A Successful Challenge to a Ban on 'aiding and Abetting' Abortion

When the city of Lebanon banned abortion in 2021, it initially seemed like a pointless stunt.

- By Elizabeth Nolan Brown

At that point, Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land, and there were no abortion clinics in Lebanon, a city of around 21,000 people in southwestern Ohio. But social workers and activists worried that the ban's broad language could be used to punish people for counseling or otherwise helping women obtain abortions outside the city.

That dauntingly vague, speech-chilling threat was magnified after the Supreme Court overturned Roe in June 2022. But in the face of a constitutional challenge, the city amended its ordinance last fall, excising language that threatened people with prosecution for "aiding and abetting" abortion.

Lebanon's ordinance made it unlawful "to procure or perform an abortion of any type and at any stage of pregnancy in the city of Lebanon." It also banned possession or distribution of "abortion-inducing drugs" and made it illegal "to knowingly aid or abet" an abortion.