Responses filed in Ohio abortion lawsuit

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WTVG) - Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost says the state’s constitution doesn’t provide the right to an abortion.

He responded to a lawsuit in the Ohio Supreme Court Thursday that looks to block the state’s newly-implemented heartbeat law.

The ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and abortion clinics across Ohio filed the lawsuit Wednesday. The groups want the court to block Ohio’s six week abortion ban, arguing that it’s already causing irreparable harm on people in the state.

In Yost’s response, he doubled down on his statement from Wednesday arguing that the Ohio constitution doesn’t explicitly mention a right to an abortion and because there’s no precedent for the court to recognize any abortion right. He told the court that stopping the heartbeat law won’t solve the abortion question because the old law made abortion legal up to 20 weeks, though some think they should be allowed up until birth.

“If this Court creates a right to abortion, the state judiciary will face a flood of cases challenging every minute detail of the many laws regulating abortion. Relatedly, every judicial election will focus on this issue,” Yost wrote in his response to the court.

Yost said those elections would become about a candidates’ willingness to expand or contract abortion access instead of their willingness to interpret what the law says.

Prosecutors in Cuyahoga and Franklin counties filed briefs with the court saying they support the request to strike down the heartbeat law.

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