A new exhibition aims to show the wide range of reasons women have abortions. “Sometimes life is complicated,” its creator said.
My Body, My Life
Women have been sharing their stories about why they chose to have abortions in the hope that a greater understanding of their reasons might help to tackle stigma around the procedure.
Last year almost 200,000 women in England and Wales chose to terminate a pregnancy, and one in three women will have an abortion in her lifetime, but the topic still remains relatively taboo.
In a new exhibition, My Body, My Life, opening at The Old Fire Station in Oxford on 7 November, clothing printed with women’s abortion stories will be displayed to help demonstrate the complexities of those women’s decisions.
My Body, My Life
Lesley Hoggart, from the Open University, and Imogen Goold, associate professor of law at the Oxford University, collected the stories and created the exhibition to show the huge variety of women who get abortions.
“We have these stereotypical ideas that it’s only younger women getting abortions, but it’s a huge range, from women in their early teens, right up to women in their late 40s, who think they’re going through the menopause,” Goold told BuzzFeed News. “I really wanted all of that shown.”
My Body, My Life
“Many women who get pregnant are using contraception of some kind,” she continued.
“Those kind of facts help us understand why women need abortions. I particularly want to get rid of this idea that it’s just laziness, or they should have tried harder, or it’s all their fault.
But Goold said she was keen for the exhibition not to be politicised, and the views of women who are both for and against abortion are represented.
“Some women are happy about their abortions, some regret it and some are conflicted,” she said. “We are keen not to just have a pro-choice message, it’s meant to be about the fact that abortion is complicated and to understand that, we need to understand a whole range of experiences that women have reported.”
Instead the aim of the exhibition is to encourage women to share their stories and experiences. The items of clothing are laid out on a rail and visitors to the exhibition are invited to chat as they browse through them. During a recent previous version of the exhibition at the Edinburgh Fringe, Goold said she saw several women strike up conversations around abortion.
My Body, My Life
“We had women talking to us, and talking to their friends, but also talking to strangers, which was great,” she said. “What I’ve noticed in conversations with women is you say your story, and all of a sudden other women will start sharing theirs.”
Goold hopes that an increased openness about abortion, and the range of women who have them, will go a long way to reducing stigma, which often leaves women feeling guilty or ashamed.
My Body, My Life
“I think it’s important that when we think about abortion law reform we actually think about the women who are having them,” she said.
“If you’re thinking about those women, you might think about it from other perspectives.”
Abdul El-Sayed vowed to use the governor’s office to block anti-choice measures if Republicans maintain the majority in Michigan’s legislature.
If elected to the governor’s office, El-Sayed told Rewire that advocacy would be a part of putting his pro-choice views into action.
Abdul For Michigan / YouTube
Evidence provided to Congress by state attorneys general and health departments proves that abortion is both extremely safe and highly regulated. Searchable by state.
DETROIT—When Michigan Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed thinks about reproductive justice, he thinks “about it as building the space within which women are empowered to make their best decision at every point along which they might make a decision about their fertility, and their reproductive choices.”
That’s what he told Rewire on Saturday during an interview at the Women’s Convention in Detroit, where he was a speaker for a plenary session on engaging new voters in 2018 elections. El-Sayed is running in Michigan’s Democratic primary in hopes of replacing term-limited Gov. Rick Snyder (R).
His campaign website engages in both reproductive rights and justice, noting that the latter “goes beyond health care” and touches on other issues such as jobs and pay. “This is something that I believe in deeply,” he said, pointing to the experiences he and his wife, who is nine months pregnant with their first child, have had. “She’s a doctor, and the set of challenges that she’s had to face around thinking about child care, around what we can do together to create the best means for raising our daughter and empowering my wife as she continues forward in her medical career—those are hard things to deal with.”
“And you know, we’re really privileged,” he continued. “But there’s a lot to think about there: Breastfeeding, how we want to feed the child, what access to child care we have and where we want to go. Those are complications that when people just talk about you know, pro-choice, pro-life, right, they don’t get baked into the picture. Now, you can imagine if Sarah and I didn’t have the means that we had, or Sarah had to make this decision alone—those are deep, complicated choices, but it reaffirms the point to me that this always is an individual decision and we have to empower women to make that decision whichever way it works out.”
El-Sayed, 32, was born and raised in Michigan, the son of Egyptian immigrants. He would be the nation’s first Muslim governor if elected. He faces an August 7, 2018, Democratic primary against candidates including former state Sen. Gretchen Whitmer.
He served as the executive director of Detroit’s Health Department, where he helped build the SisterFriends program. According to its website, the program “connect[s] pregnant moms and families to existing programs and resources—and to each other” in order to address the high rates of infant mortalityin Detroit. El-Sayed described the effort as “a partnership program where the health department helps to train sister friends, or partners, who are interested in taking on a little sister—somebody who is facing pregnancy—and being a partner, role model, resource for that individual as she moves through her pregnancy and into the first year of life.”
Noting that he had worked on the program prior to leaving the Department of Public Health and that it launched just after his departure, he said he was “very proud of it.”
El-Sayed said “the best way to prevent an abortion is to prevent an unwanted pregnancy in the first place.” Under his leadership as public health commissioner in Detroit, the department worked to addressunplanned teen pregnancy, and he has discussed the importance of providing contraception such as long-acting reversible options in reducing poverty.
If elected to the governor’s office, El-Sayed told Rewire that advocacy would be a part of putting his pro-choice views into action. “One of things that you have as the governor is a position on which to weigh in on critical issues, and I will always use that position to advocate for pro-choice policy and to advocate for Planned Parenthood, and to advocate based on my own experiences and the data we have in Michigan,” he said.
Part of that would mean applying his positions on health care to the state’s budget, he suggested. “Our public health budget Michigan is 1.5 percent of the overall budget,” said El-Sayed. “That is crazy in a state that poisoned 9,000 kids in Flint, right? And the level to which we have invested in family-planning services and empowering women across the extent of their capacity to choose, I think is very limited, and I think there is a responsibility for us to really invest there because, well, if you’re empowering women to make their best choice, it has knock-on effects over the long-term.”
“That’s a great investment in public health as a public-health practitioner,” he continued.
El-Sayed said he would “want to appoint cabinet-level leaders who believe in the responsibility to empower women in the right to choose.”
“I’d want to make investments that signal that,” he said, “to how we invest as a state, to how we advocate around federal policy, to how we empower local health departments to work.”
Given that Republicans hold the majority in Michigan’s state legislature, El-Sayed vowed to use the power of his office to block anti-choice measures that came across his desk. “I have a pretty strong pen as a governor, you know, and I’ll veto anything that comes along my desk that would limit a woman’s right to make her best choice,” he said.
He mentioned what he saw as a “responsibility we have to push a broader narrative about why this matters” and to “personalize these conversations” about reproductive rights. “I think if we bring empathy to this conversation,” he said, “share people’s stories and empower them to share their stories, I think it changes the conversation.”
“It is an area that I will unabashedly lead on because I think in a civilized society like ours we need to be able to empower people to be able to make their best decisions about when and with whom and how and what circumstances to bring a person into the world,” El-Sayed said.
This week, the Wisconsin State Assembly voted to approve a bill that would prevent health insurance plans for state employees from covering abortions, except in the cases of rape, incest, or to save the mother’s life.
While the bill passed on party lines, there was one legislator, Rep. Scott Allen (R), who said the law didn’t go far enough.
“Often in public debates people are afraid to say it, but let me just say it: Abortion is wrong,” Allen said, as reported by Mitch Reynolds of WIZM. “Although it may be legal we should in no way shape or form should we provide public funding for abortion.”
Allen then went on to argue that abortion was wrong for economic reasons, essentially saying that all women should be forced to have babies in order to grow the labor market.
“Labor force shortages are tied to population declines. Labor force shortages are a limiting factor in economic growth,” Allen said. “And limited economic growth poses a problem when government tries to pay for public services and infrastructure. In spite of this Mr. Speaker, ironically, the democrats continue their effort to support the abortion industry.”
According to the Capital Times in Wisconsin, the state Department of Employee Trust Funds already specifies that it will only cover abortions for “medically necessary” procedures. But this bill takes that a step further and makes sure “medically necessary” is clearly and concretely defined.
Democrats in the Wisconsin State Assembly tried to add two amendments to the bill — one to clarify that the measure would not impede the use of contraception, and another to get rid of the requirement that the victim of sexual assault or incest report the crime to law enforcement before being eligible for an abortion. Both amendments were rejected; those votes also were split strictly on party lines.
Speaking of party lines, it’s worth noting that the Wisconsin state assembly maps are considered to be the result of some of the most aggressive partisan gerrymandering in the country — in fact, they are currently under review by the Supreme Court.
Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) announced earlier this month that Wisconsin’s total labor force reached an all-time high in September.
Outgoing Indiana and Kentucky Planned Parenthood’s Betty Cockrum talks about the changes she’s seen over 15 years and her plans for the future. Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar
An anti-abortion group known for displaying graphic images of aborted fetuses passed out fliers Friday with the address of what it said is the home of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky’s CEO.
“Christie Gillespie murders children. Christie Gillespie lives in our neighborhood,” said the Operation Save America flier that was handed out in the Meridian-Kessler neighborhood.
As many as 50 protesters with the Texas-based organization passed out leaflets and marched with signs on the sidewalks in front of the house and through the neighborhood.
But Gillespie, who became Planned Parenthood’s CEO in July, doesn’t live at that address. She sold the house earlier this year to a couple who has three young children.
“I was surprised that a former residence of mine would be targeted,” Gillespie said. “I’m not sure what kind of research that led them to believe that it was my house, but I hope they didn’t pay for that research.”
The current residents, who didn’t want to be identified, were upset. .
“They certainly don’t want any part of this public mess and don’t support these kinds of tactics,” said Jon Mayes, a representative of the family. “A number of protesters outside and circulating in the neighborhood asking for people to visit their house. This was very alarming and very unsettling for them and still is giving them great worry and anxiety.”
The Operation Save America tactic didn’t surprise Gillespie, who said being a target of anti-abortion groups is an expected part of her job.
“It’s assumed that all the presidents and CEOS of the (Planned Parenthood) affiliates could be named publicly like that,” she said. “You know that when you apply for these kinds of jobs.”
About 75 members of Operation Save America have been in Indianapolis since Wednesday, targeting different locations to protest, leaflet, display graphic imagery and hold prayer services, said Ante Pavkovic, one of the group’s leaders. They plan to leave Sunday.
Pavkovic, who is from North Carolina, said he didn’t know how the organization got the wrong address.
“We’re sorry we didn’t have the right information,” he said. “We don’t want to be wrong about things. It’s just an unfortunate mistake.”
Regina Eaton was driving her 7-year-old son Fenix to school Friday morning when a woman at a stop sign at 42nd Street and College Avenue stepped up to her car’s back window. Eaton thought she was from a nearby church, handing out information. So she rolled down Fenix’s window.
The woman handed the boy one of the fliers.
“Fenix opened it up, and he looked at me,” she said. “… All I saw, which is what my son saw, which was a dismembered fetus.”
Eaton told the woman she was a supporter of Planned Parenthood. She said the woman called her a sinner and that she’d pray for her. Fenix started asking Eaton questions.
“I just started crying, and I drove away,” she said. “He’s asking questions like, ‘Mom did you do something bad? Are you going to hell?’ I didn’t even have time to sit him down to explain to him what it meant because he had to go to school.”
Eaton said she went out later and screamed at the group of protesters to leave her neighborhood. She posted the account to the neighborhood’s Facebook group, which garnered dozens of comments from neighbors expressing concern about the protests.
“They succeeded in their mission today,” she said. “They did. They succeeded in getting people like me emotional today.”
Pavkovic said parents don’t want their children to see the images of bloodied fetuses because “the momentum of the people in our nation is to live in denial.”
“The kids are upset because children are honest and they look at the pictures and they go, ‘That’s a baby. Why would they hurt the baby?'” Pavkovic said. “To be upset with us is an irrational misplaced outrage. We’re not the ones hurting the children.”
Pavkovic compared the photos they distribute to photos of lynchings that were publicized during the Civil Rights movement.
“Those photos began to change the tide and public sentiment,” he said. “They’re not pretty pictures to look at today.”
The Operation Save America protest is a distraction, Gillespie said, and it’s one she plans to ignore.
“Our focus is on providing high-quality reproductive health care to the people who need it,” she said. “That’s what we focus on. We don’t focus on distractions like this.”
“Reproductive rights [are] about having full ability to make your own determination as an American citizen,” Democratic candidate Gretchen Whitmer told Rewire. “It’s about liberty. It’s about freedom.”
Gretchen Whitmer, candidate in Michigan’s Democratic primary for governor, speaks to the crowd during the Women’s Convention in Detroit.
Lauryn Gutierrez / Rewire
Evidence provided to Congress by state attorneys general and health departments proves that abortion is both extremely safe and highly regulated. Searchable by state.
DETROIT–Former Michigan state Sen. Gretchen Whitmer (D) told her sexual assault story in an effort to halt Republican efforts to pass anti-choice legislation. If elected governor, she says she would continue to stand up for reproductive health care amid sustained efforts from the opposing party to limit access.
Speaking to Rewire last weekend at the Women’s Convention in Detroit, Whitmer said Republicans, who hold the majority of the legislature, have “continued to push more and more barriers to women” and their ability to access health care. “You know, it used to be that you had a health plan that covered abortive services, and they’ve created what I call ‘rape insurance,’ where it requires that you pre-purchase an abortion rider for an unplanned event,” said Whitmer, referring to the infamous 2013 Michigan GOP bill requiring insurance riders for abortion care even in cases of rape and incest. Though Whitmer introduced legislation to roll back the law in 2014, it remains in place.
If elected, Whitmer said she would work to stop anti-choice legislation and “continue to protect the investments that we make in our local public health offices—education for young people, access to birth control.” Whitmer expressed hope that Democrats could take back the Michigan House of Representatives but said, “if necessary, I have got the backbone of titanium to hold the line on further attacks eroding women’s health care.”
She added that she is “eager to build any bridge that I can to prevent unwanted pregnancy—and [is willing to partner] with anybody who genuinely has that as a goal.”
When asked what specific actions she would take to expand and protect access to reproductive health care in Michigan, Whitmer said she has “always supported the effort to fund our public health and family planning line in the state budget” and suggested that she would be “a governor who is willing to utilize the rule-making authority within departments and make it easier for women to access birth control.”
Whitmer said reproductive rights are “absolutely” an intersectional issue. “Reproductive rights [are] about having full ability to make your own determination as an American citizen,” she told Rewire. “It’s about liberty. It’s about freedom. It’s about economic security. The biggest decision a woman makes in her lifetime when it comes to her independence and her wealth is when and whether to start a family. So it absolutely transcends many issues when it comes to being viewed as a full-American [with] full rights.”
Michigan’s primary to replace term-limited Gov. Rick Snyder (R) will be held August 7, 2018. Whitmer faces competition for the Democratic nomination from a handful of candidates, including former Detroit health commissioner Abdul El-Sayed and entrepreneur Shri Thanedar.
While checking out the new Republican tax reform legislation, which they’ve invitingly named the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, you were probably looking at, sensibly, what it means for the more financial aspects of your life. So, chances are, you probably missed the anti-abortion language that’s hidden in the GOP tax plan. Because so-called personhood bills haven’t yet succeeded on their own in qualifying fetuses as people upon conception, the GOP has now apparently decided to adopt a different strategy.
And they’ve gone about it in a roundabout and unanticipated way. After all, who would expect to find anti-abortion language in a tax reform bill? Specifically, the bill contains language explicitly allowing parents to open tax-advantaged college savings accounts, or 529s, in the name of their unborn children.
“On its own, I find it a despicable play to lay the groundwork for “personhood” bills and ending abortion rights,” says Calla Hales, the manager of a clinic that provides abortions in Charlotte, North Carolina. She goes on:
While this new language might serve some purpose if the existing law didn’t allow parents to open 529s for their children until they actually had a baby in their arms, that’s not the case. As it stands right now, parents can open 529s for their future, hypothetical children before they’ve even conceived — one parent just has to be at least 18 years old, and then they can transfer the account to the child’s name as soon as the child actually exists.
The tax bill, however, inserts language specifying that an unborn child can have a 529. Then it goes on to define what it really means by “unborn child.”
“Nothing shall prevent an unborn child from being treated as a designated beneficiary or an individual under this section,” the bill says, making the infinitesimal change that now parents can open the bill in the unborn child’s name instead of their own. It doesn’t stop there, however. “The term ‘unborn child’ means a child in utero. The term ‘child in utero’ means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.’’
This overbearing explanation comes dangerously close to the typical language of a personhood bill. One introduced in the House in January used the phrase “human life shall be deemed to begin with fertilization,” which carries essentially the same meaning as the language in the tax bill. The bulk of the bill, of course, is about something entirely different — but inserting this language could be a strategy to weaken the Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal across the country.
GOP officials might have tried to sneak this one in under the radar, but so far they haven’t quite managed.
“The GOP’s tax proposal’s inclusion of ‘personhood’ language makes one thing clear: that their anti-choice ideology knows no bounds or common sense,” said NARAL Pro-Choice America representative Kaylie Hanson Long in a statement. “We know that while they are busy trying to pass this tax proposal into law, they are also turning their backs on kids, women, families, seniors, and the disabled — those who stand to lose the most in this tax bill.”
“This is a back-door attempt to establish personhood from the moment of conception,” Rep. Diana DeGette told Politico. “What’s next, giving a Social Security number to a zygote?””
Anti-abortion advocates, on the other hand, have expressed both surprise and excitement over the personhood language. “We’re thrilled about it, but it wasn’t something that we were specifically calling for,” said Tom McClusky, president of March for Life Action. “We’ll fight to make sure it stays in there.”
So don’t be fooled — this tax bill isn’t just about making people pay more so corporations can pay less. It’s also about limiting women’s reproductive rights. In a way, then, it represents a microcosm of all of the GOP’s recent goals.
On Wednesday, Ohio’s House of Representatives passed a bill seeking to ban abortion if the fetus might have Down syndrome. HB 214 must still pass the state Senate and obtain Gov. John Kasich’s signature to become law, both of which are entirely possible, but it leaves unanswered questions about how it could affect moms, and how it would even be enforced.
The bill passed in the House by more than 30 votes, with Ohio Rep. Brigid Kelly in the minority.
“Abortion is legal in the United States,” Kelly tells Bustle. “I think that women have every right to make the medical decisions that are appropriate for themselves and for their families.”
One concern that the bill raises is that it could deter women from getting prenatal screening tests to ensure that they have a safe pregnancy in the first place. Banning abortions after a Down syndrome diagnosis could potentially lead to fewer women getting prenatal screening tests, which would in turn put the mother and the fetus in a life-threatening situation that could’ve been avoided.
Opponents of the Ohio bill also say it would hinder open conversations between pregnant women and their doctors, and do nothing to help those with Down syndrome in the state. “This bill will totally offend this relationship,” Ohio Rep. Emilia Strong Sykes said, “not allowing honest discourse between a physician and patient.” According to a 2012 study by the medical journal Prenatal Diagnosis, 50 to 85 percent of American women whose fetus has a Down syndrome diagnosis opt for an abortion, USA Today reported.
Another question is how the state would track women who receive a fetal diagnosis of Down syndrome before seeking an abortion. Kelly tells Bustle her colleague introduced an amendment to HB214 on the House floor stating that no woman should have to disclose why she chose to have a particular medical procedure, but it was tabled. “There are still a few unknowns about practically how this would work,” Kelly says.
Another major unknown is whether or not women who self-induce an abortion would be punished. The bill would, however, punish doctors who perform abortions after a Down syndrome diagnosis with up to 18 months in prison and a $5,000 fine, along with the possibility of losing their medical license.
A similar law passed in Indiana that banned abortions over the fetus’ race, sex, or disability diagnosis was struck down by a federal judge in September. Other states have also tried to pass laws prohibiting abortions in cases of genetic abnormalities, but all have been partially or fully enjoined in court. Illinois is currently the only state with this type of law on the books, and it only applies after a pregnancy is viable.
What’s rare about the Ohio bill is that it focuses solely on Down syndrome and doesn’t name any other genetic abnormalities. “Their right to life should be protected,” Ohio Rep. Derek Merrin, who sponsored the bill, told The Cincinnati Enquirer. “Individuals with Down syndrome are truly treasures.”
But those who oppose it say that distinction is dangerous. While debating the bill on the House floor, Kelly read a letter from a mother in her district who had a 20-year-old daughter with Down syndrome.
“Her concern was about creating a hierarchy of disabilities … and about driving a wedge into the disability community,” Kelly tells Bustle. She adds that the mother said: “It’s not up to us to judge other people and the choices that they make.”
As this debate took place in Ohio, a very similar one was happening in Congress. On Wednesday, the House Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice held a hearing on a bill that would “prohibit abortion in cases where a fetal heartbeat is detectable.” The so-called “heartbeat” bill would effectively ban abortion at six weeks, before most women even know they’re pregnant.
Making essentially the same argument as Kelly did in her state, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the only woman invited to speak at the hearing, told Bustle previously: “It restricts the constitutionally protected right for women to make decisions about our own bodies, and similar state bills have already been struck down in the courts.”
Though the future of the federal “heartbeat” bill is still up in the air, Ohio’s abortion ban could pass the majority Republican Senate and be signed into law by Gov. Kasich, who has a history of supporting anti-abortion legislation. As has happened it other states, the constitutionality of the measure could then be challenged in court.
“We won’t let this distract us from the real issue here, which is that there are many more young women like Jane Doe out there who are still unable to get the care they need because of the Trump administration’s unconstitutional policies.”
On October 20, protesters rally in support of Jane Doe during the #JusticeforJane rally outside of the Department of Health and Human Services building in D.C.
Lauryn Gutierrez / Rewire
Abortion is among the safest medical procedures in the United States. Yet, myths about its safety abound. False Witnesses reveals the individuals behind these lies.
The Department of Justice has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in the case of an unaccompanied pregnant minor the Trump administration went to extraordinary lengths to prevent from receiving abortion care.
Solicitor General Noel Francisco, one of President Trump’s recently confirmed anti-choice nominees, on Friday asked the Court to vacate the the lower courts’ ordersto the federal government to release the teenage immigrant, Jane Doe, from custody and allow her to get an abortion.
The petition asks the Supreme Court to send the case back to the district court and order that court to dismiss claims that additional pregnant unaccompanied minors may have against the Trump administration for blocking their access to an abortion.
According to her attorneys, Jane Doe’s experience with the Trump administration blocking abortion access is not an isolated case, but rather part of a new administration policy to block access to abortion care for all pregnant immigrant minors in detention.
Doe’s attorneys, including ones from the American Civil Liberties Union, have not yet filed a response to the request and their case against the Trump administration’s policy remains ongoing. In a statementissued after the filing, ACLU Legal Director David Cole blasted the Department of Justice, saying “[t]he Trump administration blocked Jane Doe from getting constitutionally protected care for a month and subjected her to illegal obstruction, coercion, and shaming as she waited.”
“After the courts cleared the way for her to get her abortion, it was the ACLU’s job as her lawyers to see that she wasn’t delayed any further—not to give the government another chance to stand in her way,” Cole said.
The Department of Justice took its petition one step further than asking the Supreme Court to intervene in the case; it asked the Court to discipline Doe’s attorney for what the department claims are “material misrepresentations and omissions to government counsel” concerning the release of Doe and the timing of her abortion, claiming those misrepresentations were “designed to thwart this Court’s review” of Doe’s case before she underwent the procedure.
The ACLU called the Trump administration’s filing and claims a distraction.
“We won’t let this distract us from the real issue here, which is that there are many more young women like Jane Doe out there who are still unable to get the care they need because of the Trump administration’s unconstitutional policies,” Cole said.
“They want to outlaw all abortions for everyone, period.”
King is confident the total abortion ban would prevail in the nation’s highest court because, as he falsely claimed, “There’s nothing more precise in its medical definition than a heartbeat …. I don’t know how a court can rationalize their way around that.” Drew Angerer/Getty Images
A proposal to ban abortion care nationwide takes a key first step Wednesday in the “regular order” of how a bill proceeds through the U.S. House of Representatives to become law.
The so-called Heartbeat Protection Act (HR 490) is modeled on a failed Ohio Republican attempt to end legal abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy—before many people know they’re pregnant. As technology advances, the ban’s maestro, Faith2Action leader Janet Porter, hopes to end abortion access much earlier. She’s found an ally in Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who introduced the federal ban at her behest in January. King believes the U.S. Supreme Court “unconstitutionally decided” Roe v. Wade, which established the right to an abortion in the United States until fetal viability, determined by doctors to be around 24 weeks’ gestation.
Congressional Republicans’ sudden momentum on banning abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy falls in the shadow of an equally unconstitutional 20-week cutoff that the House passed in September. Reproductive health, rights, and justice advocates fear that the GOP might pull off a bait-and-switch to make the 20-week ban appear reasonable.
Could the total abortion ban become law? The ban’s future depends on its history, much of which is repeating itself on a national stage. Here are five important facts to know about the bill and the politics surrounding it.
1. The so-called heartbeat bill is an unconstitutional, medically unsupported, total abortion ban.
Because “heartbeat bills” target abortion care so early in pregnancy, they amount to total abortion bans. They’re wildly misleading and, like many anti-choice bills, based on junk science.
“When you’re talking about a fetus, the term ‘heartbeat’ isn’t even really accurate,” HuffPost‘s Erin Schumaker reported.
A fetal heartbeat is typically detectable at around five or six weeks into a pregnancy, according to Dr. Rebecca Cohen, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Colorado.
“It’s not a fully formed heart like you would understand from looking at an adult or even a young child,” Cohen said. “It’s a very early structure. We can see it on the ultrasound, but it’s not a heart, a fully developed organ, by any means.”
Moreover, cardiac activity isn’t a credible measure of fetal viability. This preliminary activity starts at a point in the pregnancy where there’s still a significant risk of miscarriage, and no real guarantee that the pregnancy will continue to be a healthy, uncomplicated one.
Total abortion bans are among the nation’s most extreme anti-choice measures, and federal courts have generally agreed, declaring them unconstitutional. That hasn’t stopped King from pursuing the ban from his position of power in Congress.
The total abortion ban will play out in House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, a forum for conservative and often racially biased anti-abortion myths. The hearing marks the debut of King, an unabashed white nationalist, as the subcommittee’s chair, and Rep. Karen Handel (R-GA), a longtime Planned Parenthood antagonist, as a potentially potent new voice on the panel.
As a member of the subcommittee, King in 2016 interrogated a reproductive justice advocate over whether killing “partially delivered” puppies would amount to a crime, in an apparent attempt to draw a parallel between dogs and Black babies. He subsequently rebuked Black people for exercising their constitutional right to abortion care in a post-hearing interview with Rewire. Another contentious hearinglast year uplifted legislation to ban sex- and race-selective abortion care—a bill that would have, in the words of reproductive justice advocate Miriam Yeung, perpetuated “the offensive stereotype that Black women are unable to make reproductive health decisions for their own families.”
Wednesday’s hearing will feature three GOP witnesses, one of whom is known for particularly inflammatory takes on abortion rights and LGBTQ rights, according to Right Wing Watch. Another witness, Kathi Aultman, bills herself as an American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists fellow, even though the College’s companion organization, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), condemned the total abortion ban upon its introduction. A spokesperson for the College confirmed Aultman’s affiliation but said she’s not ACOG’s representative at the hearing.
For their sole witness, Democrats selected Priscilla Smith, a clinical lecturer with Yale University’s Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice, in keeping with the fact-based counterstrategy they described to fight the subcommittee’s bluster.
3. Congressional Republicans are following Ohio’s bait-and-switch anti-choice playbook.
State-level tactics to make onerous abortion restrictions seem more politically palatable in the face of a total abortion ban are now in play on Capitol Hill.
What will happen if and when McConnell follows through? Will Republicans paint the 20-week ban as a more middle-of-the-road option than the total abortion ban? Ohio Gov. John Kasich certainly did so. The former Republican presidential candidate, often erroneously portrayed as a moderate, in 2016 vetoed the total abortion ban the same day he signed a 20-week ban into law, reasoning that the 20-week ban would be more constitutionally prudent. It’s not.
Despite Kasich’s veto, anti-choice lawmakers keep reviving the total abortion ban. The Ohio House Health Committee scheduled a hearing Wednesday morning on the latest state-level version hours before the federal version was set to go before King’s subcommittee.And David Forte, one of the GOP witnesses to testify on Capitol Hill, helped draft state-level heartbeat bans, including Ohio’s.
Reproductive rights advocates smell strategy, not coincidence.
“It feels like it’s ripped from the Ohio playbook,” NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio Executive Director Kellie Copeland told Rewire in a phone interview. “That doesn’t mean that I think that the people behind the six-week bans are knowingly being utilized this way.”
“I think they sincerely want to pass their legislation. They want to outlaw all abortions for everyone, period. But so do the people behind the 20-week ban, or in Ohio’s case, now the Down syndrome ban. These are all pre-viability bans, they are all unconstitutional, they are all designed to be challenges to Roe v. Wade. Our opponents are trying to offer the U.S. Supreme Court, which they hope will be further influenced by another Trump appointee—they’re trying to provide that future court with a variety, like a buffet of options to say, ‘Well, you could use this one or this one or this one to overturn or to gut Roe v. Wade.’ That’s what this is really about.”
King is confident the total abortion ban would prevail in the nation’s highest court because, as he falsely claimed, “There’s nothing more precise in its medical definition than a heartbeat …. I don’t know how a court can rationalize their way around that.”
“People down the line, they’re going to say, ‘But it would go before the Supreme Court.’ And I expect it would. And I hope it does,” King told Rewire last week after a separate Judiciary subcommittee hearing.
4. But GOP leaders are following the momentum of the 20-week ban.
King wouldn’t comment on any commitments from GOP leaders to advance the total abortion ban in the House.
“We have a tremendous amount of momentum,” King told Rewire last week after a separate Judiciary subcommittee hearing. “A lot of people thought at the beginning of this Congress that getting that many co-sponsors”—169—”on a heartbeat bill would be impossible …. I expect that number to go up, maybe before the hearing and more likely after the hearing.”
King described the hearing as laying the foundation for a potential committee markup, another next step in increasingly rare regular order on Capitol Hill. “There’s nobody in leadership that has expressed resistance to it,” King said. “They’re philosophically supportive of it, and so I think we have a little ways to go yet to make the case, but I think we can make the case.”
A spokesperson for House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) deferred comment on the total abortion ban to the chair of the full House Judiciary Committee, immigration foe Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and on the prospect for a vote to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
Ryan’s spokesperson, AshLee Strong, would not say whether Ryan was “philosophically supportive” of the bill despite the speaker’s anti-choice credentials.
Two spokespeople for McCarthy, who sets the House floor schedule and has led 20-week ban rallying cries, did not respond to an email requesting comment.
Across the Capitol, the total abortion ban doesn’t seem to be on the Senate’s radar either.
“I can’t imagine that we would skip to the next thing if we haven’t got this one done,” Lankford told Rewirein an interview near the Senate floor.“I’m not going to speak for the leader and what he’s going to try to bring up and how that would come up, but our first priority is the five-month piece.”
King won’t be stopped.
“My goal is to have the heartbeat bill on the floor of the House of Representatives January 19—that’s March for Life day,” King said.
5. The White House is on board—but it doesn’t want you to know.
The trio in September lobbied a top White House official in virulently anti-choice Vice President Mike Pence’s office. White House spokesperson Kelly Love declined to comment via email at the time, as did Marc Lotter, a top Pence spokesperson who has since left 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to promote the Trump-Pence agenda on the political circuit, headlining a GOP fundraiser last week in Buffalo, New York.
Neither the president’s nor the vice president’s public schedules at the time indicated that they were in attendance at the September meeting. But Porter subsequently sent an email to supporters with photographic evidence to the contrary, Right Wing Watchreported.
Photo courtesy of Right Wing Watch.
“The Vice President not only stated that he ‘loves’ the pro-life Heartbeat Bill, he promised to put the letter calling for its passage directly on President Trump’s desk,” Porter said in the email.
Reached by phone Tuesday about the discrepancy, Lotter directed Rewire to a spokesperson in Pence’s office. The spokesperson described what occurred as a staff-level meeting with policy aides. “My understanding is the group ran into the Vice President in the West Wing after a different meeting and he said hello,” the spokesperson said in an email.
The spokesperson ignored Rewire‘s repeated inquiries: Did Pence make any commitments to throwing the power of the White House behind the total abortion ban in Congress—or behind executive action from Trump?
The White House’s latest response, or lack thereof, builds on officials’ pattern of obfuscating meetings with anti-choice leaders. Lotter in July flat-out refused to answer questions about a “private meeting” between Pence and anti-choice advocates, even though some of the advocates—Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser and Concerned Women for America CEO and President Penny Young Nance—were clearly identifiable in a photo posted from the vice president’s official Twitter account. A third attendee, March for Life President Jeanne Mancini, retweeted Pence with her gratitude.
Rewire on Tuesday attempted to ask Porter questions about the White House meeting and the politics of the ban, but when reached by phone, she said she couldn’t talk. She agreed to take questions via email but has not yet answered them.
The last word here goes to a person who can comment on the total abortion ban from her lived experiences.
“When the six-week ban was introduced in Ohio, I shared my story of when I had my abortion. I didn’t even know I was pregnant at six weeks,” Mallory McMaster, a storyteller for We Testify project to end abortion stigma, told Rewire.
“I was pretty lucky. There were no barriers keeping me from getting my abortion,” she said.“If we ban abortion at six weeks or when there’s a detectable heartbeat, which might even be before six weeks as ultrasound technology keeps getting better, people are going to lose access to abortion completely, and the impact it’ll have on our lives is disastrous for our society, for our economy, [and] for our economic and educational well-being.”
I didn’t find out I was pregnant until the end of the first trimester. The pregnancy was unplanned, so I attributed my symptoms to polycystic ovary syndrome, which I have. But I learned I was wrong at 12 weeks into my pregnancy. Twelve weeks, by the way, seems to be double the amount of time Republican lawmakers think a person should have to decide if they want to continue with their pregnancy. Case-in-point: A new GOP abortion bill would ban abortion at six weeks — before, as is clear in my case, most women even know they’re pregnant.
According to Teen Vogue, a judiciary committee will hold a hearing on November 1 to discuss H.R. 490, anti-choice legislation introduced in January by notorious abortion opponent Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa. The proposed bill, entitled the “Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017,” would ban abortions “in cases where a fetal heartbeat is detectable.” It would also make it a federal crime if a health care provider knowingly performs an abortion procedure without first determining “whether the fetus has a detectable heartbeat,” “without informing the mother of the results,” or “after determining that a fetus has a detectable heartbeat.” Teen Vogue reported.
H.R. 490 is the first so-called heartbeat bill to be introduced into Congress, according to Rewire, although it’s certainly not the first of its kind. King’s anti-abortion legislation is modeled after a similar extreme anti-choice bill that failed in Ohio last year. Ohio’s “heartbeat bill” would have also made abortions illegal after six weeks of gestation, which many pro-choice advocates say amount to total abortion bans. Federal courts have declared such bills unconstitutional, Rewire reported.
What happened in Ohio does provide insight into what could happen at the federal level, though. According to the Cut, the same week Republican Gov. John Kasich vetoed the six-week abortion ban, he signed a 20-week abortion ban into law. How does that apply here? Earlier this month, the U.S. House passed its own 20-week abortion ban, titled the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” that uses junk science to promote debunked claims about fetal pain, Vox reported.
As seen in Ohio, and in other states such as Arkansas, six-week abortion bans have little to no chance of actually becoming law. But legislation prohibiting the procedure at 20 weeks of gestation are far more passable — despite still being unconstitutional and unnecessary. (Abortions after 20 weeks are highly uncommon; according to Planned Parenthood, 99 percent of abortions occur before 21 weeks.) That’s why many abortion advocates view King’s draconian H.R. 490 as a distraction from a more immediate threat to reproductive rights.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t be outraged over H.R. 490. There is, of course, a sliver of a chance that King’s bill will buck the trend of extremely restrictive — and wholly unconstitutional — abortion bans being shot down by more moderate lawmakers. But history has shown that six-week bans and similarly draconian legislation are smokescreens in order for the GOP to pass equally dangerous and life-threatening bills without much fanfare.
According to Vox, abortion activists believe the proposed 20-week ban is unlikely to pass the U.S. Senate. Still, it’s far more palatable to more moderate conservative lawmakers (after all, several states have made such legislation law). That’s why it’s important to not let it fall under your radar.
So, while keeping your eye on H.R. 490, make sure you to protest “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.” And there are many ways you can help stop the proposed 20-week abortion ban from becoming a nationwide law. You can call your representatives or write them an email, talk to your peers and share accurate evidence on abortions, debunk junk fetal pain research any chance you get, join or organize an in-person protest, or start a social media campaign across multiple platforms.
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