Many opponents of the amendment fear that its adoption will open the door to late-term abortion in Ohio and eviscerate parental consent and notification laws for minors who obtain abortions.
“When Michigan voters passed a similar amendment last year, they were sold the lie that parental rights would be unaffected, that late-term abortion would remain illegal, and that women’s health and safety standards would not be touched,” the Protect Women Ohio Board of Directors said in its statement.
“But just last week, the Michigan Legislature voted to repeal penalties for partial-birth abortions, to eliminate health and safety protections at abortion facilities, and they called parental-consent laws ‘unconstitutional,’” the statement added. “They even vowed to come for informed-consent laws and 24-hour waiting periods next. We know the same barbaric attacks on parents and children are now coming home to Ohio.”
Jor-El Godsey, president of Heartbeat International, expressed similar concerns about the amendment, saying in a statement that “Big Abortion won” and “women, parents, and babies lost.”
“Women lost commonsense protections,” Godsey said. “Parents have lost the ability to be involved in a key, and dangerous, component of their child’s medical and emotional health. And babies have been denied their bodily autonomy to grow as God intended. The work of pregnancy help will now be the only thing that can help women from the entrapment of the abortion profiteers.”
Although the amendment allows lawmakers to prohibit most abortions after “viability,” the amendment does not establish a clear cutoff for viability, instead allowing it to be determined by the mother’s treating physician, which is often the abortionist, on a “case-by-case basis.”