On Sunday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order suspending all nonessential surgeries to ensure medical professionals at hospitals have all the personal protective equipment they need to treat COVID-19 patients. Guess who else uses personal protective equipment? Staff at Planned Parenthood and other abortion facilities. In many states, abortion is not considered an essential medical treatment but an elective procedure (unless it is medically necessary for the mother). So when those states suspend elective procedures so that hospital staff and resources can focus on the coronavirus, abortion effectively gets banned.

Texas and Ohio are two states that have effectively banned abortion this way — not as a political statement, but as a way to ensure everyone stays healthy and safe. But when the Ohio Department of Health ordered the suspension of “nonessential and elective surgeries,” abortion advocates didn’t just accept the order and do their part to slow the outbreak, they decided to defy the order.