Welcome to The Week in Reproductive Justice, a weekly recap of all news related to the hot-button issue of what lawmakers are allowing women to do with their bodies!
After weeks of backlash directed at bills in Virginia to protect later abortion, this week, several state legislatures advanced bills that would severely prohibit or ban earlier abortion altogether.
Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee all moved forward fetal heartbeat ban bills that would ban abortion at about six weeks—or, in essence, ban all abortions, because many women don’t even realize they’re pregnant at that point.
The hypocrisy of anti-choice lawmakers who demonize, lie about, and attempt to criminalize later abortion could hardly be more apparent, or harmful. Many seek later abortion care for a litany of extreme health situations, and often seek later abortion as a humane option in the face of grave fetal abnormalities that can only be discovered at about 20 weeks. But others are forced to seek later abortion care after being delayed by endless laws restricting abortion, often supported by the same lawmakers.
As of Thursday, Mississippi’s state House and Senate have both passed separate bills that would ban most abortions once a heartbeat is detected. Both legislative bodies must agree on a single version to send to Republican, anti-choice Gov. Phil Bryant, who has explicitly stated he will sign the eventual bill into law. The fetal heartbeat ban is even more radical than a 15-week abortion ban Mississippi briefly enacted in 2018, before the law was struck down in court.
In Kentucky, on Thursday, a local pregnant woman who opposes abortion rights allowed a fetal Doppler device to be placed on her pregnant belly to hear the fetus’ heartbeat before the Senate, calling upon legislators to pass SB 9, a fetal heartbeat ban. The bill was approved by the state Senate by a 31-6 vote this week, and has been sent to the state House for its consideration. SB 9 is especially concerning because it contains an emergency clause, which would require the bill to take full effect immediately upon being signed by Republican, anti-choice Gov. Matt Bevin.
And in Tennessee, among other anti-abortion bills, including one that would immediately ban abortion upon the reversal of Roe v. Wade, state lawmakers have officially introduced a fetal heartbeat ban that the newly elected, anti-choice Gov. Bill Lee has said he would enact.
Even in the absence of anti-choice lawmakers’ scrutiny and demonization of later abortion, fetal heartbeat bans would be dangerous, dehumanizing, and carry deeply harmful implications for women’s health, but the simultaneous stigma attached to both early and later abortion serves as a crucial reminder that, despite how graphic and explicit rhetoric denouncing later abortion is, the stage in pregnancy ultimately means little to nothing to an anti-choice movement that simply wants to ban all abortions.
And make no mistake: This is not about unilaterally seeing all fertilized eggs and fetuses as children and human beings, whom anti-choice politicians never cede an opportunity to attack through their harmful policies on education, health care, social welfare, and other policy areas. If anti-choice politicians really viewed six-week or 20-week fetuses as born, living, low-income children, they’d be busy at work trying to rob those fetuses of health care, food, quality public education, and anything else they could.
Opposition to early and late abortion is entirely rooted in the anti-choice movement’s obsession with controlling and punishing women’s bodies, and the movement achieves its extremist agenda by relying on salient, emotionally manipulative narratives about babies and children that, in reality, they either don’t care about or actively hurt through their policies.
One stark example of this is the pregnant Kentucky woman who played the sounds of her fetus’ heartbeat on the state Senate floor. The heartbeat bill and opposition to later abortion both rely on rhetoric that explicitly humanizes unborn fetuses, contrary to all objective science, and the necessary consequence of the humanization of fetuses is the dehumanization of women and pregnant people.
When women are seen as mere vessels to carry fetuses, attempts to use the law to strip them of autonomy and force them to carry to term start to seem not just appropriate, but necessary and applaudable.
Texas lawmakers introduce “Rosie’s law” to lift ban on Medicaid coverage for abortions
On Thursday, a Texas state legislator introduced “Rosie’s law,” a bill to protect low-income people’s access to abortion care by lifting the state’s ban on Medicaid coverage for abortion. Like the Hyde amendment, which prohibits federal taxpayer dollars from paying for elective abortion, Texas state laws similarly prohibit state funds from paying for elective abortions.
Medicaid funding in Texas is currently only available for abortions in cases where the pregnancy was a product of rape or incest, or if there is danger to the life of the mother or fetus.
The proposed bill is named after Rosie Jiminez, a woman who died in McAllen, Texas, in the 1970s, after she couldn’t pay for a legal abortion and was forced to have an unsafe abortion.
“We must fight hard for government assistance for those who just don’t have it. We have to stand together as women, regardless of income, regardless of race, regardless of personal circumstances, because we as women are the anchors of our families,” state Rep. Sheryl Cole, who introduced the bill, said at a press conference.
While anti-abortion laws are often unsuccessful in preventing abortions, and often merely inconvenience women and, in the case of Rosie Jiminez, directly endanger them, on the federal level, the Hyde amendment successfully prevents one in four low-income women from accessing abortion. Laws like “Rosie’s law” are necessary to ensure that abortion rights—and with them, bodily autonomy—remain human rights rather than socioeconomic privilege.
Planned Parenthood challenges Ohio lawsuit banning second-trimester abortion
Planned Parenthood and an Ohio-based clinic filed a lawsuit this week to block a ban on the safest form of second-trimester abortion, called dilation and evacuation. The bill was signed into law by former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and would penalize abortion providers who offered the procedure with up to 18 months in prison, without any exception for pregnancies caused by rape or abortion to save a woman’s life.
“The (law) would unduly burden women’s constitutional right to choose an abortion by barring D&E, the safest and most common method of abortion beginning at approximately 15 weeks of pregnancy,” attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit comes after a wave of deceitful anti-choice backlash against later abortion. Despite outraged anti-abortion language about later abortions, just 1.2 percent of all abortions take place at or after the 21st week of pregnancy, while 92 percent take place before 13 weeks, but this relative infrequency in no way justifies bans on later abortion, which remains necessary for the many pregnant people who are unable to learn about fetal abnormalities or health risks until at around 20 weeks.
If the lawsuit is unsuccessful and the law takes effect, Ohio would be one of just three states (along with Mississippi and West Virginia) to have banned the dilation and evacuation procedure. Many other states have passed laws to penalize the procedure, but federal courts have struck down these laws as unconstitutional.
Today, extremist anti-abortion laws often serve the dual purpose of further stigmatizing abortion and triggering lawsuits that anti-choice politicians hope will reach the Supreme Court, and one day yield the reversal of Roe v. Wade. With Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, anti-choice lawmakers certainly have cause for optimism and seem perfectly content spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to fight back against legal challenges to their unconstitutional anti-abortion laws.
Tune in next week to see what lawmakers will try next in their never-ending mission to derail reproductive justice!
(image: Avivi Aharon / Shutterstock.com)
Kylie Cheung writes about feminism and politics, with a focus on reproductive justice. Follow her on Twitter @kylietcheung, or learn more about her writing at www.kyliecheung.tumblr.com.
Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
