Abortion foes step up effort

COLUMBUS

Ohio Right to Life and like-minded public officials and groups rallied outside the Statehouse a few days back, voicing outrage over a series of undercover videos purportedly showing Planned Parenthood’s willingness to sell body parts from aborted fetuses.

The clips and resulting debate between the two sides of the abortion issue will dominate headlines and online chatter for weeks and months to come, with calls for further efforts to block public funding for Planned Parenthood and additional restrictions on the procedure that lawmakers could pick up when they return to the Statehouse after the summer recess.

“The Republican Caucus is 100 percent pro-life,” Senate President Keith Faber, R-Celina, told reporters when asked about efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, via a bipartisan bill introduced in the Ohio House.

A bill pending a floor vote in the Ohio House would ban abortions based solely on preterm diagnoses of Down syndrome. Legislation that passed in the Ohio Senate would ban the procedure 20 weeks after conception, the point where proponents say an unborn child can feel pain.

There’s a handful of other abortion-related bills in the works, too. And that’s all in addition to other abortion-related law changes the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed in recent years.

Anti-abortion initiatives

“... Nobody, no General Assembly, no Legislature in Ohio has done more to end the tragedy of abortion than the Ohio General Assembly today, including any general assemblies at any point in Ohio history ...,” Faber said. “We banned late-term abortions. We banned taxpayer-funded abortions. We banned abortions in public facilities. We made it tougher for minors to get abortions without parental consent. ... We protected the health of women by demanding cleaner, safer facilities. We put in new tough restrictions in these facilities that have forced many to shut down.”

Largely absent from the recent rally and other public commentary, however, is the controversial Heartbeat Bill, which would ban abortions within weeks of conception and which backers say could serve as the legal vehicle to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

The legislation moved through the Ohio House earlier this year, shifting the ire, campaign efforts and focus of supporters to the Republicans who control the Ohio Senate.

The bill isn’t going anywhere fast in that chamber, however. A betting man would be silly to put money on passage of the legislation this session.

“Unless there’s some evidence or some new information out there as to why the Heartbeat Bill would be constitutional and survive, I don’t know that that’s going to be anything that gets any viable discussion,” Faber said.

Lawmakers like Faber, who have voted in favor of other pro-life law changes, believe the Heartbeat Bill would hurt other restrictions successfully implemented since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortions.

Don’t expect Heartbeat Bill supporters to go away quietly. Janet Porter and her Faith2Action, the group behind the legislation, remain vocal in their calls for passage of the bill.

“Raise your voice for the voiceless and against the Republican Senate’s hypocrisy,” Porter wrote in a recent email.

Marc Kovac is The Vindicator’s Statehouse correspondent. Email him at mkovac@dixcom.com or on Twitter at OhioCapitalBlog.