Abortion – Abortion Clinics, Abortion Pill, Abortion Information

The Ohio Supreme Court will hear two high-profile abortion cases this month. The first will decide whether to shutter Toledo’s last abortion clinic, and abortion opponents call it “the most significant abortion case in state history.”

The second case, to be heard Sept. 26, involves a lawsuit challenging the legality of patient-transfer agreements, the ban on public hospitals from providing them, and a requirement that doctors inform pregnant women about detection of a fetal heartbeat before they undergo an abortion.

Abortion-rights advocates say that if the Toledo clinic in the first case is forced to close, that city would become the first major city in Ohio without access to abortion services.

Both cases stem from abortion regulations enacted by state lawmakers.

In the first case, to be heard Tuesday, the state is asking justices to overturn two lower-court rulings that have allowed Capital Care Network to stay open.

At issue is a 2014 order by the Ohio Department of Health to close the clinic because it failed to obtain an agreement with a local hospital to take patients in the event of a medical emergency, as required by state law.

Ambulatory surgical centers, which are outpatient facilities that include abortion clinics, have long been required to have transfer agreements. In 2013, Ohio legislators and Gov. John Kasich barred publicly funded hospitals from entering into them with abortion clinics.

After losing its transfer agreement with the University of Toledo Medical Center because of the ban, Capital Care secured a new one with University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor, Michigan. But health department officials declared that a hospital 52 miles away is not local.

Judges with both the Lucas County Common Pleas Court and Ohio’s 6th District Court of Appeals in Toledo disagreed with the state and ruled in favor of the clinic, allowing it to remain open.

In court filings, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, representing the state, argued against lower-court findings that lawmakers violated the Ohio Constitution’s single-subject rule by placing the requirement in the state budget bill. The state attorneys also take issue with a part of the ruling saying that the regulation is unconstitutional because it created an “undue burden” on the clinic. The latter issue, DeWine stressed, wasn’t even raised by the clinic.

“The clinic should lose its license for failing to meet a health-and-safety law, and its constitutional claims do not matter,” DeWine said. “Ann Arbor is too far away to be part of an effective plan for ‘emergency situations.’”

Jennifer L. Branch, a Cincinnati attorney representing Capital Care, argued that tucking the transfer-agreement provision into the massive budget bill allowed insufficient opportunity for public debate.

“At the end of the state budget process, Ohio legislators buried controversial anti-abortion provisions in the several thousand pages of a budget bill that was sure to pass. The written transfer-agreement provisions, which are inherently controversial and of significant constitutional import, were not debated and approved during a fair and open legislative process,” Branch said in court filings.

More controversy was stirred up after Supreme Court Justice Sharon Kennedy spoke at a Greater Toledo Right to Life event in March. Branch and NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio demanded that Kennedy recuse herself from hearing the case, questioning her impartiality, but the justice refused.

Toledo’s other clinic, Center for Choice, was forced to close in 2013, the first casualty of the public-hospital ban on transfer agreements with abortion facilities.

In addition to Capital Care, the Department of Health is seeking to close Women’s Med Center of Dayton, which also is operating without a written transfer agreement or state-approved variance.

Two other abortion clinics without such agreements, Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio and Founders in Columbus, are operating under waivers from the health department.

Abortion-rights advocates say transfer agreements are medically unnecessary. Opponents argue that they protect women.

“We have an abortion clinic that wants to avoid health and safety standards, and they’ve come up with a preposterous proposal” to fly patients to Ann Arbor in case of emergency, said Michael Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life.

“Our desire is to ban abortions, but if (abortion clinics) are allowed to operate, they should operate under the same standards as everyone else.”

Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro Choice Ohio, said abortion opponents continue to use regulations such as transfer agreements to make it more difficult for women to undergo the procedure. Ohio has eight abortion clinics, down from 16 in 2011, she noted.

“This is dressed up as patient protection, but the goal is to prevent women access to abortion care and ultimately outlaw abortion,” Copeland said.

The second case involves a lawsuit filed by Preterm, a Cleveland abortion clinic, challenging the legality of transfer agreements, the ban on public hospitals from providing them, and a requirement that doctors inform pregnant women about detection of a fetal heartbeat before they undergo an abortion. The latter regulation also was included in 2014-2015 budget.

The state is asking justices to overturn a ruling by Ohio’s 8th District Court of Appeals in Cleveland giving Preterm standing to sue, arguing that the clinic has not been injured by the regulations.

“Ohio’s courts of common pleas exist to settle concrete legal disputes between parties, not to offer a platform for hypothetical debates started by those without a personal stake in a matter,” DeWine argued in court filings.

B. Jessie Hill, a Cleveland attorney representing Preterm, said the clinic has been affected by the new regulations.

“Preterm was forced to alter its clinic operating procedures and services to its patients to avoid sanction and loss of license under provisions that were enacted as a part of the budget bill but that are unrelated to the bill’s purpose of appropriations,” Hill wrote in a court filing.