COLUMBUS, Ohio – Abortion clinics and a doctor who are challenging the constitutionality of the fetal “heartbeat” law have no right to sue on behalf of their patients, the state argued before the Ohio Supreme Court.
“The most famous abortion case in all of history, Roe v. Wade, was brought by an individual plaintiff, not her doctors,” said Benjamin Flowers, who represented the state as Ohio’s solicitor general. that the fetal heartbeat law would almost certainly be unconstitutional, since a heart tone can be detected early in a pregnancy, typically around six weeks.Each day that the heartbeat bill is blocked, the state suffers irreparable harm, Flowers said. The the injunction undermines the state legislative goal to protect unborn humans.
“These patients, they are telling me things that they might not have ever told anybody else, even inside their own family,” she said. A woman who is no longer pregnant, either because she had an abortion, miscarriage or delivered a baby, may no longer have standing in the case since their situation was resolved, Hill said.