State abortion laws megathread

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I can maybe understand some restrictions in the third trimester, but six weeks is absurd. The whole idea of an embryo having a heartbeat at six weeks is a lie too.

“These bills present the idea that there’s something that looks like what you or a person on the street would call a baby – a thing that’s almost ready to go for a walk,” said Dr Jen Gunter, a gynecologist in Canada and the US who runs an influential blog. “In reality, you’re talking about something that’s millimeters in size and doesn’t look anything like that.”

That early in a pregnancy, Gunter said, an embryo does not have a heart – at least, not what we understand a human heart to be, with pumping tubes and ventricles. At six weeks, a human embryo throbs, but those tissues have not yet formed an organ, so the pulsing should not be confused with a heartbeat.

“When throbbing of some tissue begins, it’s not a heart,” said Dr Sara Imershein, a gynecologist and obstetrician in Falls Church, Virginia. “Really, we call it an embryo until about nine weeks from last menstrual period,” or roughly three weeks after the new laws prohibit termination of pregnancy.

'It's not a little child': gynecologists join the fight against six-week abortion bans

Being in an early stage of development doesn't mean it's not a heart. It beats, and the beat is a key vital sign. Ergo, heartbeat.

If a heartbeat can't be detected, the abortion won't be illegal in any case with this law.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Under this law a woman who miscarries could be liable for second-degree murder, she could be imprisoned for 30 years.

What?

There's a lot of wild speculation going on here about how this bill would be applied.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Under this law a woman who miscarries could be liable for second-degree murder, she could be imprisoned for 30 years.

What?

There's a lot of wild speculation going on here about how this bill would be applied.

Well, the statutes would be there if the county DA's want to make use of them. 

Which statutes?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Under this law a woman who miscarries could be liable for second-degree murder, she could be imprisoned for 30 years.

What?

There's a lot of wild speculation going on here about how this bill would be applied.

Well, the statutes would be there if the county DA's want to make use of them.  

Which statutes?

I just meant that if laws are on the books then they give the local DA's the power to charge people with crimes with the potential penalties specified in the law.  Reading about this it sounds like this law has 10 years for conspiracy to leave state to get abortion, 2nd degree murder for self-induced abortion, and 1st for abortions in other circumstances, so DA's have the discretion to file these charges if they so choose.  Am I missing something?

Here's the bill: https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/legislation-summary?id=GA133-SB-23

I don't see anything there about charging anyone with murder or conspiracy.  As far as I can tell this analysis relies on the idea that because it defines an unborn child as a person, then there would be certain penalties that go along with that. So it's making a lot of assumptions.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Under this law a woman who miscarries could be liable for second-degree murder, she could be imprisoned for 30 years.

What?

There's a lot of wild speculation going on here about how this bill would be applied.

Well, the statutes would be there if the county DA's want to make use of them.  

Which statutes?

I just meant that if laws are on the books then they give the local DA's the power to charge people with crimes with the potential penalties specified in the law.  Reading about this it sounds like this law has 10 years for conspiracy to leave state to get abortion, 2nd degree murder for self-induced abortion, and 1st for abortions in other circumstances, so DA's have the discretion to file these charges if they so choose.  Am I missing something?

Here's the bill: https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/legislation-summary?id=GA133-SB-23

I don't see anything there about charging anyone with murder or conspiracy.  As far as I can tell this analysis relies on the idea that because it defines an unborn child as a person, then there would be certain penalties that go along with that. So it's making a lot of assumptions.

Are the Ohio and Georgia bills identical?  I was referring to GA.

Here it is:
http://www.legis.ga.gov/Legislation/en-US/display/20192020/HB/481
I got mixed up about the state but I was thinking of the GA bill.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The police investigate any death of a child?  When did this start?

If that's the case then it sounds to me the police are overstepping their bounds and causing grieving parents unnecessary extra pain.  They should only investigate if there's something suspicious.   Miscarriage especially is sadly all too common, and thus even more so it is no reason for a police investigation.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I've got another good one.

If an immigrant is impregnated in the U.S., the child should be automatically given American citizenship, since the egg is apparently a baby from the moment it is fertilized, after all.

There might be some practical issues with verifying that.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I've got another good one.

If an immigrant is impregnated in the U.S., the child should be automatically given American citizenship, since the egg is apparently a baby from the moment it is fertilized, after all.

There might be some practical issues with verifying that.

Not at all. Gestation stages can easily be verified and traced back. Now, own up to your position.

So the person would have to prove that they were in the US for a certain window of time?

Sure, okay.   But I think they should still get citizenship even if they were just born here.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

If Kavanaugh is the deciding vote to keep abortion legal, is it the greatest irony in American history?

Note: I'm assuming this question is moot since I don't see Roberts or Gorsuch overturning it either, but it's a fun hypothetical.

Yeah, there is no way they are going to overturn Roe v Wade. It will just end up like Ireland's ban where public opinion will shift in favor of abortion and it will just become legal again and then the issue will become politically irrelevant.

Also, if the GOP does actually succeed in overturning Roe v Wade, within 2-3 cycles it goes from being a good issue for them to being a horrible one, as very soon, the media will be full of stories about women dying in back-alley abortions, conservative states hanging women for having abortions, and women waking up in handcuffs after suffering miscarriages and being forced to carry non-viable, dangerous pregnancies to term.

Why would all that happen if it didn't when abortion was illegal in every state?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The issue there is that we don't allow the direct and intentional killing (emphasis mine) of people simply because they are reliant on you for reasons outside of your control. If one accepts fetal personalhood and the view that murder should be illegal, then it really simply does follow from that that there ought not to be a rape exception. While the question of how someone got into that position obviously does effect the personal hardship of the matter, it doesn't materially change the reality of the situation...

The counter-argument (and I think we've discussed this before) is that abortion is not murder per se, but akin to child neglect, at least when discussing first- or sometimes second-trimester cases. By removing the fetus from the womb, you deprive it of the resources necessary for survival but don't necessarily terminate its life functions. (Obviously some processes, especially later in gestation, do terminate those functions immediately.)

Since providing resources (in the form of nutrients) is an obligation to take an action (the act of care) rather than an obligation against an action (i.e. killing), it follows from pretty standard action-inaction theories that this obligation only exists where accepted as the implication of consensual behavior (as is done by consensual, reproductive intercourse). In other words, even if we can rationally oblige mothers not to kill children borne of rape, we can't oblige mothers to care for them.

But, you can hardly claim it is an inaction when you forcibly remove it from the womb. It's less like failing to provide food to already born children and more like pulling out a feeding tube from a hospitalized patient. It is even moreso since the mother, if she takes no conscious action, will continue to provide the fetus with nutrients unconsciously.

It's more like cutting open a hospitalized patient to remove the feeding tube because it's stuck in there somehow.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

 sorry no right to life for you but here's meme XD

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Is abortion a generational issue where opposition is literally dying out like gay marriage is? I do remember back in 2004 how united the country was in opposition to gay marriage. It would seem to me that the abortion issue should be similar with the youth being less religious, but the intense opposition in red states to abortion is perplexing. Red states have mostly given up on gay marriage, and the national polls have it around 70% support.

It's been pretty bizarrely consistent, actually, especially considering the decline in religiosity.

Why? Irreligious people can't be ethical?  After all, the question of what constitutes a human life is one of the most basic of ethical questions and does not need religion to be answered. However, the answer one has to that question largely determines under what circumstances someone will support allowing abortion to happen. There's no contradiction if an atheist is pro-life.

You misunderstand me. I'm an atheist myself and don't think there is an inherent contradiction in being a pro-life atheist. I consider the resilience for pro-life stances puzzling because the pro-life movement in America is heavily reliant upon religious fervor to drive its activism and much of its organization and philosophical framing revolves around religious affiliated networks and religious rhetoric. Thus, one would think there would have been a noticeable drop in pro-life stances among the younger generations in comparison to the older ones because of their greater irreligiosity.

This is why I suspect that there must have been a shift within much of the younger pro-life identifiers in terms of the "flavor" of their pro-life stances.

It will be really interesting to see what is happening. Are seculars becoming more "moderate" or are religious people becoming more right-wing? 10 to 20 years ago, I would have definitely said that there were more pro-choice people reconsidering their opinions but not it appears to be the opposite case.

Part of it would be that not every person from a religious background who becomes more secular also becomes more pro-choice.  They may have been pro-choice to begin with, or else they may keep their pro-life views even as they leave behind their religious views.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

https://twitter.com/ReproRights/status/1139629010051313664

2 in 5 pregnancies ending in abortion in NYC isn't enough for them, apparently; now they need to subsidize abortion as an export.   absolutely revolting.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

https://twitter.com/ReproRights/status/1139629010051313664

2 in 5 pregnancies ending in abortion in NYC isn't enough for them, apparently; now they need to subsidize abortion as an export.   absolutely revolting.

I think you're missing the point here. It's not about the number, it's about safe access and affordability if a woman is going to want one anyway.

If you are subsidizing something, it's because you don't think you have enough of it.  Let me know when they vote to give money to any pregnant women from anywhere who wants to give birth and I'll consider that they maybe don't just love abortions.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

https://twitter.com/ReproRights/status/1139629010051313664

2 in 5 pregnancies ending in abortion in NYC isn't enough for them, apparently; now they need to subsidize abortion as an export.   absolutely revolting.

I think you're missing the point here. It's not about the number, it's about safe access and affordability if a woman is going to want one anyway.

If you are subsidizing something, it's because you don't think you have enough of it.  Let me know when they vote to give money to any pregnant women from anywhere who wants to give birth and I'll consider that they maybe don't just love abortions.

You're still missing the point. Access to a safe abortion in New York City may very well not be available enough. It's about access not about any sort of culling or whatever else you want to fear-monger about.

It’s projection. Just tune it out.

"It's projection" ?  What is this supposed to mean?  Do you even know?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

https://twitter.com/ReproRights/status/1139629010051313664

2 in 5 pregnancies ending in abortion in NYC isn't enough for them, apparently; now they need to subsidize abortion as an export.   absolutely revolting.

I think you're missing the point here. It's not about the number, it's about safe access and affordability if a woman is going to want one anyway.

If you are subsidizing something, it's because you don't think you have enough of it.  Let me know when they vote to give money to any pregnant women from anywhere who wants to give birth and I'll consider that they maybe don't just love abortions.

You're still missing the point. Access to a safe abortion in New York City may very well not be available enough. It's about access not about any sort of culling or whatever else you want to fear-monger about.

It’s projection. Just tune it out.

"It's projection" ?  What is this supposed to mean?  Do you even know?

Do you? Something about about apples, oranges, and priorities I guess...

lol I think your predictive text bot needs work.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

SCOTUS refuses to revive Alabama ban on dilation-and-evacuation abortions.

The total abortion ban passed this year is almost certainly DOA.

Why? Courts are not legislatures. At least in theory, they make decisions based on principles, not effects. Any decision SCOTUS makes about individual procedures won't provide a way to lay out a presumably principled challenge to Roe. Indeed, it would have to assume the Roe line of decisions are valid. Conversely, a total ban provides a way to challenge Roe and potentially reverse it. I don't think this court will reverse Roe, but not because of this decision to not review a lower court striking down a ban on a single procedure.

Why wouldn't this have been a good opportunity to address Casey and it's "undue burden" standard?   They could have at least greatly limited it's application by putting greater weight on the state interest in protecting unborn life.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Do you think there will ever be a time in this nation’s history where religious officials will be directly involved in legislating and enforcing laws regarding reproduction?

Like a priest or pastor would be a prosecutor and maybe a bishop or senior cleric a judge and church security would be arresting and jailing the accused and convicted.

No.  It's completely outside of our Constitution and our history.  Even in Puritan Massachusetts there was a division between secular and clerical authority.    Why do you ask?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Do you think there will ever be a time in this nation’s history where religious officials will be directly involved in legislating and enforcing laws regarding reproduction?

Like a priest or pastor would be a prosecutor and maybe a bishop or senior cleric a judge and church security would be arresting and jailing the accused and convicted.

Massachusetts had a state religion until 1838.
No.  It's completely outside of our Constitution and our history.  Even in Puritan Massachusetts there was a division between secular and clerical authority.    Why do you ask?

Government support for religion does not mean that the government and the church are identical.  They had different roles in society.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The Iowa Supreme Court decided last year 5-2 that abortion is a fundamental right that requires "strict scrutiny"- more sweeping than the reigning US standard of Casey.  It's a legal and moral travesty that someone could find such a thing in the Iowa Constitution, but until some of those judges get replaced, or there is a constitutional amendment, that's where things stand. 

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

SCOTUS might protect Alabama's law. Hopefully the SCOTUS takes Alabama's bait.

No they won't, take the bait expand Roe.

Unlikely to happen with the current court.

And I'm not sure if this could fit here, but this is unfortunate: https://news.yahoo.com/democratic-attorneys-general-association-impose-133934032.html. Now that Jim Hood, the last remaining pro-life Democratic Attorney General, is out the door, the Democrats are continuing their drift into the abyss. Adopting such a hardline position is a further reflection of how the Party's social liberalism has cost it electorally over time.

Well, Mississippi Democrats DID try their hardest electing a pro-choice governor in Mississippi.

What is this supposed to mean? You can't possibly be referring to Hood.

Sorry. I meant pro-life

It didn't stop Kentucky from getting a pro-choice governor. I am beginning to think that abortion isn't the main wedge issue and more of a fascade issue. Once it is exhausted, I can see them moving back to the main wedge issue. Which makes sense. Abortion became a main issue once their real issue began to lose ground but perhaps abortion gave them enough cover to stealthily work on their issue.

If Andy Beshear were pro-life he'd have won by a 10 pt margin instead of <1.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

SCOTUS might protect Alabama's law. Hopefully the SCOTUS takes Alabama's bait.

No they won't, take the bait expand Roe.

Unlikely to happen with the current court.

And I'm not sure if this could fit here, but this is unfortunate: https://news.yahoo.com/democratic-attorneys-general-association-impose-133934032.html. Now that Jim Hood, the last remaining pro-life Democratic Attorney General, is out the door, the Democrats are continuing their drift into the abyss. Adopting such a hardline position is a further reflection of how the Party's social liberalism has cost it electorally over time.

Well, Mississippi Democrats DID try their hardest electing a pro-choice governor in Mississippi.

What is this supposed to mean? You can't possibly be referring to Hood.

Sorry. I meant pro-life

It didn't stop Kentucky from getting a pro-choice governor. I am beginning to think that abortion isn't the main wedge issue and more of a fascade issue. Once it is exhausted, I can see them moving back to the main wedge issue. Which makes sense. Abortion became a main issue once their real issue began to lose ground but perhaps abortion gave them enough cover to stealthily work on their issue.

If Andy Beshear were pro-life he'd have won by a 10 pt margin instead of <1.

The difference between Hood and Epsy was like 3%.

Hyde-Smith had trouble getting McDaniel supporters to show up for her so soon after a bruising primary.

More importantly, KY is not MS.  Kentucky has much greater variation in party performance according to candidate than MS does when it comes to state and local politics.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

If Andy Beshear were pro-life he'd have won by a 10 pt margin instead of <1.

Lol. This reminds me of when all the polls showed Doug Jones losing to Moore in the AL Senate race....everyone claimed Doug Jones would of been leading if he was pro-life and then he won anyway.

Issue voting is a myth. The idea that Beshear would of won by 10% if he was pro-life is ludicrous. A recent poll by Marist found that 71% of New Yorkers think abortion should only be legal up until 20 weeks yet Cuomo just passed a bill legalizing up till 9 months. Does anyone on here really think that this will cause the Dems to suffer losses in the state?

But then again, what makes abortion such an special issue in that it swings votes while other issues rated higher in importance by the voters themselves according to polling have no effect? We are repeatedly told how health care is the most important issue and how it lost the GOP the House in 2018(well except all those victories in 2010 and 2014 when the GOP voted to repeal ACA 80 times). Do any Conservatives on this site really think that Rs will lose power in Red states because of their position on healthcare or let's say gun control bills that 90% of the voters support? These are positions that the voters themselves list in higher importance in polling than abortion.

Just because an issue is important to you or is claimed to be of importance by the policy creating elite does not mean that they are held to any actual importance by the voting public or that they swing elections. I get that people on this site want a simple cause and effect explanation for election outcomes but just simply chalking it up to muh abortion doesnt make it true. The explanations on this site for election outcomes are like R L Stine's "Choose your own Adventure" books: If they lose, its cuz of abortion, if its close....it wouldn't of been close cuz of abortion, if they win....its cuz abortion mattered but not enough.

The ACA was unpopular in 2010 and 2014.  By 2018 it was a lot more popular, and Republicans handling of the issue had a lot to do with it.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Language in the bill says "all possible steps to preserve the life of the unborn child, while preserving the life of the woman. Such steps include, if applicable, attempting to reimplant an ectopic pregnancy into the woman's uterus."

That is a very odd inclusion, and who knows what they were thinking.  But seeing as it's not even something possible to do, then it couldn't be required according to the very same clause of the bill. Absent some major advance in medical science, the text here basically nullifies itself.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Pennsylvania’s republicans continue to embarrass...

A Pennsylvania bill would require death certificates for fertilized eggs that never implant in the uterus

https://www.businessinsider.com/pennsylvania-bill-would-require-death-certificates-for-fertilized-eggs-2019-11

That's a far fetched interpretation of that bill. It says "The expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of conception which shows no evidence of life after the expulsion or extraction."  If there's no observable body/remains, there's no way for the law to apply.