Due to Ohio’s constitutional amendment, judge permanently blocks state’s ‘heartbeat law’

A judge has placed a permanent injunction on an Ohio law protecting preborn children from abortion after a heartbeat can be detected, at around six weeks gestation.

Two years ago, Judge Christian Jenkins placed an injunction on the law, first on a temporary basis, and then indefinitely. Under S.B. 23, preborn children who have detectable heartbeats are protected from abortion. Yet Jenkins agreed with the abortion industry, writing that abortion is “safe health care to which Ohioans have a right.”

An Ohio court refused to reinstate the law, so Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost asked the state Supreme Court to hear an appeal. The Supreme Court agreed, though has evidently not yet heard the case. Now, Jenkins has put a permanent injunction in place. He ruled in favor of abortion groups who sued after voters passed an amendment enshrining abortion as a state constitutional “right.”

Jenkins remarked that “Ohio’s Attorney General evidently didn’t get the memo” regarding the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which returned the question of abortion regulation to “to the people and their elected representatives.”

“Despite the adoption of a broad and strongly worded constitutional amendment [in Ohio], in this case and others, the State of Ohio seeks not to uphold the constitutional protection of abortion rights, but to diminish and limit it,” Jenkins said.

Earlier this year, another state judge blocked common-sense safety measures. One was a law banning telemedicine abortions, and the other required only doctors to commit abortions, meaning non-physicians like nurse-practitioners or physician assistants from committing them.

For his part, AG Yost said he is considering an appeal. His office released a statement, saying, “This is a very long, complicated decision covering many issues, many of which are issues of first impression.”

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