OHIO

ACLU demands court halt rules on abortions

Group cites constitutional concerns

10/9/2013
BY JIM PROVANCE
BLADE COLUMBUS BUREAU CHIEF
Ruth Clevenger of Chagrin Falls, Ohio waves an American flag during the
Ruth Clevenger of Chagrin Falls, Ohio waves an American flag during the "We Won't Go Back" Rally at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. The American Civil Liberties Union argues in a lawsuit.

COLUMBUS — The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio on Wednesday urged a Cleveland court to halt enforcement of new abortion-related restrictions that were slipped into the state’s new $62 billion, two-year budget.

The suit contends that the changes violate a state constitutional provision prohibiting lawmakers from placing unrelated issues into one law, in this case the budget. It asks Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court to issue a permanent injunction blocking the provisions, but it’s assumed that any decision at that level would work its way up to the Ohio Supreme Court.

Even if successful, it remains to be seen how the suit might affect Toledo’s second and last abortion clinic, Capital Care Network, that may be forced to close under a state administrative rule that served as inspiration for the state law now being challenged.

The litigation was filed on behalf of Preterm, a Cleveland women’s health clinic.

Susan Scheutzow, an outside attorney working with the ACLU on the case, said Preterm has already been affected by the new provision requiring that doctors perform an external ultrasound to test for the heartbeat and then offer to let the patient see or hear that heartbeat.

“A law has been put in place that mandates information be given to a woman seeking an abortion,” she said. “They are finding it to be very cruel to give that information to women and very onerous.”

At issue are:

● A prohibition on hospitals that receive public funding from entering into emergency-care agreements with abortion clinics.

● A mandate that doctors test for a fetal heartbeat on a patient seeking an abortion and advise that patient of the statistical probability of carrying the fetus to full term.

● Creation of a new program using federal public-assistance dollars to provide adoption and parenting-assistance programs that are barred from mentioning abortion.

Among the suit’s many defendants are Gov. John Kasich, who signed the law; Attorney General Mike DeWine and the Ohio Department of Health, charged with enforcing it; and members of the Ohio State Medical Board.

Among the board members is Mike Goniddkis, president of Ohio Right to Life, the primary organization that promoted these provisions with lawmakers.

“The lawsuit contradicts itself,” he said, stressing that he was speaking on behalf of Right to Life and not as a defendant.

“The ACLU says the state should be appropriating funds, and then it says it doesn’t like how the funds are appropriated,” he said.

One of Toledo’s abortion clinics, Center for Choice, closed this summer because it failed to reach an emergency-care agreement with a local hospital as previously required under Department of Health rules.

The budget cemented that administrative rule into state law and then took the additional step of prohibiting a public hospital, or any doctor affiliated with it, from entering into such an agreement. That left only privately funded hospitals as an option.

Capital Care Network faces the same potential fate as Center for Choice. Although the ACLU lawsuit challenges that provision as added to the budget, it does not challenge the underlying administrative rule.

“If we were to get [the budget provision] struck down, it would be less strict because there wouldn’t be the prohibition on public hospitals,” said Jessie Hill, a Case Western Reserve University law professor working on the case.

But she noted that the University of Toledo Medical Center, the former Medical College of Ohio, decided not to renew its agreement with the clinic before the public hospital prohibition became law. Capital Care Network has been unable since then to find a private hospital to take its place. The clinic is awaiting a state hearing.

Contact Jim Provance at: jprovance@theblade.com or 614-221-0496.