The Abortion Fund of Ohio (AFO) launched the Legal Access Program Feb. 3 to provide free and confidential legal advice and case management, connect people with pro-bono counsel and help minors who want to seek abortions without parental permission, among other comprehensive offerings.
In Ohio, a minor can only get an abortion with parental permission or through a judicial bypass, a process where a judge grants permission. The Legal Access Program is Ohio’s first judicial bypass program.
“Ohioans’ right to make unfettered reproductive decisions is once again on the line,” said interim executive director Maggie Scotece. “While our coalition works concurrently to secure explicit abortion access in Ohio’s constitution, we’re preparing to defend our communities from the senseless attacks from prosecutors and legislators alike.”
AFO partnered with Friedman, Nemecek, & Long, L.L.C. to create the Legal Access Program.
“Our legislators and our judicial folks are not scared to prosecute against pregnancy outcomes if they think it was an abortion,” said legal fellow Morgan Mitchelle. “We’re already seeing people in Ohio being criminalized and that’s really scary. We also want to make sure that we have this setup for when that might become even more common, if we go back to the six-week ban, especially.”
The Legal Access Program is currently accepting new intakes and AFO expects to field inquiries from a wide variety of patients — minors seeking an abortion who cannot ask for or get parental permission, Ohioans considering an abortion who have legal questions or are facing barriers, Ohioans with questions about the status and/or impacts of Ohio’s abortion laws, Ohioans contacted, arrested or charged by law enforcement for a crime related to abortion or pregnancy outcomes and those in the medical field with questions about how abortion laws will impact their work to reach out.
In addition to criminalization, people seeking abortions face barriers like transportation, cost, language and — as data shows that most people seeking abortions already have children — childcare. Mitchelle says these burdens fall disproportionately on minorities, people with disabilities, undocumented people, incarcerated people and the LGBTQ community.
“It’s always the marginalized communities that are hit the hardest with this kind of criminalization,” said Mitchelle. “It’s going to be the people who have the least amount of access already getting even more barriers put in place.”
A report by If/When/How, a non-profit network of law professionals and students focused on reproductive rights and justice, found 61 cases between 2000 and 2020 of people investigated or arrested for self-managed abortions — that is, abortions outside the medical system.
Although only seven states criminalized self-managed abortions, and only Nevada, South Carolina and Oklahoma criminalize them today, these 61 cases happened in 26 states, according to If/When/How. The report also found that murder or homicide charges were considered twice as frequently for people of color.
Mitchelle says that, in addition to contacting the Legal Access Program, those seeking or considering an abortion should be wary of leaving a digital footprint. Although the Abortion Fund of Ohio website is securely encrypted, the If/When/How report found that text messages and Google search histories were used as evidence in some cases.
“They are very secure. We keep the information confidential so we aren’t putting it on a Google doc or something that might be able to be accessed by the FBI or whoever wants to be awful,” said Mitchelle “If they call into us or fill out our intake form that information is only going to be seen by us and their pro-bono counsel.”
More resources and information can be accessed on the Abortion Fund of Ohio website. The patient intake form can be accessed here or by phone at
614-799-2843.
This story was originally published by CityBeat’s sister paper Cleveland Scene and is republished here with permission.
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This article appears in Feb 1-1, 2023.