Ohio: Execute pregnant mothers who get abortion?
[Updated 12/1/2018] The Ohio General Assembly is considering a bill criminalizing women who have had an abortion, and health care workers who provide them.
As written, the bill puts a ban on all abortions after about 6 weeks and criminalizes seeking an abortion and doctors who provide an abortion. House Bill 565 redefines an unborn child as a person, thus making a person who causes the death of such susceptible to capital punishment under existing Ohio law. Read more here.
This callous and extreme bill goes way too far by opening the door to the possibility of death sentences and executions for women who have an abortion and those who provide them.
To be clear, we now believe that HB 565 won’t pass on its own. Still, we must inoculate against the language in HB 565 being inserted a Christmas Tree bill as part of some back room deal. (A “Christmas Tree bill” is a euphemism for when all manner of things are inserted into other legislation during a Lame Duck session, while few are watching and no one is held accountable because the election just happened.)
Tell the Ohio Senate: Block the death penalty in House Bill 565.
This bill still has to go to the Ohio Senate and then to the governor’s desk — which means we still have time to stop it.
Help us mount our response to Ohio Bill 565. Add your name and tell the Ohio Statehouse that this bill is wrong and must be stopped.
Thank you for making your voice heard on this.
— Abe
Co-Director, Death Penalty Action
