BY JULIE CARR SMYTH
November 24, 2023
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio’s new constitutional protections for abortion access and other reproductive rights take effect Dec. 7, a month after voters resoundingly passed them. How and when their impacts are felt remains unclear.
Existing abortion-related lawsuits are moving again through the courts now that voters have decided the issue, raising questions about implementation.
Reporters are parroting — and spreading — sentimental falsehoods.
Judith Levine
May 27 2023
“ONCE A FETAL heartbeat could be detected, typically around the sixth week of pregnancy … ”
When I read this phrase in the New Yorker, referring to Texas’s first abortion ban, I shot off a letter to the editor. “This is misleading,” I wrote. “There is no heartbeat at six weeks because the fetus does not yet have a heart. As San Francisco OB-GYN Dr. Jennifer Kerns told NPR: ‘What we’re really detecting is a grouping of cells that are initiating some electrical activity. In no way is this detecting a functional cardiovascular system or a functional heart.’” I noted that “a six-week fetus is about the size and shape of a baked bean.”
Continued: https://theintercept.com/2023/05/27/abortion-fetal-heartbeat-propaganda-press-coverage/
‘Copycat bills’ are a tradition that has been a hallmark of the antiabortion movement for decades
Caroline Kitchener
October 19, 2021
Less than 48 hours after Texas’s abortion law went into effect, banning almost all abortions, West Virginia state delegate Josh Holstein was reminded of the promise that got him elected in 2020.
Holstein ran as a “100 percent pro-life” Republican alternative to the two-term Democratic incumbent. He would pursue a “heartbeat bill” that would ban abortion once cardiac activity is detected, around six weeks of pregnancy. On Sept. 2, the day after Texas became the first state to successfully implement a six-week ban without court interference, a West Virginia resident called Holstein and other state delegates to task in a private post on his Facebook page. He wanted to know: Can we do the same thing in West Virginia?
Here's How Conservatives Are Using Civil Rights Law to Restrict Abortion
Here Are the Details of the Abortion Legislation in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Elsewhere
By Abigail Abrams
January 1, 2020
Six states passed laws in 2019 banning abortions once a “fetal heartbeat” is detected, which can be as early as six weeks into pregnancy. While most of these new laws were challenged in court and are temporarily blocked, the trend has continued: another 10 states introduced similar bills in 2019 and more are expected this year.
The sudden success of these measures is not an accident. They are the result of a concerted new strategy by abortion opponents, researchers have found.
Continued: https://time.com/5753300/heartbeat-bill-civil-rights-law/
Inside the conservative organization undermining abortion access one state at a time
By Ray Levy-Uyeda
Dec 26, 2019
This year, a record number of six-week abortion bans, dubbed “heartbeat bills," were introduced at the state level. The goal of these restrictive measures was ostensibly to “protect the lives of the unborn” — as well as to issue a sneaky challenge to existing law set by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which says abortion is legal in all 50 states. The bans rely on the bogus claim that a vaginal ultrasound can detect a fetal “heartbeat” six weeks into pregnancy, giving pro-life advocates a foundational claim to fetal personhood.
In reality, these “heartbeats” are not any real sign of sentient life. But the movement is successfully restricting access to abortion in large part because of the activism of one woman: Ohioan Janet Folger Porter, who uses her organization, Faith2Action, to lobby for and proliferate such legislation.
7 Days Inside an Anti-Abortion Summer Camp Training the Next Generation of Activists
By Carter Sherman
Aug 7, 2019
HOUSTON — The circle of students sat quietly, scribbling down answers to the prompt they’d just been given: “Write down three similarities between the Holocaust and abortion.”
After a minute or two, they launched into discussion. Innocent people were, and are, being killed, they said. The Nazis discriminated against the Jews, just as “the unborn” face discrimination today. Bystanders aren’t doing enough to stand up against injustice.
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