Ohio House Health Committee Violates Constitution

Press Release | March 18, 2026

COLUMBUS — Jean Schmidt and the Republican members of the Ohio House Health Committee violated their oaths of office this morning, passing House Bill 347. The bill is attempting to restore a 24-hour waiting period on abortion care, a restriction which was blocked in courts just last year.

Abortion Forward Deputy Director Jaime Miracle said: “A state mandated 24-hour waiting period will harm patients by creating additional barriers to care and increasing costs of the procedure. For anti-abortion members of this legislature, this is a feature not a flaw. The goal of this legislation is not to ensure informed consent. It is to make it harder for people to access the care they need.”

House Bill 347 violates the Ohio Constitution in a multitude of ways.

• It’s burdensome and interferes with rights. House Bill 347 directly burdens and interferes with an individual’s voluntary exercise of the right to abortion by mandating a state-imposed 24-hour waiting period.
• It’s discriminatory against patients and providers. By imposing this 24-hour waiting period and mandatory misinformation requirement only on individuals seeking abortion care and the medical professionals providing that care and not on other medical procedures or medications, House Bill 347 discriminates against both individuals exercising their voluntary right to abortion and medical professionals assisting the individual in exercising their rights.
• It fails to meet the “least restrictive” standard in the constitution. By imposing a restriction on abortion using medically inaccurate and thoroughly debunked “research,” and having failed to prove how this restriction will advance the health of individuals, House Bill 347 does not use “the least restrictive means to advance the individual’s health in accordance with widely accepted and evidence-based standards of care.”

Research from the Ohio Policy Evaluation Network has shown that 24 hour waiting period laws “make it harder for patients to experience timely, safe, and routine health care and result in distressing challenges for abortion seekers.” Since the passage of the Ohio Reproductive Freedom Amendment, some of these barriers have begun to be dismantled.  

For nearly 20 years, Ohioans endured harmful restrictions like the 24-hour waiting period that delayed or denied abortion care altogether. The previous restriction was blocked through a lawsuit filed in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas by ACLU of Ohio on behalf of Preterm-Cleveland, Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region, Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, Women’s Med Group Professional Corporation, Northeast Ohio Women’s Center, and Dr. Catherine Romanos.