The week in abortion legislation: Senate puts forward a big ban, and Missouri’s Mary Doe makes her case
ANALYSIS | Three stories to watch
While we’re all talking about Kesha’s tear-jerking performance or the wholesale snubbing of hip hop at the Grammy’s, there’s big news regarding abortion legislation that’s going relatively unnoticed.
A 20-week abortion ban hits the Senate
On Monday night, the Senate voted on whether to ban 20-week abortions.
The “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Act” didn’t pass. The bill fell short by a vote of 51 to 46. Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) voted against it, but Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.) and Bob Casey (Pa.) supported it.
Prior to the vote, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the bill’s cosponsor told reporters, “it’s about America; it’s about, who do we want to be?”
In a tweet announcing the vote last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wrote that this legislation is meant to “protect unborn children who can feel pain.”
Research does not bear that out. Rather, fetuses have been shown to respond to stimuli around 20 weeks, but the neural pathways that allow that to be interpreted as pain don’t appear until closer to 29 weeks, according to a review of studies in medical journal JAMA.
According to Guttmacher Institute, 17 states already ban abortion at 20 weeks, which forces people in dire situations — who for financial or personal reasons couldn’t access care earlier, or who found out in second-trimester testing that their fetus is in grave danger and may not survive until it’s born or for long after — to travel to other states to access care. Should Senate take this restriction nationally (by way of President Trump’s desk, where he’ll likely follow through on a campaign promise and sign it into law), families will have to endure carrying to term and delivering dying or dramatically ill infants.
Doctors who perform post-20 week operations will be subject to up to five years in prison, fines, or both. Not to mention, people who would choose abortion will no longer have that choice.
Utah will vote to ban abortion after Down syndrome diagnoses
In Utah, there’s a bill to ban any abortion sought after receiving a Down syndrome diagnosis which, by a vote of 8–3 in the House Judiciary Committee, was put forward to the state’s House on Thursday, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. House Bill 205 would make performing an abortion in this case a class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in jail or a fine of up to $2,500 for any doctors who do so.
Before the committee vote, anti-abortion lawmakers compared people with Down syndrome to endangered birds, while families including people with Down syndrome spoke both for and against the bill. The abortion-rights side asserts that banning abortions based on a patient’s reason for choosing one is almost certainly unconstitutional.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed similar legislation into law last month.
As the ACLU of Utah points out in a tweet, the only reason the Ohio law hasn’t been challenged yet is because it doesn’t take effect until March 22.
The Satanic Temple jumps in
The abortion-rights side has found an unlikely ally in the Satanic Temple, which has been pressing a case since 2015 on behalf of an anonymous woman, Mary Doe, who says her religious belief that a fetus is not a unique life is infringed upon by the state’s abortion restrictions. It reached the Missouri Supreme Court last week.
The Washington Post reports that Missouri law stipulates that before receiving abortion care, a patient must be handed a pamphlet that claims life begins at conception — a state law rooted in a Christian belief. But a tenet of the Satanic Temple declares that a woman’s body is “subject to her will alone,” and that “she makes decisions regarding her health based on the best scientific understanding of the world.”
The Temple and their Mary Doe are fighting for her right to make choices about her own body, according to her religious belief that she should have that right. The Satanic Temple has had some victories in other religious-freedom campaigns, for example forcing the removal of a Ten Commandments statue from the Oklahoma State Capitol, by simply offering to donate a statue of their own to stand beside it.
This post was updated to reflect the Senate vote on the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.”
