A Hamilton County judge has struck down the remaining provisions of Ohio’s “Heartbeat Law,” ruling late Thursday that the last pieces of the 2019 law cannot stand after Ohio voters wrote abortion rights into the state constitution. Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Christian Jenkins concluded that requirements tied to the state’s six-week abortion ban — including cardiac testing and asking patients why they are seeking an abortion — are unconstitutional, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer, which first reported the decision Friday.
The ruling removes ancillary provider requirements that state officials had argued could survive on their own, including reporting rules and criminal penalties for performing an abortion without following them, Bloomberg Law reported. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, doctors who failed to follow the provisions faced discipline before the State Medical Board, criminal charges and fines of up to $20,000 — penalties Jenkins found would infringe on the abortion right voters guaranteed in the 2023 Right to Reproductive Freedom amendment.
Jenkins wrote that the six-week ban itself “has gone the way of the dodo,” in a passage quoted by the Cincinnati Enquirer, and that the remaining measures could not be separated from it. “These measures were passed alongside the six-week ban to make it difficult, or impossible, to obtain abortion care in Ohio by placing providers at risk of criminal prosecution as well as professional and financial ruin,” Jenkins wrote, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.
The decision is a setback for former Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, whose office had argued the ancillary provisions could remain even after the ban fell. “The amendment is a shield against governmental intrusion, not a sword to dismantle the entire regulatory infrastructure governing aspects of medical practice that intersect with abortion care,” Yost’s attorneys wrote in their legal brief to the judge, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. A spokesman for Yost told the Cincinnati Enquirer that attorneys are reviewing the decision and will soon decide on next steps, which could include an appeal.
An attorney for the abortion providers who challenged the provisions welcomed the ruling. Jessie Hill, director of the Reproductive Rights Law Initiative at Case Western Reserve University, told the Cincinnati Enquirer that the state’s fight to keep the provisions shows its attitude toward the reproductive freedom amendment: “Their view is that all it did was get rid of the six-week ban and that they’re going to fight tooth and nail to keep any kind of abortion restriction, short of a ban, on the books,” Hill told the Cincinnati Enquirer.
The Heartbeat Law, passed in 2019 after decades of effort by anti-abortion activists, was tied up in court until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Ohio voters then approved the constitutional amendment in 2023 guaranteeing access to abortion until fetal viability. Jenkins had previously ruled the provisions could not stand, but an appeals court overturned that ruling after concluding he had not properly considered whether each provision could legally stand alone — the question he answered Thursday, provision by provision, in the state’s disfavor, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
What happens next rests with the state. Yost’s office is reviewing the order and could appeal again, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer, and Bloomberg Law reported the judge again permanently struck down the provider requirements. For now, the ruling means Ohio doctors are not legally required to perform cardiac testing, ask patients why they are seeking an abortion, or comply with the reporting and penalty provisions that were attached to the defunct six-week ban.