, but it never was.

God killed babies. Psalm 137:9 "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." And this one, 2 Kings 8:12 dash their children, and rip up their women with child. The Bible is not pro life, certainly not pro child. "Thou shall not kill" certainly didn't apply to certain human beings, like a stubborn child, for being gay, or picking up sticks on the sabbath. (source: http://www.freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Abortion_and_the_bible

[squirrely girl]

02:42 PM on 06/30/2011

I get your point... but considering the separation of church and state what the Bible says really doesn't matter anyways.

[aero56]

04:43 PM on 06/30/2011

Exactly. I put my comments out there for the religious folks. I wanted to point out that their own Bible doesn't say abortion is wrong. I guess I could have better stated that.

[Dragosurfer]

04:03 PM on 06/30/2011

Blah, blah, blah, blah, bible, bible, bible, blah, blah, bible.

So what? The bible is nothing more than a collection of bronze and iron age writings by a bunch of middle eastern, desert, goat/sheep herders that made a first attempt to document their massively narrow and extremely superstitious view of the world they lived in.

The fact is that all of the woman’s rights/pro-keeping abortion legal people are working for solutions to this issue. They are working towards zero abortions being necessary. The pro-life religious groups simply want to push abortion to illegal clinics or over the border to Canada or Mexico. Religion is the problem here, not the solution.

If religion would advocate all forms of birth control and family planning, together we could end unwanted pregnancies. I’ll say it again: Religion IS the Problem here.

[jdrourke]

02:10 PM on 06/30/2011

Hey, politicians? How about you actually help kids who are living outside the womb for a change...?!

http://jdrourke.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/dear-rabid-pro-life-peeps/

[john1513]

03:55 PM on 06/30/2011

Children in the womb are the most vulnerable.

[synergie]

04:19 PM on 06/30/2011

Children don't exist in a womb, just the fetus.

[jdrourke]

05:25 PM on 06/30/2011

I actually don't believe that is true. What needs to be happening is the nanosecond a mother decides she wants to have a child, society should be protecting that child through middle school, and using high school to acclimate that child into the adult world.

http://jdrourke.wordpress.com/

[bamboozled]

01:27 PM on 06/30/2011

As we spend trillions of dollars bombing and killing thousands of children, and vote to cut funding to care for living, breathing children. This country couldn't be more hypocritical and demented.

[OGigi]

07:54 PM on 06/30/2011

And we are supposed to be christian based moral land too.
Forked tongue......still.
Hear what we say, do not look at what we do.

[mynamesyow]

12:17 PM on 06/30/2011

Its stuff like this about the Republican Party that really p!sses me off to no end. I live in Columbus, Ohio and am a news junkie and try to keep up on everything that is going down politically in my state and I just found out about this last night. It is being done in near Secrecy and only a few papers have even mentioned it, and only in passing. the biggest paper in town "The Columbus Dispatch" has barely even mentioned it although it is about to make our state the harshest in the Nation on this Issue....I wonder if its b/c the head of the paper John Wolfe is a staunch Republican who has endorsed Repub candidates nearly every election for the past decade.......but as a newpaper owner he has an obligation to let Ohioans know what our own elected officials are doing especially on something that is in direct conflict with already established Federal Law...W7F?!??!

[Alice Pernezny]

12:15 PM on 06/30/2011

Taken from another comment I wrote pertaining to this argument:
In the Supreme Court case, Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. John Danforth, the court ruled that a law requiring a husband's approval for his wife was unconstitu­tional. If the father of the fetus (note:not a baby) is not allowed to have veto power regarding the decision to abort, how is it legal for predominan­tly male legislatio­ns to decide for women who they have never and probably will never meet and have no personal connection to the situation?
But it seems that no matter how many studies, statistics­, and facts you present them, logic is completely lost on pro-lifers­.

[synergie]

01:33 PM on 06/30/2011

Anti-choicers, not pro-lifers. These people are not pro-life.

No, logic and facts don't seem to penetrate, but they do like to pretend to apply them, it's not a pretty sight.

[Cynthia Dudley]

01:43 PM on 06/30/2011

Let alone the fact that the preborn aren't citizens under the Constitution, they are simply housed in citizens. This is a direct attack on the rights of a citizen in favor of an "undocumented alien".

[RussianEconomics]

04:43 PM on 06/30/2011

This is not an argument. Citizens are not permitted to kill illegal aliens.

[Freddie27]

12:01 PM on 06/30/2011

No, Ohio voters didn't vote Republican to get anti-choice bills passed, they voted for Repubs on economic issues. How dare Bill Bubp (?) claim that these crazy measures are the will of Ohio voters. That is purely mendacious.

[synergie]

01:33 PM on 06/30/2011

Are his constituents calling him on this?

[squirrely girl]

06:57 PM on 07/01/2011

There are a number of recall issues proposed for the ballot this fall.

[OGigi]

07:58 PM on 06/30/2011

Common theme among the recently elected GOP state governors. They did not campaign on these issues.

[saysaycollins]

11:15 AM on 06/30/2011

Here is why I think there is all the sudden a huge push for abortion bills in almost all GOP states right now.

Abortion is an easy platform to run on with the typical Republican voter base. Representatives can grab that platform and run with it because its easy. All you have to do is introduce bill after bill on Abortion, which PROBABLY wont pass. BUT they can at least say "hey i tried"

But turn it around. IF a representative tries to pass legislation for economic change (and i'm using that term broadly) and it fails or the results are diastrious then the representative will be closely scrutinized by its voter base.

This push for anti-abortion legistation is nothing but an easy pass into re-election. I wish that pro-lifers would wake up, legislators don't care about your issue...they care about re-election.

If you want to effect unwanted pregancies then create support systems within your own community, involve your churches, set up counseling sessions, improve the s3x-ed classes. Pro-lifers if you want change, it is NOT COMING from your government.

[TechYes]

12:00 PM on 06/30/2011

Well said!

[Cynthia Dudley]

01:34 PM on 06/30/2011

They can't win on a pro-life only platform so they pretend to know something about economics. They get elected and then they pretend to know something about obstetrics. I would really like people to get elected who really actually know things.

[RussianEconomics]

04:46 PM on 06/30/2011

This is the difference between a liberal and a conservative. A conservative simply knows that the more you learn, the more we realize we don't know. Hands off. Let's try and keep all people alive (i.e. end abortion), and let people live their own lives.

The idea of an elected official who "really knows things" is completely terrifying to an educated person.

[SingularityPoint]

11:10 AM on 06/30/2011

It is the woman's decision. It really is this simple.

[OGigi]

08:05 PM on 06/30/2011

We all thought that had been established.

Sadly we are setting ourselves up for newborns suffocated, dropped in the garbage or other means women USED to use with unwanted pregancies. This is taking our country back to those days. Horrible.