In a state where abortion currently remains legal, Ohio lawmakers have drafted a bill to add two new felony charges to the Ohio criminal code, reports ReWire: “abortion murder” and “aggravated abortion murder.” If this bill were to pass, any pregnant person, medical practitioner, or child over the age of 14 would be subject to a fine no less than $1500, life imprisonment or, in the case of “aggravated abortion murder”—the death penalty.
The new Ohio bill, HB 413, is an even more extreme and restrictive version of Alabama’s Human Life Protection Act, which is blocked from taking effect. While the Alabama bill made certain allowances for having an abortion in favor of the life and health of the mother, HB 413 would require a physician to believe that a “pregnant woman would die from a certain fatal condition.” The bill does not list the pregnancy itself as a potentially fatal condition. A pregnant person would have to be knocking on death’s door before an abortion provider could even be consulted.
In the case that a physician performs an abortion to preserve the life of the mother, HB 413 also orders that the physician must preserve the life of the “unborn child victim” by any means, including reimplantation of ectopic pregnancies, a feat that is not medically possible.
This is not the first time Ohio has tried to implement a pre-viability abortion ban, and while federal courts keep shooting down these bans as unconstitutional, lawmakers continue to put the bills forward. While the entire bill is unfathomably ridiculous, what might be most heinous is how it outlines treatment for a person who obtains an abortion but is still legally considered a child. Any child found guilty of “abortion murder” can be held in a juvenile facility as a felon until they turn 21. The bill also maintains a provision allowing the court to charge a child as an adult should the court see fit to do so.