But the rush to regulate has exposed division among groups and lawmakers who consider themselves staunch abortion opponents.
On April 11, Ohio became the latest state to ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. For a long time, Ohio Right to Life supported a more gradual approach to restrict the procedure and deemed what’s come to be called a “heartbeat bill” too radical – until this year. Restricting abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected basically bans the procedure after 6 weeks’ gestation – before many women know they’re pregnant.
“We see the court as being much more favorable to prolife legislation than it has been in a generation,” spokeswoman Jamieson Gordon said. “So we figured this would be a good time to pursue the heartbeat bill as the next step in our incremental approach to end abortion on demand.”
The Ohio law contains no exception for pregnancies that are the result of rape or incest; it does have an exception for the life of the mother.
Some say the rush to pass these bills is about lawmakers competing to get their particular state’s law before the Supreme Court. The state that helps overturn Roe v. Wade would go down in history.
More than 250 bills restricting abortions have been filed in 41 states this year, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research and advocacy group.
“After the appointment of Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh, there really is just an environment in state legislatures to roll back abortion rights. And so we’re seeing these bans just fly through,” said Elizabeth Nash, who monitors state laws at Guttmacher.
But the speed of passage of some of these laws masks divisions about strategy and commitment to the cause within the antiabortion movement.
Tennessee infighting over ‘heartbeat bill’
In Tennessee, for instance, there’s a philosophical split between pragmatists and idealists.
A “heartbeat bill” in the state has had high-profile support, including from Tennessee’s new governor. But the Republican attorney general warned such a law would be difficult to defend in court. And several Republicans, swayed by that logic, voted no for the legislation.
“This is an issue that is extremely important to me. It’s the reason I got into politics many years ago,” Republican state Rep. Bill Dunn said as the House approved the measure over his objection earlier this year. Dunn has said he wants to stop abortion, but that will require strategy. He pointed out that no heartbeat bill has ever been enforced. And recent laws in Iowa and Kentucky have been immediately blocked in court. The same is expected for Ohio.
“No. 1, it’ll probably never save a life if we go by what’s happened in the past,” Rep. Dunn argued on the Tennessee House floor.
But it was money that ultimately stopped the heartbeat bill this year in Tennessee. (It stalled in committee, though the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee agreed to review the bill this summer.)
Senate Speaker Randy McNally, who also opposes abortion, said he has no interest in wasting tax dollars to make a point.
Even worse, in the view of Republicans who voted against the heartbeat bill, the state could end up paying the legal fees for groups that defend abortion.
“That is a big concern,” Sen. McNally said. “We don’t want to put money in their pockets.
The last time Tennessee had a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, it cost roughly $1.9 million. The experience was enough to give a few antiabortion crusaders some pause. They voted last week with Democrats for a 1-year delay on a heartbeat bill, vowing to study the issue over the summer.