I'm not familiar with Ohio law so I'm not sure what, if any, existing abortion laws are on the books. Assuming there aren't existing laws either protecting or

I'm not familiar with Ohio law so I'm not sure what, if any, existing abortion laws are on the books. Assuming there aren't existing laws either protecting or prohibiting abortions, my read on this bill is that it is playing two roles. It does establish a right to reproductive treatment and grant elgal protections to Healthcare workers providing it, I don't see this as an expansion of government powers as it is focused entirely on protecting the rights of the people. The state isn't really claiming any new ground there, and if anything is limiting it's own powers a bit by protecting individual health decisions. The second part of the bill seems to get into an expansion of powers though. The state is granting itself the right to prohibit abortions after the treating physician deems a pregnancy viable, unless the physician believes the mother's life is at risk. Thats absolutely a expansion of government if there aren't currently any abortion bans in Ohio today, as the state otherwise hadn't claimed the power to ban abortions. Given both in the same bill, my personal read on that would be the first section protecting freedoms is a political stunt to get the second part through. The state is leaving itself a backdoor of the definition of "viability" as well as the line for what level of life/heath risk to mother warrants a later term abortion. If passed, the state would also have the opportunity to try a case in court that challenges a treating physician's determination of either point, opening the door for case law that would effectively expand or refine the law based on the court's ruling. tl;dr; I see this as the state protecting some rights while claiming more power under certain conditions. The line distinguishing the two is a gray area that the state has likely left poorly defined and/or can try to move later through case law rather than legislation.