Gloria Steinem weighed in on Monday to try to save the last abortion clinic in her Ohio hometown.
The 83-year-old feminist icon issued a statement urging one of Toledo's private hospitals to sign the patient-transfer agreement with Capital Care of Toledo that the clinic needs to remain open.
"We must not allow a political regulatory scheme to close Toledo's remaining abortion clinic," Steinem said. "Its absence would not diminish the number of abortions but would increase the injury and death of women in my home city and state. Democracy begins with each person's control of his or her own body. Without reproductive freedom, there is no democracy for America women."
The Ohio Supreme Court last week upheld a state order from 2014 shuttering Capital Care. Justices ruled the Ohio Department of Health acted within its rights because the clinic lacked the required transfer agreement with a local hospital.
Abortion-related restrictions tucked into the state budget bill in 2013 required the partnering hospital to be "local," which nixed an agreement that Capital Care had struck with a public hospital across the Michigan border in Detroit.
The clinic's earlier transfer agreement was with the University of Toledo Medical Center, which is public. The university ended that agreement as a law, later passed, was being debated at the Statehouse that barred public hospitals from participating in transfer agreements with abortion clinics.
Abortion opponents have said the regulations are contributing to a decline in abortions in the state. Abortion-rights groups contend a lack of access is a contributing factor.
U.S. & World
Steinem strongly urged ProMedica and St. Luke's Hospital to sign Capital Care's required transfer agreement, in order to retain safe, legal abortions in the area.
"Ohio hospitals must not allow themselves to be used by politicians to hurt women's health," she said, in a statement released through the office of state Rep. Teresa Fedor, a Toledo Democrat.
ProMedica had previously refused to sign such an agreement, but it said it is re-examining its past policy in light of the court's ruling. Messages were left Monday with St. Luke's.
