2022—Ohio common pleas court judge Christian Jenkins rules (in Pre-Term Cleveland v. Yost) that the Health Care Freedom Amendment adopted by Ohio voters in 2011 had the wholly unforeseen and undebated effect of creating a state constitutional right to abortion and that the Ohio heartbeat law violates that right.
The HCFA, in guaranteeing a right to purchase health care, barred Ohio from adopting a single-payer system in which citizens would be prohibited from buying health care themselves. But Jenkins wildly misreads the HCFA’s statement that Ohio shall not “prohibit the purchase or sale of health care” as guaranteeing a right to a particular health care procedure from any provider willing to offer the procedure. Under Jenkins’s misreading, Ohio’s bans on physician-assisted suicide, electroshock therapy for minors, and female genital mutilation for minors would all be invalid.