The anti-choice movement has taken a sadistic turn in Georgia, where a new abortion ban, called HB 481, has just been signed by Governor Brian Kemp. Signed into law this Tuesday and due to take effect in 2020, the bill effectively bans abortion outright, declares fetuses to be persons with full legal rights and protections, and imposes prison sentences for women found guilty of aborting or attempting to abort their pregnancies. The bill is misleadingly termed a “heartbeat” bill, and it bans abortions at any stage of pregnancy after the detection of “embryonic or fetal cardiac activity”. But “heartbeat” is a bit is a bit of a misnomer, since the cardiac activity that is first detected in an embryo is not a heartbeat by any stretch of the imagination; what is first observed is the pulsing of cells that are specializing and will eventually become a heart. At this point in the pregnancy, the fetus has no brain and no face. This cellular movement can first be detected at a phase of pregnancy referred to as six weeks of gestation. But this, too, is a misleading phrase. Gestational age is measured not from insemination, but from the beginning of the patient’s last menstrual period. So the bill bans all abortions at four weeks after conception, or roughly two weeks after the woman’s first missed period. This stage of pregnancy is often past before the patient even knows that she is pregnant. This is the idea: to make the logistical, legal and monetary burdens to access an abortion so heavy that most women will not be able to get one. All this is justified by a moralizing, misogynistic and medically arbitrary logic based on a fantasy that wants to equate the movement of cells with personhood. Based on this logic, women who abort their pregnancies – and, probably, some women who have accidental miscarriages – will be treated as murderers under the law, subject to imprisonment and even capital punishment. Those who leave the state for an abortion, or who help others leave the state for an abortion, can be charged with conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. It is tempting to imagine that the law would not be enforced this way, that prosecutors and juries would not enforce a law that forces women to give birth and threatens to kill them if they refuse. But prosecutors have proved themselves zealous in prosecuting women in states where abortion is already de facto illegal. It would be a mistake to underestimate their capacity for cruelty. “Heartbeat” bills are nothing new. They have been signed into law in six states – Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio and now Georgia – just since the beginning of this year. In the past, heartbeat bills were put forth by state legislatures as deliberate legal provocations: they were designed to provoke lawsuits from women’s and civil rights groups that could go to federal court and chip away at the edges of Roe v Wade. They were expensive, experimental, taxpayer-funded misadventures in misogynist litigating that were designed to provoke a lot of controversy, rally the anti-choice movement and eventually get struck down – which most of them were. It’s not certain, but it’s highly likely, that HB 481 will be blocked or delayed by a federal court before it goes into effect on 1 January 2020. For now, it’s still legal to get an abortion in Georgia. Quick Guide What is Roe v Wade? Show Norma McCorvey, pictured, was the real name of the woman known as “Jane Roe” in the landmark 1973 US supreme court case Roe v Wade, which established the right of American women to have abortions. McCorvey became the plaintiff in 1970 after she met with two lawyers looking for a test case to challenge the abortion ban in Texas, where it was a crime unless a woman's life was at risk. Similar statutes were in place in nearly every other state at the time. At the time, McCorvey was pregnant, unmarried, unemployed and unable to obtain an abortion legally or otherwise. The case went to the supreme court, which handed down the watershed ruling that a woman's right to make her own medical decisions, including the choice to have an abortion, is protected under the 14th amendment. McCorvey never had an abortion. Her case, which proceeded largely without her involvement, took too long to resolve, and she gave birth to a child that she placed for adoption. Several years after the ruling, she publicly revealed her identity and became involved in the pro-abortion rights movement. But after a conversion to Christianity, she became an anti-abortion rights activist. Before she died in 2017, McCorvey had said it was her wish to see Roe v Wade overturned in her lifetime. Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Was this helpful? Thank you for your feedback. But we are not living under the same legal regime that we were a year ago. The new slew of six-week abortion bans is a direct result of the appointment of the multiply accused sexual assault perpetrator Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court, where anti-choice conservatives now hold a five-four majority and can dismantle or strike down Roe v Wade at any time. Before, these bills were passed by lawmakers who knew they would be struck down, but who wanted to test the limits of Roe, to see how stringent and outlandish a state could make its abortion restrictions and still have those restrictions deemed legal. Now, they are designed to eliminate Roe altogether, and to throw the question of abortion legality back to individual states – many of which will immediately ban it. When Justice Anthony Kennedy (now retired) was on the supreme court, these states had little chance of having outright abortion bans like HB 481 upheld. Now, with Kavanaugh on the court, the door is wide open for misogynist laws to make legal, clinic-based abortion access a thing of the past in large swaths of the United States. To some extent, this has already happened. Since the landmark 1992 ruling Planned Parenthood v Casey, the supreme court has held that states may not impose an “undue burden” on abortion access before fetal viability, roughly 24 weeks gestation. But states have been generous to anti-choice interests in interpreting what burdens on abortion access are undue. They have been able to impose long waiting periods, arbitrary and expensive facility standards for clinics, mandatory ultrasounds, including vaginal ultrasounds, for patients, and mandates that abortion providers read false and misleading statements saying that fetuses can feel pain (which they cannot) and that abortion increases a woman’s risk of cancer (which it does not) or that women who have had abortions exhibit severe psychological ramifications (they do not). They have been able to ban state Medicaid plans from covering abortion and they have been able to keep insurance companies from covering abortion. They have been able to make it too logistically hard, too time-consuming, and far, far too expensive for many women to get an abortion in a medical clinic. This does not mean, however, that abortions are not happening. Instead, self-induced, self-managed abortions are on the rise again in the United States. Before Roe, self-induced abortions were risky, violent and dangerous: women would attempt to pierce their cervixes with knitting needles or coat hangers, and they would puncture organs and suffer infection, hemorrhage and sepsis. Women would drink bleach and poison themselves. Now, self-managed abortions are largely safe and effective, because the face of self-managed abortion has changed. Self-induced abortion no longer looks like a coat hanger; it looks like a pill. Misoprostol, a drug that can be used to treat ulcers but also empties the uterus, is prescribed by abortion clinics as the second of two abortion drugs, along with Mifepristone, which is used first to loosen the lining of the uterus. Mifepristone is hard to find on the black market, because it is subject to tight regulations. But Misoprostol can easily be found on the internet, and it can end a pregnancy on its own; it’s overwhelmingly effective during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, especially for women with an average BMI. The effect of the medication looks identical to an accidental miscarriage; if the patient doesn’t tell anyone she induced, then no one needs to know. However, under the new law, it’s at least possible that Georgia authorities could start treating every miscarriage as a potential homicide. Women who are able to self-induce at home with black market Misopristol might be relatively more safe than their grandmothers who had to use coat hangers and knitting needles. But that doesn’t mean that the cops won’t start asking questions.<doc-sep>Ben Nadler And Sanya Mansoor, The Associated Press ATLANTA -- Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Tuesday signed into law one of the nation's most restrictive abortion laws, a measure that bans the procedure once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can be as early as six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. Kemp, a Republican, said he approved the bill "to ensure that all Georgians have the opportunity to live, grow, learn and prosper in our great state." The signing caps weeks of tension and protests at the state capitol and begins what could be a lengthy and costly legal battle over the law's constitutionality. But a legal showdown is exactly what supporters want. "We will not back down," Kemp said. "We will always continue to fight for life." Anti-abortion activists and lawmakers across the country have been energized by the new conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court that includes President Donald Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. They are pushing abortion bans in an attack on the high court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized abortion nationwide until a fetus is developed enough to live outside a woman's uterus. Staci Fox, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southeast, said she had one message for Kemp: "We will see you, sir, in court." At a news conference on the Capitol steps, she said the new law criminalizes doctors for providing lifesaving care. The organization vowed to campaign to unseat lawmakers who supported it, saying they would "be held accountable for playing politics with women's health." The legal director of the ACLU of Georgia, Sean Young, has said the group will challenge the measure in court. "Under 50 years of Supreme Court precedent, this abortion ban is clearly unconstitutional," Young said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. "Every federal court that has heard a challenge to a similar ban has ruled that it's unconstitutional." Current law allows women in Georgia to seek an abortion during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. If it's not blocked in court, the new ban would take effect Jan. 1. The measure makes exceptions in the case of rape and incest -- if the woman files a police report first -- and to save the life of the mother. It also would allow for abortions when a fetus is determined not to be viable because of serious medical issues. In addition, the bill includes provisions for alimony, child support and even income tax deductions for fetuses, declaring that "the full value of a child begins at the point when a detectable human heartbeat exists." The legislation would result in $10 million to $20 million in lost tax revenue for the state each year, according to its author, Republican Rep. Ed Setzler, who offered the estimate during a committee hearing in March. Setzler called the bill a "common sense" measure that seeks to "balance the difficult circumstances women find themselves in with the basic right to life of a child." But Democratic Sen. Jen Jordan said "there's nothing balanced about it: It's an all-out abortion ban." Jordan said she is particularly worried that the new law will push obstetricians away from practicing in Georgia, worsening health care outcomes for women in a state that already has one of the nation's worst maternal mortality rates. "It's about the unintended consequences," Jordan said. "They're making policy choices that are going to end up causing women to die, and they're preventable deaths." Georgia has at least 11 abortion providers, according to the National Abortion Federation, a group that advocates for access to abortion. Some abortion providers have already faced negative effects from the bill, according to Wula Dawson, director of development and communications for the Feminist Women's Health Center, an abortion clinic in Georgia. Dawson said anti-abortion protesters outside their clinic have become "bolder and more aggressive" toward patients. In the first few months of 2019, "heartbeat" abortion bans have been signed into law in four states: Mississippi, Kentucky, Ohio, and now Georgia. Lawmakers in other states including Tennessee, Missouri, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, Louisiana and West Virginia, are considering similar proposals. A bill that recently passed the Alabama House would outlaw abortions at any stage of pregnancy, with a few narrow exceptions. Kentucky's law was immediately challenged by the ACLU after it was signed in March, and a federal judge temporarily blocked it. Earlier versions of the law passed in North Dakota and Iowa have also been struck down in court. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, about 33,000 abortions were provided in Georgia in 2014.<doc-sep>
Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp has signed legislation to ban abortion once cardiac activity can be detected – which can be as early as six weeks, before many women even realize they are pregnant. The signing caps weeks of tension and protests at the state capitol in Atlanta, and marks the beginning of what could be a lengthy and costly legal battle over the law’s constitutionality. Kemp said he was signing the bill “to ensure that all Georgians have the opportunity to live, grow, learn and prosper in our great state”. The legal showdown is exactly what supporters of the legislation are looking for. Anti-abortion activists and ultra-conservative lawmakers across the country, energized by the new conservative majority on the US supreme court that includes the Donald Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, are pushing ever stricter abortion bans. It also represents a further threat to the court’s landmark 1973 Roe v Wade ruling, which legalized abortion nationwide until a fetus is developed enough to live outside a woman’s uterus. Quick Guide What is Roe v Wade? Show Norma McCorvey, pictured, was the real name of the woman known as “Jane Roe” in the landmark 1973 US supreme court case Roe v Wade, which established the right of American women to have abortions. McCorvey became the plaintiff in 1970 after she met with two lawyers looking for a test case to challenge the abortion ban in Texas, where it was a crime unless a woman's life was at risk. Similar statutes were in place in nearly every other state at the time. At the time, McCorvey was pregnant, unmarried, unemployed and unable to obtain an abortion legally or otherwise. The case went to the supreme court, which handed down the watershed ruling that a woman's right to make her own medical decisions, including the choice to have an abortion, is protected under the 14th amendment. McCorvey never had an abortion. Her case, which proceeded largely without her involvement, took too long to resolve, and she gave birth to a child that she placed for adoption. Several years after the ruling, she publicly revealed her identity and became involved in the pro-abortion rights movement. But after a conversion to Christianity, she became an anti-abortion rights activist. Before she died in 2017, McCorvey had said it was her wish to see Roe v Wade overturned in her lifetime. Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Was this helpful? Thank you for your feedback. The bill is one of a growing number of similar pieces of legislation being pushed at state level, in what anti-abortion campaigners call “heartbeat bills” even though that is a medical inaccuracy as well as a politically inflammatory term in the reproductive rights debate. Sean Young, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, said the ACLU would challenge Georgia’s new abortion restriction in court. “Under 50 years of supreme court precedent, this abortion ban is clearly unconstitutional,” Young said in a recent interview. “Every federal court that has heard a challenge to a similar ban has ruled that it’s unconstitutional.” Under current law, women in Georgia can seek an abortion during the first 20 weeks of a pregnancy. If it is not blocked in court, the new ban would take effect on 1 January next year. The legislation makes exceptions in the case of rape and incest if the woman files a police report first, and in order to save the life of the mother. It also would allow for abortions when a fetus is determined not to be viable because of serious medical issues. The bill also deals with alimony, child support and even income tax deductions for fetuses, declaring that “the full value of a child begins at the point when a detectable human heartbeat exists”. In fact, at six weeks, an embryo has not yet formed heart chambers, and is not considered a fetus until nine weeks into pregnancy. The Republican state representative Ed Setzler, the bill’s author, said in an interview after the bill passed the state House that it was a “commonsense” measure that seeks to “balance the difficult circumstances women find themselves in with the basic right to life of a child”. But the Democratic senator Jen Jordan disagreed that the legislation was balanced. “There’s nothing balanced about it, it’s an all-out abortion ban,” she said.