Republican lawmakers in Ohio are introducing a bill to ban abortions and criminalize the procedure — a direct challenge to an amendment in the state’s constitution enshrining abortion access. 

Two state representatives, Levi Dean and Jonathan Newman, introduced the “Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act” on Wednesday, in hopes of triggering a court challenge to the state constitution under the U.S. Constitution.

If passed, the bill would treat abortion as a criminal act, with the woman who obtained the procedure and the person who performed it subject to homicide charges. The bill does provide exceptions for life-threatening emergencies, and its advocates say it would not apply to miscarriages.

The bill would defy a 2023 amendment to Ohio’s constitution that protects abortion access. A Franklin County judge stayed a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion, and that case is pending in court. However, earlier this month, a Republican state representative, Josh Williams, introduced a bill that would create a new 24-hour waiting period. 

The president of End Abortion Ohio, Austin Beigel, told the Columbus Dispatch that the latest abortion bill is aimed at prompting a challenge to the 2023 abortion amendment. 

“We hope this bill will change the culture of the Republican Party in Ohio, which I think has been afraid to speak truly and openly about abortion,” Mr. Beigel said. 

End Abortion Ohio says it believes the amendment is superseded by the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause and will eventually be struck down.

Some activists in the state are questioning that approach. The president of Ohio Right to Life, Mike Gonidakis, told the Columbus Dispatch, “It’s a strategy that won’t be successful at the legislative level, and it’s a strategy that won’t be successful at the judicial level.”

But the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, which supports the new bill, refuted Mr. Gonidakis on X, writing that he has not “proposed even a single policy that would put Ohio on a path toward [an end to] the slaughter of preborn children.”

“The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads that no state can ‘deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’ Issue 1 plainly violated the U.S. Constitution by denying equal protection to preborn persons,” the group said.

“In order to comply with the U.S. Constitution, which is a higher authority than the Ohio state constitution, lawmakers in Ohio must nullify its ‘right to abortion’ amendment by passing equal protection to preborn persons.”

The legal director of the ACLU of Ohio, Freda Levenson, told a local TV station in Cleveland, WKYC, that her organization is prepared to challenge the latest abortion bill. She said, “This bill is a brazen attempt to violate the Constitution and is a brazen affront to Ohioans’ decision that they expressed overwhelmingly at the polls only recently.”