Press Release
NARAL Pro-Choice America Condemns Ohio’s SB 8 Copycat Bill
For Immediate Release: Tuesday, November 2, 2021
Contact: [email protected]
Ohio becomes the second state to introduce legislation using Texas’ abortion ban as a blueprint
Washington, DC — Today, just 24 hours after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases involving Texas’ vigilante-enforced ban on abortion (SB 8), anti-choice state lawmakers in Ohio introduced a bill, HB 480, modeled after Texas’ unprecedented law—but Ohio’s law goes so far as to ban abortion outright. Ohio is one of 13 states where lawmakers have announced intentions or plans to use Texas’ vigilante enforcement mechanism as a blueprint to even further eviscerate abortion access. In September, Florida became the first state to introduce a copycat ban.
NARAL Pro-Choice America Acting President Adrienne Kimmell released the following statement:
“Ohio’s dystopian law is an all-out ban on abortion complete with a vigilante-enforcement scheme straight from Texas’ playbook. The SB 8 domino effect is well underway and will only continue to escalate in cruelty as long as the Supreme Court allows Texas’ blatantly unconstitutional law to stand.
The anti-choice movement’s decades-long strategy to end legal abortion is playing out before our eyes. The future of reproductive freedom is in peril.
With every passing day, more people in this country are being blocked from accessing abortion care and our leaders in the Senate must act. It is past time to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act and safeguard the legal right to abortion before the Supreme Court has the chance to end the constitutional right to abortion as we know it.”
Ohio HB 480, modeled after Texas’ SB 8, is part of a broader onslaught of attacks on abortion access across the country. Anti-choice state lawmakers have already introduced, advanced, or passed more than 330 state bills attacking abortion access in 2021.
Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases regarding Texas’ ban on abortion before many people know they are pregnant (SB 8). The cases—Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson and United States v. Texas—focus on SB 8’s unprecedented vigilante enforcement mechanism and whether the Department of Justice has the authority to bring a challenge to the Texas law.
In September, the Supreme Court refused to block Texas’ SB 8, allowing this blatantly unconstitutional law to go into effect. This law has effectively shut off access to abortion care in Texas and rendered Roe v. Wade meaningless for tens of millions of people in the state. As we have seen, the impact of SB 8 does not stop in Texas: Anti-choice lawmakers in 13 states and counting have said they intend to use Texas’ vigilante-enforced ban on abortion as a blueprint to attack reproductive freedom through copycat legislation and lawmakers in Florida and Ohio have done just that.
The copycat bills in Ohio and Florida, along with SB 8 in Texas and the hundreds of other attacks on abortion moved this year, underscore the urgent need for Congress to pass The Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) and protect the right to abortion throughout the United States. Every day without action means that more and more people are being denied their constitutional right to abortion—and this disproportionately affects women; Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color; members of the LGBTQ+ community; and those with lower incomes.
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For over 50 years, NARAL Pro-Choice America has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, paid family leave, and protections from pregnancy discrimination—for every body. NARAL is powered by its more than 2.5 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.