An Ohio House bill creating in-person requirements for “high-risk” medications is now in an Ohio Senate committee after passing the House last year. Advocates question the bill’s metrics and say it’s a back-door way to attack abortion pill access. 

Ohio House Bill 324 was brought by Republican sponsors to create “greater oversight” over medications that are determined to have “a high risk of severe adverse effects,” according to bill sponsor state Rep. Adam Mathews, R-Lebanon.

The bill passed the Ohio House in November along party lines, 60 to 28.

Using insurance claims data, patient reporting, and “applicable data” from the FDA, the bill would require in-person appointments for medications that have caused complications that required hospitalization like sepsis or hemorrhaging, cases of organ failure, or death, in more than 5% of its users.

“The rise of mail-order medication and telehealth has transformed how Ohioans access prescription and over-the-counter drugs,” Mathews told the Ohio Senate Health Committee.

“While telehealth often is beneficial, offering increased access to care and convenience, it may fall short when high-risk medications are involved.”

The measure’s co-sponsor, state Rep. Meredith Craig, R-Smithville, said requiring in-person consultations and banning mail-order sales of “dangerous drugs” through the bill “protects Ohio’s citizens from the risks associated with inadequate oversight in mail-order and telehealth systems.”

The bill does not single out one medication specifically, but it was criticized in the House for the consequences it could have on medical access to necessary medications like diabetes prescriptions and blood thinners, and also the data that could be used to declare a medication in-person only.

Even before a national battle over the medication abortion drug mifepristone came to Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, H.B. 324 heard from reproductive rights advocates who said the bill could create an avenue for debunked or medically unsound studies to be used to argue that medication abortion drugs have too many adverse effects. The drug has been approved by the FDA for decades and has seen decades of peer-reviewed medical studies showing serious complications to be statistically rare.

If mifepristone and its companion drug misprostol were required to be prescribed only during in-person appointments, abortion access could be impacted in low-income areas, and areas of the state where clinics and medical facilities are limited, advocates told House Health Committee members last year.

Anti-abortion advocacy groups spoke in support of the bill while it was in the committee, saying the bill would provide “necessary safeguards” specifically for medication abortion pills.

In the recent Ohio Senate hearing, physician and state Sen. Beth Liston, D-Dublin, pointed to national drug safety data collection and peer-reviewed scientific journals “that do a broad analysis of drug safety.”

“But you’re excluding them from being used (in the bill),” she said to the co-sponsors.

Craig said discussions were had while the bill was considered in the House, and “ultimately, the language in the bill includes strong measures,” including the use of insurance claim data and patient reports.

“Quite honestly, looking at actual insurance claims, I think, is where we’re going to find the most concrete data in this,” Craig said.

She added that 30 other states use insurance data to “establish and try and figure out the value of care.”

“You have to look at what the cost of care is,” she told Liston. “Insurance claims paying for that is a big part of that.”

Liston pushed back on the argument, saying insurance claims don’t point directly to the outcome of drugs and their safety.

“No one uses insurance claims to look at health outcomes when you have other mechanisms specifically to do so, especially when there’s no real transparency publicly on Medicaid data, Medicare …,” Liston said. “Whereas, there is a national drug safety database and surveillance system that captures that.”

The senator noted data on blood thinners and diabetes medications that show they can have the severe adverse effects the co-sponsors noted as part of the bill’s focus, and asked if regulating those types of medications was part of the aim of the bill.

“You have very strong medications treating very difficult situations,” Mathews said. “But you want to have in-person checks rather than just having telemedicine without having any in-person evaluation.”

H.B. 324 will now be open for hearings in the Senate Health Committee to hear from those who support and oppose the bill. The next hearing on the legislation has not been scheduled.

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

The post Bill That Could Limit Abortion Pill Access Starts Trip Through Ohio Senate appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

During a recent U.S. Senate committee hearing, Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted spoke against the abortion pill, a target of the Trump administration as well as legislation at the Ohio Statehouse.

The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee held a hearing on “protecting women against dangerous abortion drugs,” in which the attorney general for Louisiana and other speakers spoke in favor of further regulations and FDA scrutiny for the abortion pill mifepristone.

It comes amid a re-review of the drug requested by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., back in September 2025.

The chair of the committee, Louisiana Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, specifically said the hearing was convened to hear testimony on “dangerous chemicals abortion drugs,” despite the fact that decades of research and some testimony at the same hearing have shown mifepristone to be medically safe and severe complications to be rare.

“Scientifically and morally, there is no difference in the value of a child, whether she is in her mother’s arms or she is in her mother’s womb,” Cassidy said during the hearing.

Husted sits on the committee and participated in the hearing on mifepristone.

He gave two examples in which men are accused of forcing women to take medication abortion without their knowledge or against their will as argument against the drug. He said requiring an in-person visit before dispensing the drug “would stop this.”

Husted also pointed to his own adoption story, in which he said his mother could have chosen abortion.

“Thankfully for me, she didn’t,” Husted said.

An OB/GYN and fellow for Physicians for Reproductive Health, Dr. Nisha Verma, pointed to more than 100 “high quality, peer-reviewed studies” that prove mifepristone’s safety and effectiveness, surpassing the fewer than 10 studies suggesting that the drug is not safe.

One study that is often cited by anti-abortion Republicans was a “policy paper that was self-published,” Verma told the committee, and included “routine care” as serious adverse events.

She said the science “is more than settled” on the safety of the abortion method, “which really does beg the question of what are we doing here today.”

“And it may be that we are here today because people in this room feel uncomfortable with abortion, and that’s okay, and we can talk about that,” Verma said. “But we should not pretend that this is an issue of the science.”

The American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists has said the complication or death risk from an abortion procedure “is less than the same risk from common procedures like wisdom tooth removal, cancer-screening colonoscopy, and plastic surgery.”

Advocates in Ohio further insisted on the safety of the treatment, and said in-person requirements would create an accessibility problem for health care.

“Telehealth and mail-delivery options for medication abortion are particularly crucial for patients living in rural areas, patients with child care or other caretaking responsibilities, or patients with transportation challenges,” said Erica Wilson-Domer, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio.

On Husted’s examples of men forcing mifepristone on unknowing or unwilling women, Wilson-Domer said those “are criminal acts, not a result of the drug’s accessibility.”

“The isolated anecdotes that Sen. Husted bases his argument on should not be used to justify restricting this extremely safe and effective medication,” Wilson-Domer said in a statement.

The FDA first approved mifepristone in 2000, and has since updated its regulation of the drug to allow telemedicine methods.

What remains in place for the drug is a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, an FDA drug safety program used for several medications to verify distributors of the drug are properly authorized to do so and “ensure the benefits of the medication outweigh its risks,” according to the FDA’s website on the programs.

Ohio’s General Assembly is considering its own moves connected to medication abortion, with Republican-led legislation active in committees.

This includes bills such as Ohio House Bill 324, a general drug regulation bill that would require in-person prescription and ban telehealth options for drugs with severe adverse effects occurring in more than 5% of patients.

Mifepristone came up during hearings for the bill, because abortion advocates argued non-peer-reviewed studies like the one mentioned in the U.S. Senate hearing could be reported to the Ohio Department of Health as reasoning to categorize the medication abortion drug as one in need of in-person requirements.

Anti-abortion groups claimed the bill would provide “necessary safeguards” for mifepristone.

Other bills still up for consideration include Ohio House Bill 370, which would bring back the concept of “fetal personhood” to effectively ban abortion at conception; and Ohio House Bill 347, which would force patients to wait 24 hours before having an abortion, potentially returning to law a requirement paused by an Ohio court.

Ohio Senate Bill 309 would require prescribers of mifepristone to inform patients that they can sue the physician, the health care facilities, and others should complications arise from the drugs.

Physicians and abortion rights advocates have said not only does the law duplicate informed consent requirements already included in their medical training, but it could bring about mistrust between doctors and patients.

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

The post Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted Speaks Against Abortion Pill During Senate Hearing appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Ohio Republican lawmakers have introduced several bills to regulate abortion and reproductive health care despite the constitutional amendment approved by 57% of Ohio voters in 2023.

One bill introduced by Republican sponsors in the Ohio House attempts to bring up the “fetal personhood” debate again, while another seeks to further regulate medication prescribed through telehealth.

Yet another Republican bill touches on the information required to be shared by physicians when discussing abortion, and a fourth bill would bar Medicaid funds from going to facilities that provide abortion.

Abortion rights supporters think moves to continue regulating abortion in the state despite an amendment adding abortion rights to the state constitution mirror a national movement from Republican leaders to try to push back against abortion rights.

Because Ohio has a Republican supermajority in the legislature, a Republican governor and attorney general, along with an Ohio Supreme Court that has a 6 to 1 Republican majority, Danielle Firsich, director of public policy for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, says that anti-abortion sentiment in the halls of government is more empowered.

“We’re kind of in a perfect storm in the state of Ohio in this space,” Firsich said. “Even if some of these bills are flagrantly unconstitutional, it’s just a waste of our time, of the legislature’s time, of the taxpayer’s time.”

Providers, prescriptions and personhood

While women’s health providers are already banned from using Medicaid funds specifically for abortion services, Ohio House Bill 410 piggybacks onto the work of congressional Republicans in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Donald Trump in July.

The federal bill keeps federal funds from going to nonprofit organizations who received more than $800,000 in federal and state Medicaid payments in fiscal year 2023, specifically those that serve “predominantly low-income, medically underserved individuals by primarily providing family planning services, reproductive health and related medical care,” according to the Legislative Service Commission.

The banned organizations are those that provide abortions when the life of the pregnant individual isn’t in danger and the pregnancy didn’t result from rape or incest.

The state bill introduced Aug. 7 bars state Medicaid funds from going to those organizations as well. The bill’s co-sponsor, state Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Loveland, claimed to the House Medicaid Committee when introducing the bill that it would not interfere with “a woman’s ability to exercise their constitutional rights under the Ohio Constitution.”

“In fact, we are upholding the core principles of our constitution to ‘enjoy and defend life and liberty,’” Schmidt said. “Although I do not believe they should exist, entities that provide elective abortions can continue to operate in Ohio and allow women to exercise that constitutional right to choose — the state will simply not provide the funding.”

The method of pushing bills that are directly related to measures that have either been struck down by courts or enshrined in the state constitution has historically been “fairly uncommon,” according to one political science professor, but a rise in these deliberate moves concerns not only those in the pro-abortion space, but political science in general.

“The rule of law should be considered as a rule of the people as a body politic,” said Ohio State University professor Jos Raadschelders. “And it is through their representation that laws are made.”

The state constitution was amended in 2023 to include abortion rights as part of it with 57% of Ohio voters approving the measure.

“I don’t care whether you’re in favor or against abortion,” Raadschelders said. “The one problem you should have with this … those are moral issues, and government should stay away from legislative morality.”

A true test of the amendment could come from Ohio House Bill 370, the language of which states an aim “to acknowledge the sanctity of innocent human life, created in the image of God, which should be equally protected from the beginning of biological development to natural death.”

The bill follows the messaging of previous “personhood bills,” in and outside of Ohio, which seek to give rights to the unborn, even before they have viability or development of any kind.

The bill notes the U.S. Constitution’s overriding authority over the state constitution, and presents an argument that the 14th Amendment would protect “preborn persons.”

The legislation seeks to repeal “provisions that may otherwise allow a person to direct, advise, encourage or solicit a mother to abort her child” as well.

Firsich said pro-abortion groups are “not un-used to fetal personhood bills,” but they have a less-than-consistent success rate across the country.

“Fetal personhood is so astoundingly unpopular that it’s much harder to get passed,” Firsich said, adding that the topic often splits anti-abortion groups as well.

Still, with national pushes to re-review previously FDA approved medication abortion drugs, and comments from federal leaders supporting anti-abortion movements, abortion rights supporters may not be able to rely on past precedent to guide the future of these new bills.

“They’re going to be using the death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach,” Firsich said. “You make it impossible for medical facilities to work, and it becomes a national abortion ban.”

In a bill that could come in conflict with not only the state constitution but also a recent court decision, Ohio House Bill 347 would only allow an “elective abortion” after a 24-hour waiting period in which a physician must “provide specified information and document the woman’s informed consent, except in the case of a medical emergency.”

The legislation would “permit” the State Medical Board to “adopt rules specifying adverse physical or psychological conditions arising from abortion that a physician must disclose as possible complications when meeting with the pregnant woman as part of the informed consent process,” according to the Legislative Service Commission analysis of the bill.

One of the members of the State Medical Board is Michael Gonidakis, a past president of the anti-abortion group Ohio Right to Life, and who is currently listed on the organization’s website as a “member trustee.”

Reproductive health facility representatives have said rules are already in place as part of basic medical standards to inform patients of the risks of medical procedures.

“This (new bill) not only sets up additional barriers for medications like mifepristone, but also requires misinformation from providers,” Firsich said.

A more generalized bill that has abortion rights advocates like Firsich concerned is a proposal to change regulations around the sale of “drugs causing severe adverse effects” and establish conditions on drug prescriptions.

Ohio House Bill 324 would require the director of the Ohio Department of Health to determine if individual drugs cause “severe adverse effects in greater than 5% of the drug’s users,” including death, hospitalization due to infection or hemorrhage, organ failure, or sepsis, according to the bill.

The determination would be based on insurance claims, patient reports, and FDA data. If an over-the-counter drug is determined to have caused those adverse effects in more than 5% of users, pharmacies and other retailers would be barred from selling it. The drug also couldn’t be distributed via mail-order.

The bill further requires an in-person examination of a patient and a follow-up appointment if a drug falling under the category is being prescribed by a physician.

“These measures ensure that patients receiving high-risk medications, even in an era of expanding telehealth, are protected through direct medical supervision, reducing the likelihood of preventable harm,” state Rep. Meredith Craig, R-Smithville, told the House Health Committee in June.

The bill itself does not mention medication abortion drugs like mifepristone, but supporters of the bill included anti-abortion groups like the Center for Christian Virtue and Ohio Right to Life, both of whom mentioned the abortion pills as part of their supporting testimony.

“At the heart of this legislation is the protection of women and children from dangerous drugs — most notably, chemical abortion pills,” said Katie DeLand, legislative director for Ohio Right to Life in testimony on Sept. 24.

The abortion drug mifepristone has been approved as safe and effective by the FDA for 25 years, since September 2000.

Planned Parenthood locations in the state have been pivoting to telehealth more because the loss of federal funding for non-abortion services, such as STI testing and preventive care, has resulted in closures and workforce reductions.

Having bills that further regulate medications as the access to care is reduced could negatively affect the patients more than any one else, advocates note.

“If you have a bunch of people who are having to get emergency medical care, there is only so much the medical field can do,” Firsich said. “It’s a massive ripple effect that touches a lot of other issues, and it becomes so overwhelming to operate in that system when you don’t know what you’re allowed to access and where and when.”

Hearings and recourse

The bill on Medicaid funds was scheduled for a second hearing on Tuesday for supporters to speak on the measure.

The high-risk medication bill is set to have its third hearing on Wednesday in the Ohio House Health Committee.

The Ohio House Health Committee has heard sponsor testimony on the bill to change informed consent laws in the state, but has not scheduled another hearing.

While the “prenatal protection” bill was introduced in June, it wasn’t referred to the Ohio House Judiciary Committee until September. No hearings have been scheduled on the bill.

Raadschelders said the current federal and state legislative system is working in a way he calls “na na bo boo politics.”

“’I’ll do to you, now that I’m in power, what you did to me,’” Raadschelders said. “The legislature overriding the voters’ will is an act of unbelievable arrogance.”

The only recourse from here, both Firsich and Raadschelders said, is “the people.”

“The founding fathers … they knew they were human, they knew they were not writing law the way that Moses wrote the Ten Commandments, that they would be written in stone,” he said. “The pendulum will swing back and I’m afraid the Republicans are eating each other alive.”

Firsich said the fight will be a long-term one, with challenges to perceived rights violations coming “in real time.”

“We literally can’t afford to be apathetic about these things,” she said. “People really want their elected officials to be people who are fighting for them, who are not backing down.”

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

The post Ohio Republican Lawmakers Look to Regulate Abortion, Push Against Constitutional Amendment appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

In the first full year following Ohio’s passage of the reproductive rights amendment, Issue 1, the number of abortion procedures performed in the state declined. The year-to-year decrease was small but continues a broad downward trajectory in abortions since the mid-1990s.

In all, there were 21,829 induced abortions in Ohio in 2024, compared with 22,000 in 2023; the abortion rate per 1,000 residents declined from 8.7 to 8.4.

The vast majority of procedures continue to happen early in pregnancy. More than 64% involved a pregnancy of less than nine weeks, and another 23% involved pregnancies of 9-12 weeks.

Non-surgical abortions, using drugs like Misoprostol or Mifepristone, made up a little less than half the total.

Ohio’s new reproductive protections stand out among many of its neighbors, and that appears to be showing up in the data as well. For most of the last 10 years, out of state residents made up about 1,200 of those seeking abortions in Ohio in a given year. In 2023, even before Issue 1 passed, that figure jumped to more than 2,700, and in 2024 in climbed again to 3,113.

Supporters and opponents reactions

Despite passage of Issue 1, which guarantees Ohio officials can’t “burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate” against an individual making their own reproductive decisions, abortion access remains a live issue.

In March, Ohio Right to Life filed a complaint with the Department of Health about a company offering reproductive care via telemedicine. The laws the company was supposedly violating had been put on hold by a judge more than a year prior.

This summer, two Planned Parenthood clinics closed following federal changes to Medicaid. Even after a judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s efforts, the clinics decided it was too risky to continue. Republican state lawmakers even filed a billdefining life at conception in a bid to circumvent Issue 1 and outlaw abortion and IVF treatment.

Abortion opponents welcomed the decline in the most recent report but promised to keep fighting.

“Given that Ohio has some of the most liberal abortion laws in the country and we have radical judges pushing this agenda, these numbers are encouraging,” Ohio Right to Life Executive Director Carrie Snyder said.

“We aren’t satisfied with the loss of any innocent pre-born child, and our efforts to protect them will continue,” she added.

Snyder highlighted “disturbing trends” like Black mothers making up a disproportionate amount of the state’s procedures and the continued rise in out-of-state abortion seekers.

“This is another reason why we have called on Governor (Mike) DeWine to sign an executive order prohibiting any Medicaid funds from going to abortion providers,” Snyder said. “Taxpayer dollars should not (be) used to support the practice of abortion in any way, and even more so on people not from the Buckeye State.”

Kellie Copeland from the organization Abortion Forward compared the current moment to the brief window in 2022 when Ohio’s 6-week abortion ban took effect — cutting off access to abortions before most mothers know they’re pregnant.

“For 82 days in 2022, Ohioans were forced to travel out of state for the abortion care they needed,” Copeland said. “Thankfully, those days are behind us, and abortion is protected in the Ohio Constitution.”

Still, she said her organization has work to do.

“People must be able to plan if, when, and how they start a family, and government should be ensuring they have access to education and resources to make that plan for themselves,” Copeland said. “Unfortunately, Trump, Congress, anti-abortion organizations, and their friends in the Ohio Legislature continue to do everything they can to impede access to reproductive healthcare.”

Copeland criticized lawmakers threatening Medicaid funding and leaving tens of thousands of Ohioans without access to medical services. She’s concerned about the number of out of state abortion seekers, too — but not for the same reasons as Snyder.

“I am glad that those people could come to Ohio for the care they needed,” Copeland said, “but they should have been able to get the care much closer to home.”

“No one should be forced to cross state lines for health care,” she insisted.

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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As some Ohio women’s health facilities square with federal budget cuts and a new effort to cut funds at the state level, anti-abortion pregnancy resource centers are receiving million in state grants.

Even in a state with a constitutional amendment that protects the right to abortion, the difference between the facilities receiving boosts in funding and those facing further cuts is largely their stance on abortion.

A new Ohio bill introduced by Republican state Reps. Jean Schmidt and Adam Mathews seeks to bar Medicaid funds from going to any entities that provide abortion other than when the abortion is a result of rape or incest, or when the life of the pregnant person is endangered.

The bill bases its language on the federal budget reconciliation bill passed and signed into law by President Donald Trump in July.

The federal budget language was criticized for specifically impacting Planned Parenthood, which could lose hundreds of facilities if the loss of funding, on top of other budget cuts, goes through.

The national Planned Parenthood Federation of America is suing to stop the cuts from being enforced. A federal judge temporarily stopped the cuts in July as the lawsuit continues.

Meanwhile, Gov. Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel announced nearly $20 million in grants over the next two years, distributed through the Ohio Parenting and Pregnancy Program. The grants were announced as funding boosts to help improve Ohio’s infant health outcomes.

The awards were provided to entities for “prenatal education, parenting classes, case management, referrals and material assistance tailored to the needs of their local communities.”

“These efforts are part of the DeWine-Tressel Administration’s broader mission to reduce infant mortality and ensure every child in Ohio has the opportunity to live up to their God-given potential,” a release on the grant funding stated.

The grant program is distributed by the Ohio Department of Children and Youth, which saw its own cuts in the most recent state operating budget, including millions of dollars cut from line items for “infant vitality.”

The state department reported an infant mortality rate of 6.5 per 1,000 live births in 2024, a slight decrease from the year before.

The annual March of Dimes Report Card for 2024 noted the decrease, but still gave Ohio a D+ for its preterm birth rate, ranking the state 32nd in the country. The report card also noted the infant mortality rate for Black individuals was 1.9 times higher than the overall state rate.

Among the 21 recipients of the grantees are several religiously affiliated groups, including Heartbeat of Lima County, Inc., Elizabeth’s New Life Center, Inc., and the Family Life Center of Auglaize County.

Grant recipients also included several pregnancy resource centers, a sector of services that are controversial and criticized for not being required to have the same medical license requirements as facilities like Planned Parenthood, and for providing medically debunked and inaccurate information to patients.

The application details for the grants noted that the awards would only go to entities who promote “childbirth, parenting and alternatives to abortion.”

State law establishing the Ohio Parenting and Pregnancy Program further specifies entities supported by the program can not be “involved in or associated with any abortion activities, including providing abortion counseling or referrals to abortion clinics, performing abortion-related medical procedures or engaging in pro-abortion advertising.”

Funding future

In the federal budget bill, the women’s health clinic funding prohibition targeted at abortion providers lasts for one year, but leaders of Ohio clinics say the state measure could mean more longterm cuts.

The state-level Medicaid ban being proposed by conservative, anti-abortion legislators, along with federal-level cuts, would cut funds that don’t go toward abortion services in the first place.

“By introducing all of these bills to cut Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid, it does not impact abortion at all, it impacts every other service that keeps people healthy,” said Erica Wilson-Domer, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio.

Wilson-Domer said more than 40% of her affiliate’s patients are covered by Medicaid, and the “vast majority” of the services provided to those patients are office services. Those services include well visits, contraception services and infection checks, among other non-abortion care.

Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio has already announced staffing reductions after “mounting attacks from the Trump administration, including the loss of Title X funding and Medicaid defunding through the federal reconciliation bill.”

In announcing the reduction in force, the greater Ohio affiliate said the federal funding losses represent a $10 million drop in annual funds.

“Without a reduction in force, PPGOH could cease to exist, leaving over 50,000 patients without access to birth control, gender affirming care, abortion and a myriad of other essential health care services,” Wilson-Domer said in the announcement on Aug. 4.

Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region also announced changes because of federal funding cuts, including the closure of a clinic in Springfield and another in Hamilton. Neither of the closed facilities provided abortion services.

Wilson-Domer and her fellow Planned Parenthood affiliate leader Nan Whaley in Southwest Ohio both said federal funds have never paid for abortion services. But the services they do provide to low-income and underinsured patients make them “uniquely positioned to have a better impact on maternal and infant mortality,” Wilson-Domer said.

“To take us out of Medicaid is just completely taking away any women’s health care options for those communities, and it will completely exacerbate this crisis,” Wilson-Domer said.

Republicans who sponsor and support anti-abortion measures are missing the point of the care, and taking away other services while they attempt to stifle abortion services, according to abortion rights advocates in Ohio.

“Our policies are not promotion of abortion, our policy is to make sure every person has bodily autonomy,” Wilson-Domer said. “We will do what we need to do to help you with whatever decision you’ve made.”

Abortion rights advocacy group Abortion Forward said budget cuts on the state and federal level don’t show the prioritization of children, and in fact could create more infant and maternal mortality problems.

The group’s deputy director, Jaime Miracle, said the state’s time would be better spent supporting all facilities who are working to address the problem, rather than cutting them down.

“These actions speak louder than his words when (DeWine) continues to fund unproven, deceptive programs instead of real providers with a track record of success,” Miracle told the Capital Journal. “To really help families in our state, Ohio must invest in improvements to prenatal care, home visiting programs with a proven track record of success, and respect and support people seeking abortion care.”

The post Anti-Abortion Facilities Get Ohio Grants as Funding for Other Women’s Health Facilities Slashed appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Workers backed by the local arm of the Office and Professional Employees International Union want nine C-suite executives at Ohio’s Planned Parenthood branch to cut their own pay by a quarter, the union said in a press release on Thursday, to save other jobs.

The request comes after the union met for a third time on Wednesday with PPGOH to try and handle fallout from about $10 million in federal funding cuts affecting 12 Ohio locations.

In June, Planned Parenthood’s clinic in Midtown shut its doors due to those funding freezes. And a month later, in July, two more Ohio clinics, in Springfield and Hamilton, closed as well.

More somber news followed. Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio would be forced to, the organization said, reduce their workforce through layoffs due to Trump. Other staffers would be forced to take salary cuts.

The union asked, in the aftermath, why leadership didn’t take their own salary cuts.

Leadership told Scene the math doesn’t work out.

“The impacts of a total $10 million funding loss unfortunately cannot be solved entirely through cutting executive compensation,” Erica Wilson-Domer, president of PPGOH, told Scene in a statement.

“Even with the reduction in force, PPGOH will continue to offer all of the services it currently does at our health centers,” she said. “This reduction does not include any health center closures.”

Though it’s unclear exactly how many employees will be cut from the dozen remaining clinics and surgical centers, the pay drop for clinic workers that decide to stay could lead an overall drop in quality.

As proposed to her, and others, in bargaining talks this month, Grubbs’ role in patient navigation would blend with two other departments, customer contact and centralized followup, into a newly-created Patient Access and Support Department, where new hires would make about $18 an hour.

Not exactly what she feels her bachelor’s degree amounts to.

“I in good faith don’t expect someone to stay and take a $15,000 pay cut,” Grubbs, 23, told Scene. “I mean, a 20-percent pay cut means I can’t pay my mortgage. For them? I don’t know.”

Brian Pearson, the head of North Shore branch of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, told Scene it’s “disappointing” to have to witness a back-and-forth fight over pay cuts and layoffs, specifically for an organization rife with employees passionate about reproductive rights in general.

Pearson, whose organization oversees the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 98, which is bargaining on PPGOH employees’ behalf, frames the current impasse between PPGOH and its unionized workers as part of a growing trend.

“It’s this common theme of workers, even those that are unionized, not having a seat at the table,” Pearson said. “And I’m definitely fed up about it.”

No Planned Parenthood leaders, including Wilson-Domer, have agreed to take any pay cuts as of Thursday. Wilson-Domer’s predecessor made roughly $318,000 a year, according to a 2023 tax filing.

About $2 million in “director-level and above” spending was however cut, PPGOH said in a statement, “in an effort to reduce overall costs” concerning patient care.

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The post Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio Employees Want Leadership to Take Pay Cuts to Avoid Layoffs, Staff Salary Reductions appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

The Planned Parenthood in Midtown, in the Shops at Church Square at 7997 Euclid Avenue, shut down last weekend due to cuts to federal funds that the clinic needed to operate.

In a message to donors Sunday, Erica Wilson-Domer, the CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, said that the Trump administration’s freezing of Title X funds was one of the “driving factors” behind shuttering one of Cleveland’s only reproductive care clinics.

“We will continue to reach out to patients,” she wrote, “and be here for them, no matter what.”

The choking of federal dollars used by clinics around the country to provide access to fertility treatments and to perform abortions is no surprise when considering months of executive orders that were clear on the federal stance towards such medical procedures.

The Cleveland clinic closure comes amid heightened political tensions for reproductive care.

Last Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court decided 6-3 that two Planned Parenthood clinics in South Carolina were not allowed to sue the state for withholding Medicaid dollars it needed to provide access to abortions.

Squeezing those Title X dollars, typically earmarked for social services in low-income areas, has mostly impacted services in mostly red states. Since the Supreme Court decision, dozens of Planned Parenthoods have closed, including four in Minnesota, four in Iowa and four in Michigan.

Erica Wilson-Domer did not respond to comment from Scene in time for publication.

On Monday, black metal doors sheathed what was once a quiet clinic with tinted windows.

A placard was fixed to the door, reading: “Ongoing attacks from the Trump administration have disrupted the essential services we provide to the Cleveland community, including birth control, cancer screenings and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections.”

The clinic directed current patients to reschedule appointments or transfer records via MyChart or by calling 1-800-230-7526.

Despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, and the retaliatory Issue 1 vote to solidify abortion access the following year in Ohio, the procedure is still legal in the state up to the point of fetal viability, which is typically 23 weeks after conception.

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The post Cleveland Planned Parenthood Location in Midtown Shuts Down, Cites Trump Administration’s Medicaid Cuts appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Pro-abortion rights advocates are taking a proposed total abortion ban in Ohio to heart. Noting the celebration of Juneteenth and Black emancipation, they say the use of the 14th Amendment to try to exert state control over individual freedom and bodily autonomy is vile.

The new bill a pair of freshman Republican House lawmakers are planning to introduce would ban abortion and criminalize it, along with in-vitro fertilization and certain types of contraception. The measure’s filing was first reported by WEWS.

The bill is meant as a direct challenge to the state reproductive rights amendment passed by 57% of Ohio voters in 2023.

Bill supporters say the current constitutional amendment that enshrined reproductive rights into the Ohio Constitution “should be treated as null and void” because, they claim, it violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment “by denying pre-born persons the right to life.”

The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects citizenship and due process, along with equal protection under the law.

“In appealing to the 14th Amendment, the Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act appeals to a higher law; the U.S. Constitution,” the anti-abortion group End Abortion Ohio, who is leading the charge on the bill, said in a statement.

Austin Biegel, a member of End Abortion Ohio, argued that yes, the bill would go against the majority public opinion of Ohioans, but he justified it by arguing that slavery was once also supported and legal in the U.S.

Lexi Dotson-Dufault, executive director of the resource and referral service Abortion Fund Ohio, called the use of the 14th Amendment as part of an abortion ban bill “vile.”

“A bill that bans abortion while citing the 14th Amendment misuses a civil rights protection to justify state control over our marginalized community members, especially Black people,” Dotson-Dufault said.

A report from the National Partnership for Women & Families in May of last year found that state abortion bans “exacerbate the existing Black maternal mortality crisis,” and “threaten” 7 million Black women nationwide.

The study found that mothers who can’t access abortion care see negative impacts to their “economic security and development of their existing children.”

‘Canary in the coal mine’

Dotson-Dufault and Ohio Women’s Alliance Deputy Director Jordyn Close believe Republican legislators are emboldened to attempt anti-abortion measures in part because of a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that reinstated a “de facto abortion ban” in May, lifting an injunction that had blocked abortion restrictions.

The decision came months after that state also approved an amendment to its constitution that protected reproductive rights.

The pro-abortion rights advocates see no legal standing for the new abortion ban bill, but they also see abortion rights as “the canary in the coal mine when it comes to … rights being stripped away from people.”

“I don’t think that this bill has any legs to stand on, but I do think that it’s very important to highlight just how gross it is that they would even try it,” Close said. “Because if it’s not this bill, it will be another one introduced in the next session … it just continues because they do not respect Ohioans.”

Ohio’s constitutional amendment, passed in 2023, protects abortion and other types of reproductive health like fertility treatments and miscarriage care, but more than 30 other regulations still sit on the books in Ohio law.

Those statutes would have to be undone one by one, even though state courts have blocked some of the laws, as well as a six-week abortion ban that was on the books before Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

But Republicans in the state legislature are also trying to double-down on such regulations.

State Reps. Mike Odioso and Josh Williams have already filed House Bill 347, a bill which targets informed consent, requiring that 24 hours before an abortion doctors provide not only “medically accurate information that a reasonable patient would consider material to the decision of whether to undergo the elective abortion” — which abortion providers have said they are already required to do — but also “alternatives to abortion, including adoption and parenting.”

H.B. 347 also puts into law medically controversial and unproven language that “it may be possible to reverse the effects of the abortion-inducing drug” if a medication abortion is taking place.

This isn’t the first time Ohio lawmakers have attempted to include this language in state law.

The bill also requires a physician to notify the pregnant person, except in the case of rape or incest, “that the unborn child’s father has a child support obligation, even if the father has offered to pay for the elective abortion.”

According to a recent midyear analysis from the Guttmacher Institute, 13 states have total abortion bans on the books, with another 28 that have bans between six weeks of gestation and “viability.”

Ohio’s constitutional amendment places abortion legality at viability, as determined by an individual’s physician.

The institute’s report also said the first half of 2025 has given rise to anti-abortion state lawmakers who “have continued to push the envelope toward pregnancy criminalization, restrictions on bodily autonomy and laws that recognize fetal and embryonic personhood,” while also reducing funding for resources like sex education.

The state-level action comes as the Trump administration spent its first few months in office revoking Biden-era executive orders on abortion, including patient privacy protections, and rolling back guidance on access to emergency abortion care under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.

President Donald Trump also pardoned nearly two dozen people convicted under a federal law that bans threats, physical obstruction or force at the entrances to reproductive health clinics.

The language of that federal law for which Trump issued pardons also bars interference, injury or intimidation for any exercise of First Amendment religious freedom, including at places of worship.

Efforts to slash federal funding have also touched reproductive health, with cuts to Title X, which funds “family planning” grants and other reproductive health services for low-income individuals, including many services in Ohio.

Pro-abortion rights groups have already started their fight against the total abortion ban bill with a demonstration on Wednesday that interrupted an anti-abortion gathering in the Statehouse.

They want to spend more time not only raising their voices in the halls of the legislature, but also educating the voters going into 2026 elections.

“Even though we had a moment of victory in 2023, the fight is far from over,” Close said. “We have to look toward the next electoral (cycle) to protect our courts, because inevitably when we have these showdowns in the state legislature, the courts is where everything ends up.”

A spokesperson for Oho House Speaker Matt Huffman said Huffman’s focus remains on the state operating budget until its July 1 deadline, and had no other information on the bill’s introduction or timeline.

A request for comment from Senate President Rob McColley on whether he would consider such a bill went unanswered on Wednesday.

Back in November 2024, just before he began his tenure as Senate president, McColley told the Capital Journal “the inaction on the issue kind of speaks for itself,” referring to any effort to undermine the constitutional amendment. He also said since the issue had passed the year before, “there really hasn’t been a lot of discussion about it.”

“I think, by and large, people realize Ohioans spoke, and that’s the way it is right now,” McColley said then.

The Ohio Democratic Party said they were staunchly against the abortion ban measure, questioning the priorities of state Republicans, and saying the party with the Statehouse supermajority is attempting to “drag our state into the past.”

“Ohio women would die under this cruel, disastrous legislation,” said Ohio Democratic Party Chair Kathleen Clyde.

The post Ohio’s Pro-Abortion Rights Groups Plan Fights Against Total Abortion Ban Bill appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

With the three-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion rights advocates are looking at a time when funding cuts could spell the closure of clinics and the limiting of reproductive access in Ohio and nationwide.

But local advocates are also resolute in saying health clinics will continue to serve Ohioans, and fight to maintain the rights in the state.

The federal budget reconciliation bill is still being debated, but one provision that has been included would “defund” Planned Parenthood, which the organization says could mean the closure of 200 clinics across the country.

Funding under Title X “family planning” grants could be slashed as well, which would also impact reproductive health clinics.

Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called the measure a “big bad betrayal of a bill” in a Tuesday news call, and said the funding cuts in the bill “would make it harder, if not impossible, for everyone, everywhere to get an abortion.”

Since the 2022 Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization moved the issue of abortion legality to the states, Ohio has passed a constitutional amendment that in 2023 placed the right to abortion into the state’s founding document, making abortion legal up to viability, as determined by a physician. The measure passed with 57% of voters that November.

But the newest state operating budget, which could be approved by the General Assembly this week, could cause more limits to abortion services via a provision related to Medicaid.

The House and Senate both brought along a measure from Gov. Mike DeWine’s executive budget that would eliminate the Medicaid expansion group from the state’s program if the federal budget contributes less than the 90% it’s paying currently.

Should that contribution drop even 1%, the state budget states the expansion group, which policy experts say accounts for about 770,000 Ohioans, would be dropped from their health insurance.

That would represent 30% to 50% of patients who go to Cincinnati-area Planned Parenthood clinics just to obtain birth control, according to Nan Whaley, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region.

For other services, like health screenings, primary care services, specialist referrals, and abortion services, Whaley said patients who lose their Medicaid coverage likely “will go nowhere.”

“It’ll make Ohio less healthy, it’ll make abortions go up in Ohio,” Whaley said. “What’ll happen is the opposite of what (legislative and congressional Republicans) claim to want.”

While clinics will still be able to provide services to those with commercial insurance, the idea that the most vulnerable Ohioans will be without health care strikes advocates even more than threats to their existence that they’ve experienced many times before.

“There aren’t enough words for ‘unacceptable,’ and every Ohio congressperson should be voting ‘no’ and should be fighting for their constituents,” said Lauren Blauvelt, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio. “There’s no cost-savings in taking away people’s insurance.”

For Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health clinics, being the target of potential funding cuts and disapproval by elected officials who oppose abortion rights is nothing new.

“All providers and most non-profits are under attack in a way that they’re not use to in this environment, but we’re used to this,” Blauvelt said.

Clinics are working to continue providing as much care as they can, including providing and hoping to expand virtual health care.

Lexi Dotson-Dufault, executive director of the referral and resource service Abortion Fund Ohio, said her team is beginning to work with telehealth providers, in an effort to expand services and in anticipation of clinic closures, but more importantly so pregnant individuals can get questions answered.

“People are still confused about what care they can access in Ohio, where they can get that care, who’s there to help them access that care,” Dotson-Dufault said.

Once the budgetary decisions have been made, abortion rights advocates are also preparing for another fight: the total abortion ban bill that was recently introduced in the Ohio House.

While Dotson-Dufault, Whaley, and Blauvelt emphasized the unconstitutionality of the bill, which would seek to undermine the reproductive rights amendment, they aren’t taking it lightly.

Blauvelt said she remembers when the six-week abortion ban didn’t have the full support of the legislature or pro-life advocates, but then ended up being signed into law before it was struck down in court.

“Our supporters are not backing down, we are focused and we take this threat seriously,” Blauvelt said. “We expect our lawmakers to do better.”

The post Ohio Planned Parenthood, Health Clinics Brace for Closures, Plan Fight Ahead appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Ohio doctors saw an increase in women getting long acting reversible contraception in the weeks following President Donald Trump being elected. 

Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio noticed a 30% increase in call volume during the week of the election, most of them about accessing contraception or asking what another Trump presidency means for accessing reproductive health care, said Dr. Bhavik Kumar, chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio. Intrauterine devices can last between three to 12 years, depending on the type, according to Planned Parenthood. 

Some of their centers saw a 200% increase in the number of IUD insertions in December compared to November, he said. 

“We can never tell exactly why everyone’s coming in, but anecdotally and talking to patients, they’re all expressing some level of fear, uncertainty and bracing themselves for a couple of years of uncertainty given the way that this administration behaved the first time,” Kumar said. 

Dr. Ashley Brant, an Ohio OB-GYN associated with Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, has seen patients in the last couple weeks that have cited the current political climate as their reason for getting an IUD.

“It’s the desire to use highly effective birth control, coupled with concerns about access to birth control in the future that’s sort of what’s under this urgency or concerns about access to reproductive health care in the future if they had an unintended pregnancy,” she said. 

During Trump’s first term in office, he appointed three anti-abortion justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, which paved the way for overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. 12 states have a total abortion ban, according to the Guttmacher Institute. 

The Kaiser Family Foundation surveyed more than 500 gynecologists in 2023 and more than half of them reported more patients were asking for contraception — sterilization, IUDs and implants — after the supreme court ruling.

“How many kids you have is both deeply personal, but also influenced by our life circumstances like your financial situation, the stability of your relationships, what you expect your life to be like in one year, five years, 10 years,” Brant said. “With any major change in politics in the U.S., people are likely wondering, what this means for their lives and for their families and making the best decisions that they can with the information that they have.”

Trump was inaugurated Monday and the government website reproductiverights.gov dedicated to providing information on reproductive health care is now no longer accessible.

“(Sexual and reproductive health care) has been unfairly targeted and marginalized when it comes to the Trump administration, and is a potential target, and so people … are panicked and uncertain and trying to make quick decisions about what’s best for them given the amount of uncertainty that’s coming their way,” Kumar said. 

This recent uptick mirrors an increase in the number of people getting IUDs after Trump’s first election win back in 2016 when the daily rate of long-acting reversible contraceptive insertion was up 21.6% in the month after Trump was elected president in 2016, compared to the 30 days before, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. 

“It’s triggering for a lot of people, in the sense that for a large swath of our country, their ability to control their body and their life and their futures has been compromised, and they are having to move into action to do what’s best for them,” Kumar said.

The post Some Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio Health Centers Saw 200% Spike in IUD Insertions in December appeared first on Cleveland Scene.