April 11, 2019

The Ohio Governor Just Signed a Bill Banning Abortion Before Many Women Know They Are Pregnant

And it doesn’t include exceptions for rape or incest.

Mike DeWine gives his victory speech after winning the Ohio gubernatorial race on November 6, 2018.

Justin Merriman/Getty Images

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill Thursday making it illegal for women to receive an abortion once a heartbeat has been detected in the fetus—as early as six weeks gestation. The legislation effectively bans abortion before many women even know they are pregnant.

The bill does not include any exceptions for abortions in the instances of rape or incest. When it passed the state House earlier in the week, Republican lawmakers also added a last-minute addition that imposes a $20,000 fine on physicians who violate the law. 

Gov. DeWine’s approval of the legislation did not come as a surprise. John Kasich, the state’s previous governor, signed a 20 anti-abortion during his tenure, according to NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, and imposed burdensome requirements on the state’s abortion clinics. But he vetoed “heartbeat” bills in 2016 and 2018, citing them as unconstitutional.

DeWine, however, had categorically stated that he would sign one if he had the chance. Before his election last November, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio Kellie Copeland described DeWine as “the most dangerous prospect” pro-choice Ohioans had faced in a while.

Ohio’s “heartbeat” bill has been a long time coming. The first version of the legislation was written by far-right religious and anti-abortion activist Janet Folger Porter back in 2011, and introduced five times. My colleague Nina Liss-Schultz reported on Porter’s colorful record in 2016, including the extreme religious views which resulted in her radio program being canceled by its Christian host.

“We literally crafted this legislation to be the arrow in the heart of Roe v. Wade,” Porter admitted in 2016. “It is made to come before the United States Supreme Court.”

Ohio is the seventh state to pass legislation that bans abortion after a heartbeat is detected, and legislation is pending in 11 other states. So far, none of the signed bills has successfully become law. Abortion rights advocates in Mississippi have said they will sue to block legislation signed by Gov. Phil Bryant in March, set to go into effect in July. In Ohio, the ACLU has said they plan to challenge the state’s bill: “If the governor signs, we’ll see him in court.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate