Advocates Advocate for and Against Ohio Wait Break for 24-Hour Abortion Care • Ohio Capital Journal

Advocates challenging Ohio’s 24-hour abortion waiting period and minimum in-person visitation regulations argued Friday why the laws should be suspended as they fight to repeal them entirely.

Jessie Hill represented the ACLU of Ohio, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, abortion clinics and a doctor in the Franklin County case, and said the constitutional amendment passed last November to legalize reproductive rights at the state level “is expansive and clear”, protecting the rights. that she says state laws prevent.

“Being prevented from doing something that you want to do and have a legal right to do is an injury if it is prevented by a law that provides penalties,” Hill told Judge David Young during a preliminary hearing.

Based on arguments heard at Friday’s hearing, the judge will decide whether a 24-hour waiting period and at least two in-person visits will continue to be required before abortion services can be provided as the trial continues.

Challengers to the law are entitled to a preliminary injunction “because the challenged requirements facially discriminate against abortion patients and providers,” Hill said.

Hill argued that the state does not agree that courts must apply the amendment to “test” other existing abortion laws. She went on to cite the legal analysis Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost released before the November election that explained the impact the amendment would have on abortion services across the state.

In that analysiswhich Yost wrote was “designed only to describe the legal effects of Issue 1 on our state,” he listed several laws that “I certainly expect to be challenged at some point” and said the amendment “it would create a new standard … and will make it more difficult for Ohio to maintain the kinds of laws already upheld before the (2022) decision in Dobbs.”

“In other words, the amendment would provide greater protection for abortion to be free from regulation than at any time in Ohio’s history,” Yost wrote.

The 24-hour waiting period was a law listed in its legal analysis and potentially affected by the change, along with “informed consent” laws.

“It is possible to anticipate a court decision that said a waiting period is a ‘burden,’ but that informed consent is not,” Yost wrote. “If so, neither provision could survive the “exclusive control” test.

Yost also notes that the state “may regulate only in order to promote the health of a pregnant person.

“This means that the state cannot regulate for anyone else scope or interest not at all, no matter how lenient the regulation,” Yost wrote. “Thus, long-recognized interests in fetal life or medical ethics cannot be protected, rendering laws previously upheld on those grounds invalid, even if the interests rise to the level of “compelling.”

The attorney general has since changed his tune, fighting lawsuits seeking to overturn the laws and saying abortion clinics I can’t challenge the laws such as the 24-hour waiting period regulation.

The attorney general’s office argued Friday that eliminating enforcement would be the opposite of the goal of a preliminary injunction, which is to maintain the “status quo,” according to Amanda Narog, senior legal counsel for the AG’s office.

“We’re talking about more than three decades of law that has regulated abortion in this state,” Narog told the judge.

But Hill pushed back, saying the status quo changed when voters approved the reproductive rights constitutional amendment, which went into effect in December 2023. So, of course, laws she believes violate the amendment will be challenged.

“That was the whole point of the amendment,” Hill said.

The state “can regulate the practice of medicine in Ohio,” Narog argued, and emphasized Hill’s arguments that doctors provide informed consent (in abortion care and any other sector of medicine) because of their medical training and will continue to do so. regardless of what the law provides.

The attorney general’s office did not fight back against the amendment’s language and its weight in the state, even though Narog argued that the 24-hour waiting period and in-person requirements should remain in place.

“It is well known that women have a right to a pre-viable abortion under the Ohio Constitution,” Narog said. “There’s no reason to think women can’t do that.”

Young did not give a timetable on when he might rule on the preliminary injunction or a motion to dismiss filed by the state.