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Associated Press

If a new Mississippi law survives a court challenge, it will be nearly impossible for most pregnant women to get an abortion there.
Or, potentially, in neighbouring Louisiana. Or Alabama. Or Georgia.
The Louisiana legislature is halfway toward passing a law – like the ones enacted in Mississippi and Georgia – that will ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many women know they’re pregnant. Alabama is on the cusp of approving an even more restrictive bill.
State governments are on a course to virtually eliminate abortion access in large chunks of the Deep South and Midwest. Ohio and Kentucky also have passed heartbeat laws; Missouri’s Republican-controlled legislature is considering one.
Their hope is that a more conservative US Supreme Court will approve, spelling the end of the constitutional right to abortion.

“For pro-life folks, these are huge victories,” said Sue Liebel, state director for the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion advocacy group. “And I think they’re indicative of the momentum and excitement and the hope that’s happening with changes in the Supreme Court and having such a pro-life president.”
For abortion right supporters, meanwhile, the trend is ominous. Said Diane Derzis, owner of Mississippi’s sole abortion clinic, the Jackson Women’s Health Organisation: “I think it’s certainly more dire than it ever has been. They smell blood and that’s why they’re doing this.”
Already, Mississippi mandates a 24-hour wait between an in-person consultation. That means women must make at least two trips to her clinic, often travelling long distances.
Pope: having an abortion is like hiring a ‘contract killer’
Other states have passed similar, incremental laws restricting abortion in recent years, and aside from Mississippi, five states have just one clinic – Kentucky, Missouri, North and South Dakota, and West Virginia. But the latest efforts to bar the procedure represent the largest assault on abortion rights in decades.
Lawmakers sponsoring the bans have made it clear their goal is to spark court challenges in hopes of ultimately overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalising abortion.
Those challenges have begun. Derzis’ attorneys are scheduled to go before a judge on May 21, seeking to prevent Mississippi’s heartbeat law from taking effect July 1.

A judge in Kentucky blocked enforcement of that state’s heartbeat ban after the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of the clinic in Louisville.
Similar legal action is expected before bans can take effect in Ohio and Georgia, where Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed the latest heartbeat bill into law Tuesday. Kemp said he welcomed the fight, vowing: “We will not back down.”
Georgia’s ban does not take effect until Jan. 1. But the impact was immediate.
An abortion clinic operated by The Women’s Centers in Atlanta began receiving anxious calls from patients soon after Kemp signed the law. Many callers had plans to travel from outside the state for abortions. Georgia’s heartbeat ban would have a wider impact because the state has 17 abortion clinics – more than the combined total in the other four Southern states that have passed or are considering bans.
“On a typical day we will see people from North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina – all over the region,” said Dr. Lisa Haddad, the Atlanta clinic’s medical director. “And my thought is we’re not going to see those people coming here because they assume it’s already illegal in Georgia.”
Dr. Ernest Marshall, co-founder of Kentucky’s last remaining abortion clinic in Louisville, said in an email that banning abortions before most women know they’re pregnant would “have a disproportionate impact on poor women and communities of colour throughout the South.”
Advocates for abortion rights expect judges to halt enforcement of any new bans while lawsuits work their way through the courts. That could take years.
“These laws are blatantly unconstitutional,” said Elisabeth Smith, chief counsel for state policy and advocacy for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which also has filed suit over Mississippi’s ban. “But if they were allowed to go into force, they would have devastating consequences for the residents of all of these states.”

If heartbeat bans are upheld, many women who are poor and have limited means to travel would have few options other than to try to terminate their own pregnancies, Haddad said, possibly using abortion drugs purchased online.
Others would have to drive or fly across multiple states, said Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst for the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
“People would go to Florida, people would continue to go to Memphis,” Nash said. “How many states do you have to cross before you can access abortion services? It exacerbates all the issues we’ve already seen around taking time off from work and having the money to travel.”
Proposed heartbeat bans failed to pass this year in several Republican-led states, including Texas. There, Republican Party lawmakers lost ground to Democrats in the 2018 elections, and some abortion foes were wary after courts struck down prior abortion restrictions in the state. Such efforts also fell short in Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.
Alabama lawmakers postponed until next week a vote on a proposal that would make performing nearly all abortions a felony. The measure has passed the state House, and the Senate suspended debate Thursday amid a heated dispute over whether exemptions for rape and incest should be stripped from the bill.

“You can’t put a price on unborn life,” Eric Johnston, president of the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition, said Wednesday, as a legislative committee heard testimony on the state’s proposed ban. “What you have to do is protect the people that live in this state and that includes unborn children.”
But Jenna King-Shepherd told Alabama lawmakers she believed the abortion she had at age 17 allowed her to finish college. She said her father, a part-time Baptist preacher furious about her pregnancy, drove her to the abortion clinic because he trusted her to make the right choice.
“I’m not asking you to support access to abortion,” King-Shepherd said. “I’m only asking you to let women, their families, their physicians and their God make this decision on how they want to start their families in private and trust them to do that.”


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Reproductive health

Controversial ‘heartbeat’ laws could ban most abortions across the US Deep South

April Houston and Lara Martin hold signs while dressed as Handmaids in protest of Georgia's anti-abortion “heartbeat” bill at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta. Photo: Reuters

Ashley Garecht speaks as anti-abortion protesters rally near a Planned Parenthood clinic in Philadelphia, Friday, May 10, 2019. The demonstration was spurred by the actions of a Democratic state lawmaker who recorded himself berating an anti-abortion demonstrator at length outside the clinic. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

FILE - In this March 20, 2018, file photo, anti-abortion sidewalk counselors call out to a woman entering the Jackson Women's Health Organization's clinic, the only facility in the state that performs abortions, in Jackson, Miss. A new Mississippi law could make it nearly impossible for most pregnant women to get an abortion there if it survives a court challenge. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

Anti-abortion protesters rally near a Planned Parenthood clinic in Philadelphia, Friday, May 10, 2019. The demonstration was spurred by the actions of a Democratic state lawmaker who recorded himself berating an anti-abortion demonstrator at length outside the clinic. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

FILE - In this May 7, 2019, file photo, Georgia's Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, center, signs legislation in Atlanta, banning abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can be as early as six weeks before many women know they're pregnant. Georgia became the fourth state to enact the ban on abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. (Bob Andres/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, File)

‘Law limits women’s rights’: South Korea’s constitutional court strikes down abortion ban in landmark ruling

Activists react outside the Constitutional Court in Seoul. Photo: EPA-EFE

epa07498106 A group of civic activists calling for the repeal of the current anti-abortion law reacts as the court ruled the law unconstitutional, in front of the Constitutional Court in Seoul, South Korea, 11 April 2019. Aborting a fetus is punishable by a prison term of up to one year or a 2 million-won (1,750 US dollar) fine under the Mother and Child Health Law enacted in 1953. EPA-EFE/YONHAP SOUTH KOREA OUT

Pro-life demonstrators hold banners during a rally supporting South Korea's anti-abortion regulations outside of the Constitutional Court in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, April 11, 2019. In a major reversal, South Korea's Constitutional Court on Thursday ordered the easing of the country's decades-long ban on abortions, one of the strictest in the developed world. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Pro-abortion law protesters take part in a rally to support the abortion law in front of the constitutional court in Seoul, South Korea, April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

South Korea's Constitutional Court chief judge Yoo Nam-seok and other judges sit for the ruling on decriminalisation of abortion at the court in Seoul, South Korea April 11, 2019. Jung Yeon-je/Pool via REUTERS

Activists hold banners reading “Abolish punishment for abortion” in front of the court in Seoul. Photo: EPA-EFE

Donald Trump tells US anti-abortion marchers he will veto any legislation that ‘weakens the protection of human life’

Anti-abortion activists in Washington on Friday. Photo: AFP

Anti-abortion activists march towards the U.S. Supreme Court, during the March for Life in Washington, Friday, Jan. 18, 2019. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

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United States & Canada

New legislation could ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many women know they’re pregnant


New legislation could ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many women know they’re pregnant.


Controversial ‘heartbeat’ laws could ban most abortions across the US Deep South

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;}New legislation could ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many women know they’re pregnant

New legislation could ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many women know they’re pregnant