Last Thursday, April 11, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed the Heartbeat Bill, making Ohio one of the five states in the U.S. with the most restrictive abortion laws. As he signed, supporters stood behind him smiling while holding their own infants and children. As they celebrated, their joy over stripping women of the right to make decisions regarding their own bodies filled me with disgust. I am not alone; a recent study by Baldwin Wallace University indicates that more Ohioans oppose the bill than those that support it.
The bill makes it illegal for a woman to have an abortion after six weeks, and those found receiving or performing the procedure can be found guilty of a fifth degree felony. The bill demarcates six weeks as when the heart of a fetus begins to beat, but at six weeks most women do not even know they are pregnant.
This law is an even stricter addition to preexisting legislative barriers to abortion that discourage women from having the procedure. Currently, there are almost six million women living in Ohio, and only nine clinics that provide abortions in the state, with most clustered around city centers. If a woman is even able to have access to a clinic in time, she then must have two appointments to have the procedure. During the first, the doctor performing the abortion is legally required to offer booklets on fetal development and getting help with continuing pregnancy at least 24 hours before the procedure in order to sway the woman towards keeping the child. The Heartbeat Bill means that even if a woman were able to realize she was pregnant by six weeks, she would also have to jump through the hoops already in place in an even smaller window of time to safely access an abortion.
Imagine a rural, poor woman who discovers she is pregnant after five weeks. She would have only seven days to save up $350-$1000 dollars for the procedure, get time off of work, procure transportation and housing and schedule the two appointments. If a minor found herself pregnant and neither of her parents give their consent for her to have an abortion, she would have at most only six weeks to navigate an intense legal process to bypass this constraint.
While there are minor exceptions in the case to save the life of the mother, there are not even exceptions for victims of rape or assault. Representative Lisa Sobecki (D-Toledo) and State Senator Teresa Fedor (D-Toledo) emotionally opened up about how while in the military, both of them were victims of sexual assault and sought abortions to end pregnancies forced upon them, a choice neither of them would have been able to make if this bill had been in place.
However, a woman should not have to be financially downtrodden, too young to care for a child, or a victim of assault to justify her right to choose if she wants to continue a pregnancy. If a woman does not want a child, she should not be forced to have an unwanted pregnancy. In looking at other countries that have banned abortions completely, increased legislation does not result in decreased abortion rates. Instead, women seek increasingly dangerous means to terminate their pregnancies since they have no access to safe and sterile procedures. Those in support of the Heartbeat Bill argue that it prevents living, beating hearts from being murdered when really all it does is prevent women with living, beating hearts from safe abortions. This bill will not stop abortions, it will only stop safe ones.
Collier Summay, a Contributing Writer for the Voice, can be reached for comment at CSummay19@wooster.edu