A Republican-sponsored bill would require women who got abortion-inducing medication to receive information on how to reverse that process after taking the first of the two-pill dose. It is similar to bills that have been introduced twice before.
Backers of this bill said 8,000 abortions have been safely reversed when women changed their minds. Rep. Jennifer Gross (R-West Chester) said the bill would provide information to patients who might change their minds after taking the first dose.
"Providers must give printed discharge instructions with the odor hotline and the website, plus clear, compassionate statements if saying and stating if you have started a chemical abortion but now regret it, you're not alone," Gross said. She said patients would be referred to a toll-free, 24-hour a day hotline. She added the bill would create an "Unborn Child Education and Public Information Fund", to be funded by state money as well as private donations.
Rep. Johnathan Newman (R-Troy) said this bill won’t add any extra waiting time to the process: "There would be no waiting period. It would simply be included in the information describing the prescription.”
But Kellie Copeland with Abortion Forward said this bill has a different goal.
“They’re really trying to create confusion, give doctors more things that they have to do, and force them to lie to their patients," Copeland said.
Copeland said the so-called abortion reversal process is dangerous, and added that a study on it was stopped before it was finished because of bad outcomes.
“It’s so dangerous because patients need medically accurate information, not some cooked-up state-mandated deception. That's meant to pressure and shame patients," Copeland said.
Copeland noted that the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) does not recommend the practice, stating that “claims of medication abortion reversal are not supported by the body of scientific evidence."
That's an argument Newman refuted.
“Doctors have been working on this and using this for a number of years, actually," he said.
There's also a question of constitutionality. Copeland said the bill is unconstitutional under the reproductive rights amendment Ohio voters approved in 2023. But its backers said it isn’t because it doesn’t put undue burdens on patients or deny them abortions.
Similar bills have been introduced twice before, prior to the amendment's approval. Senate Bill 155 was introduced in 2019, and House Bill 378 was introduced in 2021.
