These groups include Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Ohio, and Fanon A. Rucker of the Cochran Firm-OH representing reproductive health care providers, Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region, and Women’s Med Dayton.
Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas Judge Alison Hatheway found that the law was being prematurely enforced before its effective date and that violated Women’s Med Dayton’s due process rights.
The clinic has a license through a waiver that needs to be reapproved, and the new law in question, Senate Bill 157, makes this process more difficult for the clinic.
The law was set to go into effect March 23. The clinic would then have another 90 days to show it could comply.
Women’s Med in court documents accused the Ohio Department of Health of prematurely enforcing the new law, by making compliance a condition for renewal of the license waiver.
“The state’s disregard of foundational due process principles shows just how far it will go to attempt to eliminate access to abortion,” stated representatives from Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region, ACLU, ACLU of Ohio, and Women’s Med Dayton.
The current problem roots back to a requirement that Women’s Med Center in Kettering and other surgical abortion clinics must have a written transfer agreement with a hospital to operate in the state.
Women’s Med has never been able to get one of these agreements with the two major local health networks — Kettering Health and Premier Health — and instead has been operating under a waiver signed by doctors affiliated with Wright State University.
Now under the new law, the physicians who sign the clinic’s license waiver paperwork cannot be affiliated with a state medical school.
The overwhelming majority of OB/GYNs in the Dayton region are either affiliated with the public medical school at Wright State University, or work for Kettering Health or Premier, leaving questions over whether the clinic will be able to find people to sign the waiver or have to stop procedural abortions.
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