Personhood and Heartbeat Bills

People for the American Way

Personhood and Heartbeat Bills

While the largest and best-funded anti-choice groups have embraced a strategic, incremental approach to ending legal abortion, a vocal and increasingly influential segment of the anti-choice movement is calling for more immediate and extreme measures. Blatantly unconstitutional head-on attacks against Roe – including “personhood“ and “heartbeat” measures – are frequently blocked by voters, legislatures, and the courts. However, these attacks are increasingly becoming part of the national debate, as evidenced by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s impassioned defense of “personhood” measures in a nationally televised GOP presidential debate in August 2015.

Although many incrementalist activists fear that such measures will upset their carefully laid plans to chip away at abortion access and undermine Roe in the courts, their efforts are also aided by extreme policy proposals that can serve as cover for quieter efforts to chip away at choice.

Personhood Laws

The “personhood” movement defines life as beginning at conception. Therefore, personhood measures seek to change the legal definition of a “person” to include a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus with the intent of outlawing all abortion as well as some common contraceptive methods that proponents argue prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg. The movement, which enjoys support from prominent figures such as Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, opposes any abortion restriction containing exceptions for cases of rape, incest, or health of the pregnant woman.

This supposed “pro-life” agenda would therefore prevent doctors from providing appropriate care to women, even when their lives are in danger. Under personhood laws, doctors could face restrictions on their ability to treat life-threatening conditions such as ectopic and molar pregnancies that necessitate early termination. They also threaten to place women who have suffered miscarriages at risk of criminal prosecution.

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Heartbeat Laws

Heartbeat bills seek to ban abortion after the point at which a fetal heartbeat can be detected by an ultrasound. A heartbeat can be detected as early as six weeks into pregnancy – before some women may even be aware that they are pregnant – but can only be detected using a transvaginal ultrasound. Under a heartbeat law, a woman seeking an early-term abortion may have to submit to this unnecessary and invasive procedure to find out if she can legally terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

Banning abortion after six weeks, before which many women don’t even know they are pregnant, places an arbitrary limit on a woman’s right to choose and is clearly unconstitutional, setting up a direct challenge to Roe.

To date, North Dakota and Arkansas are the only two states to have enacted heartbeat laws, although similar laws are being considered by several other states. North Dakota’s heartbeat law was struck down by a federal appeals court in July 2015. A federal judge struck down Arkansas’s law in May 2014.

http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/chipping-away-choice-growing-threats-women-s-health-care-access-and-autonomy-2015-updat?utm_medium=email&utm_source=aa&utm_campaign=waronwomen#personhood



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