Bob Andres/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP
Abortion bans, like the one signed into law by Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp, restrict the circumstances under which a woman can access abortion.
The new year brings a fresh start for many state legislatures and a return to old battles over abortion access: 2019 proved to be a watershed year for conservative states seeking to limit abortion access as they competed to craft a law that would force a Supreme Court challenge. The idea that Roe v. Wade might finally be struck down by a more conservative Supreme Court fueled the passage of nine early-abortion bans in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Utah.
Abortion restrictions and their outsize impact on poor women of color are not new. What is new is how anti-abortion proponents are appropriating historic and progressive legal victories and using medical disinformation in their attempts to enact these early-abortion bans. As statehouses with a majority of anti-abortion legislators reconvene in 2020, these laws will continue to proliferate. We researched the arguments and the language Georgia lawmakers and community members used to pass a “heartbeat bill,” HB 481. The Georgia law bans abortions upon detection of possible fetal cardiac activity, often around six weeks, before most women know they are pregnant.
Abortion bans, like the one signed into law by Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp, restrict the circumstances under which a woman can access abortion so that the procedure is effectively prohibited. Although the ban won’t go into effect on January 1, thanks to a temporary injunction by a federal judge, supporters of reproductive rights can’t rest easy. With nearly 75 percent of women who access abortions living below the federal poverty level, the ban in Georgia and other states would disproportionately hurt low-income groups, pregnant people of color, and young people.
Supporters of the abortion ban asserted that fetuses are a class of persons entitled to equal protection under the 14th Amendment. They compared Roe v. Wade’s treatment of fetuses to the Three-Fifths Compromise, which counted slaves as partial persons for tax and census purposes. Comparing fetuses to enslaved people is particularly craven and effectively erases the historical and ongoing struggles for Black liberation. It is also deeply insulting to Black residents of Georgia.
“HB 481 is in and of itself a denial of the full humanity of the very people who would be forced to be pregnant against their will … many of whom will inevitably be Black women,” said Kwajelyn Jackson, executive director of Atlanta’s Feminist Women’s Health Center, who attended the March 2019 hearings. “We will not accept any law that invalidates our humanity in an effort to assign humanity to what is growing inside our bodies.”
HB 481 supporters also used terms that described fetuses as “early infants” or “child in utero”—vocabulary which does not exist in medicine. Medical evidence was grossly misrepresented, for example, conflating fetal viability with viable pregnancy. While fetal viability is influenced by numerous complex factors, viability of a fetus before 22 weeks is highly unlikely, even with extreme medical intervention. Even though beliefs about when life begins are complex, varied, and personal, the determination of fetal viability is clear under constitutional law, which recognizes a difference between fetuses in later pregnancy and six-week-old embryos.
Abortion opponents frequently use religion to support their positions, from displaying signs with Bible verses during protests outside clinics to violent extremist attacks against health providers. Yet that language was largely absent from the HB 481 debate, and religious beliefs did not appear to be explicitly driving the push for early-abortion bans. Instead, issues of oppression, marginalization, and control are.
By misrepresenting medical facts and couching their arguments within dubious constitutional frameworks, supporters of early-abortion bans are attempting to pass laws that will produce a Supreme Court challenge. If such a case reaches the high court and a majority of the justices side with abortion opponents, many women may find it difficult if not impossible to end a pregnancy in certain states.
In 2020, conservative states like South Carolina are already moving swiftly to enact restrictions that would limit reproductive autonomy and disproportionately harm poor women and women of color. Pro-choice legislators, reproductive-health researchers, and human rights and reproductive justice advocates must respond just as fast.
This article was posted in conjunction with the Scholars Strategy Network.
