Abortion Laws : Ohio and Federal: US Code, CFR and Executive Orders

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words “person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual”, shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.

Makes it a crime to block access to abortion clinic entrances.

EMTALA - Examination and treatment for emergency medical conditions and women in labor. HHS says this includes emergency abortions.

Makes mailing any article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion illegal. The Comstock Law was passed in 1873, before women had the right to vote. The part of the Comstock Law applying to birth control was repealed in 1971, but the abortion language remains.

Partial-birth abortions criminalized, except when to save the life of the mother.

Protection of unborn children

Title IX, which banned discrimination against girls in education, is to be construed as neutral with respect to abortion.

Prohibition against misbranded drugs.

Prohibition on unapproved new drugs

Restrictions on fetal research

TItle X - Funding of Family Planning Programs

The Biden administration on Monday revoked a Trump-era rule that bars clinics that receive federal family planning funding from referring patients for abortions.

A federal prison inmate has the responsibility to decide either to have an abortion or to bear the child.

A Title X project may not perform, promote, refer for, or support abortion as a method of family planning, nor take any other affirmative action to assist a patient to secure such an abortion.

Federal medicaid dollars are only available for an abortion when a physician has found, and certified in writing to the Medicaid agency, that on the basis of his professional judgment, the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term. The certification must contain the name and address of the patient.

Title XXI (State Children's Health Insurance Programs) funds are not available for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.

On the ACA exchanges,an issuer may not offer abortion coverage in any State where such coverage of abortion services is prohibited by State law. If an issuer chooses to offer an option that covers non-excepted abortion services, in addition to an option that does not cover non-excepted abortion services, the issuer must provide notice to consumers prior to enrollment that non-excepted abortion services are a covered benefit.

OLC Opionion 12/23/22 Section 1461 of title 18 of the U.S. Code does not prohibit the mailing of certain drugs that can be used to perform abortions where the sender lacks the intent that the recipient of the drugs will use them unlawfully. Because there are manifold ways in which recipients in every state may lawfully use such drugs, including to produce an abortion, the mere mailing of such drugs to a particular jurisdiction is an insufficient basis for concluding that the sender intends them to be used unlawfully.

Aug. 3, 2022

7/8/22

Biden's Executive Order of 1/28/21 Biden rescinded the “Global Gag Rule,” also called the Mexico City Policy, brought in originally by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, which said even the mention of abortion services by an non-governmental organizations barred them from receiving funding from the United States.

5th Cir. Court of Appeals says Texas hospitals cannot be forced to perform abortions under EMTALA.