A new bill signed by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) makes it illegal for a woman to take an abortion pill without a physician present, a move that will impact telemedicine abortions, which have become more prevalent amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The bill, Senate Bill 260, changes the law so that “No physician shall personally furnish or otherwise provide an abortion-inducing drug to a pregnant woman unless the physician is physically present at the location where the initial dose of the drug or regimen of drugs is consumed at the time the initial dose is consumed.”
The bill was sponsored by a Republican state senator, Dr. Steve Huffman (R-District 5), who denounced abortions and telemedicine abortions as “a tragedy which results in the ending of a human life.”
He also stated that “Abortions committed through telemedicine have the potential to add one tragedy to another by subjecting women to dangerous abortion-inducing drugs without providing basic health and safety standards.”
But Planned Parenthood was not happy with the legislation.
In an interview with the far-left news network Democracy Now, the president of Planned Parenthood called acts like Ohio’s “unconscionable.” She also stated “we have to think about how we’re going to support and how we’re going to get the 25 million women who live in states that are increasingly restrictive, access to safe and legal abortion, should they need it. And that’s currently the planning that we’re working on right now.”
However, the president of Ohio Right To life, Allie Frazier, said that “Telemed abortions are not safe, either for the unborn child whose life is tragically taken during a chemical abortion or for the woman who is left to deal with the harrowing experience of a telemedicine abortion on her own, alone, potentially hours away from the doctor who prescribes the drugs.”
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/September15
John Paluska has been a contributor for Christian Headlines since 2016 and is the founder of The Daily Fodder, a news outlet he relaunched in 2019 as a response to the constant distribution of fake news.
