The Akron Legal News

Pro-choice group gives Ohio an 'F'

TIFFANY L. PARKS
Special to the Legal News
Published: February 3, 2015

Ohio is among 25 states that received an “F” rating in the 24th edition of “Who Decides? The Status of Women’s Reproductive Rights in the United States.”

The yearly report is published by NARAL Pro-Choice America and NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation and offers individual letter grades on the status of women’s reproductive rights for all 50 states.

According to the report, which outlines reproductive health-related legislation in each state, Ohio law subjects women seeking abortion services to biased-counseling requirements, mandatory delays and prohibits certain state employees and organizations receiving state funds from counseling or referring women for abortion services.

In addition to noting Ohio’s “Choose Life” license-plate program and certain insurance coverage restrictions for abortions, the report states that as many as 91 percent of Ohio counties have no abortion clinic and blasted the state as engaging in targeted regulation of abortion providers or TRAP.

“Ohio subjects abortion providers to burdensome restrictions not applied to other medical professionals,” the report reads.

Kellie Copeland, NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio executive director, said the state’s grade was expected.

“Unfortunately, Ohio has consistently scored an ‘F’ rating in the annual ‘Who Decides?’ ranking,” she said.

“Because of Gov. (John) Kasich’s regulatory witch hunt against abortion providers, Ohio has gone from 14 to eight abortion providers, making abortion unnecessarily difficult to obtain.”

The report references Ohio’s abortion refusal clause that permits certain individuals and hospitals to refuse to provide abortion services and notes that the state directly funds and refers women to crisis pregnancy centers that promote childbirth.

“Abortion is a safe, legal and needed medical procedure,” Copeland said. “We are working toward the day when women are able to access abortion without political interference.”

At the end of the last legislative session, Copeland praised the 47-40 vote that stopped the widely-debated, reintroduced ‘Heartbeat Bill’ from getting to the governor’s desk.

The proposal, House Bill 258, along with its companion measure Senate Bill 297, sought to generally prohibit an abortion after the point of the unborn having a detectable heartbeat.

“Sadly, we know that defeat of this legislation is not the end of the threat to women’s health,” Copeland said. “Anti-choice forces already have more restrictions on access to reproductive health care ready for introduction when the legislature returns.”

In contrast to NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, Faith2Action, a North Royalton, Ohio-based, pro-life organization, lobbied intensely for the bill’s passage.

With the measure’s defeat, Faith2Action President Janet Porter called on state Republicans to “either protect babies or stop calling themselves ‘pro-life.’”

Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas are included in the states that received an “F” in the “Who Decides?” report.

As a whole, the U.S. averaged a “D.”

“This year’s report comes as anti-choice politicians take control of both chambers in Congress, multiple state legislatures, and governors’ mansions across the country,” NARAL officials wrote in a statement.

“However, pro-choice measures enacted in states increased from 16 in 2013 to 22 in 2014. Conversely, the number of anti-choice laws fell from 52 enacted in 2013 to 27 in 2014.”

Ilyse Hogue, NARAL Pro-Choice America president, said the report “exposes the politicians across the country who don’t trust women to make decisions about our bodies and our lives.”

“At a time where polls show the majority of Americans support legal access to abortion, this report shows that federal legislators in our nation’s capital are continuing to prioritize a rollback of women’s rights while states have begun to stem the tide of anti-choice laws that riled voters in 2014,” she said.

“Politicians in Congress and state legislatures who further hostile attacks on women, including limiting access to abortion, contraception, and to reproductive-health care facilities, will find themselves losing support as voters get behind leaders who want to make progress as a nation.”

While this year’s “F” recipients tied last year’s record high, Hogue said her organization is encouraged by the expansion of reproductive freedom indicated in the report.

“We think this is what the American people want and what the future holds,” she said.

The report can be accessed at www.whodecides.org

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