Ohio became the latest state on Thursday to sign into law one of the country’s most stringent abortion laws, joining a league of states that are set to ban or have already banned abortion at six weeks. So, which states have banned abortion at six weeks? Here’s what you need to know.
The abortion law, dubbed “heartbeat bills” by advocates, prohibits abortions after detection of a fetal heartbeat during an ultrasound, which doctors say can be as early as five or six weeks into the pregnancy. This is oftentimes before women, trans, and non-binary individuals know they are pregnant. Ohio’s version of the bill would subject doctors who perform an abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat would be subject to a $20,000 fine from the state medical board, could have their medical licenses suspended or revoked, and could face up to a year in prison, according to The Hill and NPR.
The ban, signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio — in stark contrast to the two-time veto of a similar bill by his predecessor former Gov. John Kasich — late last week is part of a wide-sweeping effort at the state level to ban abortion. States like North Dakota, Arkansas, Kentucky, Iowa, and Mississippi have also passed similar laws, according to The Hill, however, many of the passed abortion bans in these states have been reviewed or thrown out by the courts. Mississippi’s law is set to take effect in July, according to the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, similar heartbeat bills have advanced in one chamber of state legislatures in Missouri and Tennessee, according to USA Today, and may be on their way to pass in the near future. The legislation has been introduced in Florida, South Carolina, Louisiana, Minnesota, Illinois, Maryland, New York, and West Virginia.
For many anti-abortion activists and conservative leaders, this is an opportunity that could eventually lead to a Supreme Court challenge of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
Indeed, human-right groups including the ACLU and Planned Parenthood have already promised legal action to challenge the bills. “Gov. DeWine just signed the Ohio law that virtually bans all abortion care. We’ll see you in court,” the ACLU tweeted following Ohio’s decision on Thursday.
Planned Parenthood promised eventual Supreme Court action to battle out the national issue. “If this is what it takes, we will see you at the Supreme Court,” the organization’s Ohio president Iris Harvey said at a rally on Wednesday, NPR reported.
Those looking to join the fight can contribute in a multitude of ways. Currently, House Republicans are attempting to advance a bill in Congress that, if passed, would be a federal restriction on abortion after six weeks. While a bill like this one is likely to face considerable obstacles, considering Democrats currently control the House of Representatives, you can sign this petition by NARAL that would firmly oppose any anti-abortion legislation before it even gains traction.
Be sure to contact your representatives to make your pro-choice stance clear and affect legislation on a local level before it can advance to policy. Begin by going to this guide, which will direct you to your state assembly or legislature website, and then navigate to find your state website’s page to identify your representatives. To find your governor’s information, go to this website and simply choose your state from the drop-down menu.
To find out who represents you in Congress, you can visit the House and Senate’s websites and then enter your zip code or state name. Once you find the names of your representatives, you can locate their contact information through the House and Senate directories.
If you’re looking to support organizations that are gearing up for legal battles, donations can go a long way. Oftentimes, nonprofit organizations benefit the most from monthly donations of any amount. Organizations that could benefit from your donations to fight abortion laws include NARAL, state offices of the ACLU, and the national ACLU organization.
Outside of donating, you can also raise money for these organizations by teaming up with the organization and creating your own personal fundraising campaign. If you have a birthday coming up, you can ask family and friends to donate the amount of your age to a selected organization as your birthday gift. If you’re planning on getting hitched, you can make an organization like the ACLU a part of your wedding registry and ask your guests to donate to the cause instead of giving traditional gifts. Here are do-it-yourself fundraising tipspublished by the ACLU that can get you started.
With an overwhelmingly conservative Supreme Court bench and multiple states rallying to fight the good fight on abortion laws, it is now more important than ever to take action to preserve women’s rights.
Abortion - Abortion Clinics, Abortion Pill, Abortion Information 
April 23, 2019 at 3:20 pm
The Christian Pro-Choice Response To Pro-Life
1) Jesus never once spoke about or against abortion! Nor did Apostles Paul, Peter, John or James. What did they know that for them made abortion a non-issue? Could it be that they believed all fetus/embryo souls return to God? If “all things are possible with God” who is to say aborted souls do not return to God? In all scripture both Jewish and Christian, abortion is never called a sin, it is a non-issue.
2) At Jesus’ trial, who was it that yelled: “Crucify Him, Crucify Him”? It was the Pharisees, the bible believing fundamentalists of that day? Today, who is it that yells “abortion is murder”? Is it not today’s Christian fundamentalists? If abortion was not an issue for Jesus, why is it for today’s fundamentalists? Why is it fundamental’s wants to impose by law its fabricated dogma on all citizens regardless of their belief? Answer: An excuse for raising money and consequent political power.
3) Pro-Lifers proclaim “life begins at conception”. The fact that life “begins” does not equate to a “human” life. If a “life” that has begun in the form of an embryo or fetus is a human life then contact Prudential or Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and tell them you want to buy a $100,000.00 life insurance policy on your yet to be born child. The first thing they’ll ask is what is the baby’s date of birth. You’ll answer Billy/Susie hasn’t been born yet. The Insurance Company will tell you “Sorry, we’d love to sell you that policy, but we only insure human beings.” So just because life “began” at conception, that life has not yet developed into an insurable “human being”.
4) When did Adam become a human? “And the Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:6) Though Adam was conceived, Adam did not become a living being until he could breathe. After a mother gives birth to an embryo/fetus, it is considered a baby and can breathe. The unborn is not yet a living breathing human being.
5) It is estimated that some 30% to 40% of conceptions end in a stillbirth or miscarriage. According to the Bible, God designed the woman’s body. God designed woman so she would have miscarriages. A miscarriage is an abortion. Abortion is a non-issue with God, it’s normal. God is Pro-Abortion.
6) Bible-believing Evangelicals belief about abortion:
In a 1968 symposium sponsored by the Christian Medical Society and Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of evangelicals, they refused to characterize abortion as sinful, citing “individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility” as justification for ending a pregnancy.
In 1971, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, passed a resolution encouraging “Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.” The convention reaffirmed that position in 1974, one year after Roe, and again in 1976.
In 1973, Wallie Amos ‘W.A’ Criswell, President of the Southern Baptist Convention 1968 to 1970, said: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person, and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”
What changed amongst the Evangelicals? The present-day hard-line Pharisees took control. Roe v Wade birthed political opportunity. Whereas Evangelicals were Pro-Choice, they became Pro-Life.
7) In a 2004 PBS interview with Bill Moyers, Benedictine Nun Sister Joan Chittister said, ” I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think you’re morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t care? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation about what the morality of pro-life is.”
8) Donald Trump/Mike Pence voters claim Pro-Life is in accord with their God’s moral standards. If morals are their concern, what are they doing about the fact that among the 34 OECD advanced nations the USA has the second highest infant (age zero – one) mortality rate, the second highest child (age one – five) mortality rate, and highest maternal mortality rate. How convenient for Trump/Pence that their allegedly moral Pro-Life endorsement generates votes, whereas the health of infants, children, and mothers is of no concern.
9) What is America’s attitude about abortion? According to Pew Research, after more than four decades since Roe v Wade passed in 1973, 57% of Americans support a woman’s right to abortion. Even 48% of Roman Catholics agree.
10) How about Europe? 81% of the populations in European nations support a woman’s right to abortion. Those nations include Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Norway, the United Kingdom, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and Portugal. Further, Israel and Canada not only consider abortion a woman’s right but subsidize the cost.
11) So what is Trump’s path to “Make America Great Again”? Is it the path of the “Enlightenment” which inspired our Founding Fathers with separation of church and state or the path of early religious fanaticism of the Christian “Dark Ages” and the “Inquisition”?
Consider the revered Roman Catholic patriarch Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) ” Every woman is birth defective, an imperfect male, begotten because her father was ill, weakened or in a state of sin when she was conceived.”
Or how about Protestantism’s revered theologian Martin Luther (1483-1546) “If a woman grows weary and at last dies, it matters not. Let her die from bearing, she is there to do it.” For Christian fundamentalists, women are mere incubators.
12) Lynn Paltrow, lawyer, and director of National Advocates For Pregnant Women states that 36 states have instituted Fetal Homicide laws resulting in the incarceration of over 1,100 women (mostly poor minorities). Their crime? After having a miscarriage or stillbirth they are accused of murder and incarcerated with no due process, no trial. These laws have been instituted by today’s Pharisees, Christian fundamentalist legislators inspired by the pro-life politically fabricated theology of “personhood”, “life begins at conception”, “sanctity of life”.
Pro-Life operates under the guise of concern for children’s lives, when in fact Pro-Life is really about dominion over women, a foundational doctrine promoted throughout the Bible.
America desperately needs Pro-Choice legislators who will stand up to the lies and deceptions of Christian fundamentalism and its political errand boys, the Republican GOP (“God’s Own People”).
What does Pro-Life produce?
A religious dogma opposed by the vast majority
A deceptive distorted meaning of life.
An immoral usurpation of democratic values
An unjust criminalization of innocent women
A governmental police enforcing church theology
A Bible-based dogma perpetuating women’s inferiority
Religious totalitarianism
Final thought: “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” Author unknown.
These thoughts are offered by Lee Salisbury who was an evangelical pastor and Christian Conference speaker in the USA, Europe, and Africa 1972-1986. Presently, I am retired and oversee the Critical Thinking Clubs of Minnesota, Inc., 2000 – present.
Please forward this to any and all Democratic Pro-Choice state legislators in order to better enable opposition to the self-righteous Pharisaical Pro-Lifers.
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April 24, 2019 at 6:56 am
leesalis, you should always refer to them as “so-called ‘pro-lifers.’ ”
It helps to remember that it is a dysfunctional self-help group, seeking to address deeply embedded flaws in imitation of Alcoholics Anonymous, but in vain. Rather than admitting their flaws, they disguise them. Rather than accepting responsibility, they dodge it.
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April 24, 2019 at 10:50 am
I completely agree with Lee Salisbury. The religious right is seeking to impose their religious beliefs on our nation. And this is the only medical procedure with which they wish to interfere between a patient and doctor.
I believe this could be challenged in court on the basis of the First Amendment. My religious belief regarding abortion is the ancient biblical “Breath if Life” tenent.
If I wish to have an abortion, but am prevented by another’s religious beliefs, then that is a violation of my First Amendment rights.
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April 25, 2019 at 2:22 pm
Laws do not deter abortion. Mexico is the winner in this whole thing. American women are crossing in their thousands to procure abortion pills across the border.
Those who can not go to Mexico, use dangerous alternative abortion methods. Some mutilate themselves in the process. Government and insurance take up the treatment tab. It all ends up expensive and messy.
Keep abortion legal within limits and solve many problems. Give women a chance to choose. Do not own them.
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April 26, 2019 at 5:09 am
The only things stupider than the columns are the comments.
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