Ohio's Republican governor has been working feverishly to outlaw abortions. The trick has been to create laws that make it almost
impossible for clinics to get licenses.
Current Ohio law requires an abortion clinic to have a transfer agreement with a local hospital in case of emergencies, but Gov. John Kasich (R) signed a budget in 2013 that includes a provision barring public hospitals from granting transfer agreements to abortion providers.
Well, some clinics in Ohio have worked very hard to meet these requirements and, of course, almost all of them are operating with
expired licenses. Is this because they aren't following the letter of the law? No, actually. As the
Daytona Daily News reports:
In almost all of these cases, the Ohio Department of Health has inspected the surgical abortion facility but never issued a report to notify the clinic if the annual license is valid. Some clinics have been waiting for months to hear if the state will renew or deny their licenses, while others have been waiting for more than a year.
This revelation comes only a fews days after a
Cincinnati-area clinic ended its fight with the state to end surgical abortions this week.
The development will leave just one facility in the Cincinnati area offering surgical abortions and none offering late-term abortions, said Dorothea Langsam, a lawyer for the clinic, the Lebanon Road Surgery Center in Sharonville.
Which brings us back to how is it that these clinics haven't been given their licenses?
[Daytona Daily News] reviewed records of the 135 outpatient surgery clinics in six of Ohio’s largest counties, which are all home to an abortion clinic. The health department has issued license renewals for all of those clinics, except for eight — all of them abortion clinics. Only one abortion clinic, a Columbus facility, has been issued a timely renewal in the last year; that clinic’s license will expire at the end of this month.
Health department officials wouldn’t answer questions about why the abortion clinics’ licenses haven’t been renewed.
These clinics have no idea whether or not they will be renewed. They continue to operate because they haven't been told to close. Ohio is systematically taking away a woman's right to choose.