COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – The right to an abortion is now enshrined in Ohio’s constitution, but the state’s Attorney General said some legal questions remain.

The constitutional amendment protecting abortion that voters approved last month took effect about a week ago. But there is still a case pending before Ohio’s Supreme Court over a law prohibiting abortions after about six weeks into a pregnancy.

Until voters passed the amendment in November, Attorney General Dave Yost had defended Ohio’s “Heartbeat Act,” which prohibited abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected.

The law was placed on hold by a judge in 2022, until the court could decide whether it violated the state constitution. There is no question, Yost said, that it does now.

“The core prohibition of the Heartbeat Act—the prohibition on performing an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected—is overridden by the new amendment,” Yost wrote in a December brief to the Ohio Supreme Court.

“The voters spoke loud and clear that they believe that there should be a constitutionally protected right. That’s very clear. And I think that it’s incumbent upon the state to respect that,” he said. 

Still, Yost does not want the case dismissed. His brief still takes issue with the fact that a lower court judge was able to put the Heartbeat Act on hold in the first place.

“It goes literally to the foundation of a representative democracy, by providing a single county judge the ability to negate the acts of the peoples’ representatives without any review, for a very long period of time,” Yost argued in the filing.

The brief suggests that the court’s guidance that procedural issues can inform other matters impacting Ohioans, such as state challenges to local gun-control ordinances.

Yost said he also expects courts in future cases to sort out how the new abortion amendment affects other existing laws on abortion.

“Things like regulation of ambulatory surgical facilities, you know. We, as a state, regulate the practice of medicine, so that’s … an appropriate set of issues to work on going forward, recognizing that the people have spoken,” Yost said.

Lawyers for the group that had sued to block the heartbeat law also filed a brief this month, asking the Supreme Court to dismiss the case because, they believe, the state’s argument is moot.