NEW YORK — Buoyed by conservative gains in the November election, foes of abortion are mobilizing on behalf of bills in several state legislatures that would further curtail women’s access to the procedure.
On both sides of the debate, activists are highlighting their hopes and concerns in conjunction with today’s 42nd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 that established a nationwide right to abortion. Since then, there have been more than 50 million abortions in the U.S.
Coinciding with the annual March for Life in Washington, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives had planned a debate today on a bill that would ban most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy on the disputed premise that a fetus can feel pain at that stage. However, the House leadership decided late Wednesday to scrap those plans after objections from GOP women and other lawmakers left them short of votes.
Several proposed bills at the state level may have a better chance of enactment.
Notable among them is a first-of-its-kind measure being drafted in Kansas, with the backing of the National Right to Life Committee, which would ban doctors from using forceps, tongs or other medical implements to dismember a living fetus in the womb to complete an abortion.
Proponents have titled the bill the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act and say it targets a procedure used in about 8 percent of abortions in Kansas.
“Dismemberment abortion kills a baby by tearing her apart limb from limb,” said National Right to Life’s director of state legislation, Mary Spaulding Balch, who hopes the Kansas bill will be emulated in other states.
Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri has vowed to fight the bill “every step of the way.”
“Kansas women are smart enough to make their own decisions about their families and their lives,” said a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman, Elise Higgins.
Among other measures surfacing in state legislatures:
• Bills in West Virginia and South Carolina that would — like the measure in the U.S. House — ban abortions after 20 weeks of gestation. A similar bill was vetoed in West Virginia last year by Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, but Republicans now control both chambers of the legislature and may have better prospects for overriding another veto.
• A bill in Arkansas that would require women seeking abortion-inducing medication to take it in the presence of a doctor. Supporters of the bill say they want to prevent any instances of abortion medication being administered from afar by a physician using video conferencing technology.
• A bill in Mississippi that would increase the minimum waiting time from 24 hours to 72 hours before a woman could obtain an abortion.
• A bill in Missouri that would require pregnant women to get permission from the fathers before having abortions, except in cases of rape and incest.
• Several anti-abortion measures are expected in Tennessee, where voters in November overturned a court ruling holding that abortion was protected by the state constitution as part of a woman’s fundamental right to privacy.
According to abortion rights groups, about 230 laws restricting abortion have been enacted nationwide in the past four years.
