Ohio bill would require ectopic pregnancies be ‘re-implanted’

In the ever-intensifying war on women’s reproductive rights in the U.S., Republican Ohio lawmakers have managed to take things to a new, frightening low. A bill introduced this month would criminalize all abortion and includes a provision requiring doctors to try to “re-implant” ectopic pregnancies, despite the fact that no such procedure exists.

There has never been a documented case in which an ectopic pregnancy (when the embryo grows outside the uterus) has been successfully re-implanted into the uterus, according to Newsweek. One doctor told the U.K. Independent that the procedure is “pure science fiction.” Ectopic pregnancies are extremely dangerous and can result in the woman’s death if not terminated. The March of Dimes estimates that 1 in 50 U.S. pregnancies are ectopic.

The Ohio bill would also subject abortion providers to charges of aggravated murder that would carry the death penalty.

“Any provider performing an abortion by any method, including but not limited to medical, surgical or chemical methods, will be subject to already existing murder statutes,” the lawmakers said in a press release obtained by The Columbus Dispatch.

The state would also consider embryos humans from the moment of conception.

“They want to ban abortion; they want to classify it legally as murder; they want to impose criminal penalties against people who get abortions and people who provide them,” Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, told The Washington Post. “That’s been the goal of all of the abortion legislation we’ve seen in Ohio. This kind of legislation is revealing the ultimate agenda of our opponents.”

Similar bills have been introduced previously in the legislature but did not pass. This time around, however, the lawmakers are operating in a state that has passed a “heartbeat bill,” which bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually around week six of pregnancy. The law punishes providers who perform abortions after that with up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

“The heartbeat bill really opened the floodgates,” Margie Christie, president of the Right to Life Action Coalition of Ohio and executive director of Dayton Right to Life, told the Dispatch.

The Ohio Department of Health reported in October that abortions dropped 2 percent in 2018 and are now at their lowest level since 1976. Also in 2018, 56 percent of abortions involved pregnancies before six weeks.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked Ohio’s heartbeat law from taking effect. The ACLU said in October that “none of the state abortion bans passed earlier this year are in effect,” the Post reported. Georgia, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Ohio, and Utah have all voted in favor of abortion bans. The trend of restrictive abortion laws across the country is meant to force a showdown at the Supreme Court, which could then overturn Roe v. Wade, experts say.