The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.
Changes will be made to the way abortions are reported in Ohio, according to the state operating budget the legislature passed last week. Meanwhile, infant and maternal funding are seeing reductions compared to previous versions of the budget.
Also, millions were set aside to provide ultrasound equipment specifically for entities that do not inform patients about abortion procedures and services as an option.
The Ohio General Assembly passed the state operating budget bill out of a joint conference committee last week, sending the bill to Gov. Mike DeWine for his signature, and possible line-item vetoes of his choosing.
The budget included language making changes to the Ohio Department of Health’s annual abortion report, and established a new monthly report as part of the changes. A “public electronic dashboard” will also be published monthly, according to budget documents.
Data collection for both the annual and monthly reports would now include the total number of Ohio residents versus non-Ohio residents who have “undergone an abortion and received post-abortion care,” according to the budget. Physicians are required to fill out reports on both surgical and medication abortions, which Jaime Miracle, deputy director of advocacy group Abortion Forward, said just adds to the bureaucracy that bogs down proper medical care.
“No one wants to wait longer to see a doctor because they’re busy completing extra paperwork to satisfy some politician’s agenda,” Miracle said. “Ohio already has some of the most medically unnecessary and burdensome reporting requirements around abortion care. No other medical procedure is required to be reported in the way abortion is.”
Those reports would get information on the patient down to the ZIP code of the pregnant individual, something pro-abortion rights advocates have said is a privacy issue.
“Sharing ZIP code level data is a threat to patient data and privacy and has no business being in the state budget,” said Lauren Blauvelt, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio.
Age categories would be altered under the budget bill, moving categories to younger than 16, 16 to 17 and 18 to 24.
The total of number of minors who received abortions will be included in the monthly and annual reports, separated out by the facility who performed the abortion. The number of abortions a patient has received and the total number of in-state versus out-of-state patients will also be broken down by age.
The deadline for the reports was also moved up by legislators. The public report will now be issued March 1 rather than Oct. 1.
Separate provisions
In other abortion-related budget provisions, the conference committee kept a provision from DeWine’s executive proposal that requires the Ohio Department of Health’s Genetic Services fund to be used for newborn screenings and genetic disease programs, but prohibited the use of the funds for abortion counseling or referral, “except in the case of a medical emergency.”
While the conference committee kept the overall provision, including the prohibition, it removed the exception for medical emergencies.
Kept intact was a Senate provision that gives $5 million over the biennium to the Ohio Department of Children and Youth for the purchase of “3D diagnostic ultrasound machines,” to be distributed through a grant program.
The budget specifies, however, that the entities who are eligible to receive the ultrasound machines are those who do not “promote abortion, perform abortion-related medical procedures or make referrals for abortions.”
This could go to so-called pregnancy resource centers, also called crisis pregnancy centers, which are typically religiously based and center their information and services on promoting pregnancy and discouraging abortion. The state – and DeWine through executive orders – has funded the centers with grant programs in the Parenting and Pregnancy Program, which has clear exceptions for those who provide abortion services or information.
The new budget even includes up to $750 per year in personal income tax deductions for those who donate to the centers, which could cost the state about $900,000 per year, according to budget documents.
Reproductive rights advocates have said not only do the anti-abortion measures pushed by the legislature negatively impact the state’s already low-ranking maternal and infant mortality rate, but the attention and money spent on anti-abortion measures take away from improvements that could be made.
The total appropriation for the “infant vitality” budget line went down from $20 million in the Ohio House proposal to $18 million in the conference committee-approved document. That number is a slight jump from the $16.8 million the state estimates for the fund in the current fiscal year.
Legislators gave $5 million to “programming by community and local faith-based service providers that invest in maternal health programs” and provide services to support pregnant mothers. But that number dropped in the budget process, from $7.5 million in the governor’s proposal and $6 million in the House proposal.
The final budget document removed a provision to use up to $1 million for non-medical services at residential infant care centers.
A provision to fund research looking into “causes, diagnoses, prevention and treatment” of pediatric cancer stayed cut in half from DeWine’s proposal, with the conference committee sticking to the House’s $5 million for fiscal year 2026, rather than the $10 million the governor had proposed.
$1.6 million was cut from funding for community projects that support “families, assisting families in avoiding crisis, and crisis intervention.”
The conference committee budget did include $5 million in each fiscal year from a Maternal and Child Health Block Grant, to be used to implement grant activities in “prenatal, maternal, perinatal and infant domains.”
A mental health block grant was also funded with $1.7 million each fiscal year for infant and early childhood mental health activities, and $6 million each year in funds from tobacco use prevention, cessation and enforcement would be used for awards, prioritizing “entities that serve women who reside in communities that have the highest infant mortality rates.”
