COLUMBUS, Ohio – With 50 co-sponsors, a renewed legislative effort to pass a much more restrictive ban on abortions appears to be a slam dunk in the 99-member Ohio House.
READ MORE: In the Columbus Dispatch
And if that weren’t enough assurance, House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger (below) is among the co-sponsors of the bill to outlaw abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, generally about six weeks into pregnancy.
Speakers generally don’t co-sponsor bills.
But whether House Bill 69, the so-called heartbeat bill, would clear the Senate and get Gov. John Kasich’s signature to become law is much less certain.
Both Kasich and Senate President Keith Faber share the concerns of Ohio Right to Life and others in the anti-abortion camp who say such a ban would be found unconstitutional by the courts and jeopardize other laws restricting abortion. Similar laws in other states have been overturned by the courts.
Supporters welcome a legal challenge, hoping it could lead the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision giving women the right to an abortion until the point that a fetus is viable or able to survive outside the womb, generally about 24 weeks.
“Where there is a heartbeat there is life,” said Paula Westwood, Executive Director, Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati which unlike its state affiliate is supporting the bill.
“While every baby deserves protection from earliest spark of life in conception, Ohio’s Heartbeat Bill is a huge step towards that goal.”