Ohio Governor DeWine Criticizes Abortion Policy of Issue One, Deems It Excessive

Ohio’s “Issue One” proposed constitutional amendment on abortion rights is “radical” whether a voter is pro-choice or pro-life, as it goes “much too far,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Sunday.

“It would enshrine in our constitution, the right to have an abortion up until birth, at any time during the pregnancy,” the Republican governor told “Fox News Sunday” about the plan, which comes up for a vote Tuesday.

The measure would also “threaten a law we have had on the books for many years requiring parental consent if we’re dealing with a minor,” said DeWine. “The lawyers who wrote this were mindful of what they were doing… it is a radical proposal and does not fit Ohio.”

Voters are being asked whether to amend the state’s constitution to promise the freedom to “make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including… abortion,” or to vote no and leave the document unchanged, which could allow for a potential statewide abortion ban.

The proposal’s language leaves it up to a patient’s physician to determine if the fetus has a significant livelihood to survive outside the uterus. Critics have said that DeWine’s argument that the rule would allow abortions up to the moment of truth is not true, an argument he rejected Sunday.

“Constitutional scholars have a different opinion,” he said. “The viability question will be determined by the person performing the abortion, Planned Parenthood, or wherever that is being done. There is no review of that. Second, there are exceptions written into this law, which talks about the health of the mother.”

But the Supreme Court defined that question broadly, said DeWine.

Health can mean something having to do with her income or with how many children she has,” said DeWine. “It is the person performing that abortion in the clinic who would make the determination.”

But the lawyers writing the proposal were “mindful” of the language in it, so “this allows abortion at any point in the pregnancy,” he insisted.

“We’ve had on the books, for example, in Ohio law dealing with partial birth abortion,” DeWine said. “It prohibits that. We had a doctor in Ohio who was performing these and we stopped that because of the law in Ohio.”

Issue One, he added, would be a constitutional amendment, not a law, if it’s passed, and that means it would eliminate the state’s parental consent laws.