Following the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, the election of President Joe Biden, and a new state legislative session, a surge of abortion-related bills have been proposed and passed by state legislators.
On February 18, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster signed into law a ‘fetal heartbeat’ bill. This bill requires that an ultrasound be conducted prior to an abortion, and in the case that a fetal heartbeat is detected, prohibits abortion. Prior to signing the bill, McMaster affirmed: “If there’s not a right to life, then what rights are there? What rights exist, if not the elementary, fundamental, profound right to life.”
Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights in a press release stated their intention to file a legal challenge in federal court. In response, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson stated, “My office will vigorously defend this law in court because there is nothing more important than protecting life.”
On February 26, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law Senate Bill 10, which repealed a 1969 statute that banned abortion in most cases. The repealing of this statute, which has been unenforced since Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in all 50 states through all nine months of pregnancy, has no immediate effect, but will be utilized if that Supreme Court decision is struck down in the future.
As lead sponsor of Senate Bill 10, state Senator Linda Lopez said, “The time has finally come to get this outdated abortion law off the books and ensure that we keep abortion accessible, safe and legal in New Mexico.”
“SB 10 would allow sex traffickers and child abusers to take a pregnant minor in for an abortion without any reporting criteria (yet reporting is required when they skip school often). What are the lifelong effects of a minor child having an abortion? How does this bill protect her? Do we ignore this child’s rights because she isn’t old enough to have women’s rights yet?”, Anastacia Golden Morper, a former candidate for the 3rd Congressional District in New Mexico, wrote in an op-ed about the bill for the Las Cruces Sun News. “A child cannot protect herself. It is our responsibility to protect our children.”
On March 18, Montana state House legislators introduced House Bill 337 which grants legal personhood to “all members of mankind at any stage of development, beginning at the stage of fertilization or conception, regardless of age, health, level of functioning or condition of dependency.” This would effectively ban abortions in the state.
During debate over the bill on the House floor, state Representative Scot Kerns said, “How long are we going to remain silent and afraid to speak up and act with a unified voice that life is fundamentally sacred? That the unborn are alive and are persons and that their abortion is murder?”
Although passed by the Montana House, this bill will likely narrowly fall short of the 33 votes needed in the Senate in order for it to be enacted into law.
On April 13, the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of an Ohio law that prohibits physicians from committing an abortion when the physician has knowledge that the mother has decided to abort because of a fetal Down syndrome diagnosis. This U.S. appellate court decision reversed a lower court’s ruling which invalidated the Ohio law that bars the abortion of a fetus because it has Down syndrome.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of pro-life organization Susan B. Anthony List, affirmed the court decision in a press release that read: “This law includes reasonable, compassionate measures to prevent lethal discrimination in the womb. We also recognize and celebrate that this legislation has the potential to pose a significant challenge to Roe v. Wade.”
Photo courtesy of Sdandsd via Wiki
- U.S. States Legislate on Abortion - April 30, 2021