In other words, they hate women:
The bill signed by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) on Wednesday prohibits abortion in almost every circumstance and is considered the
most restrictive abortion law in the country. The legislation makes exceptions only for the health of the mother and for fetuses with “fatal anomalies” that make them unlikely to survive outside the womb. Rape and incest are not exceptions to Alabama’s ban.
Missouri’s Republican-controlled House on Friday voted to ban abortions at eight weeks of pregnancy, after the state’s Senate passed the measure a day earlier. Gov. Mike Parson (R), who has said the bill would make Missouri “one of the strongest pro-life states in the country,” has said he would sign it into law.
Like with the law in Alabama, rape and incest would not be exceptions to the ban in Missouri.
Some bills,
like the one in Georgia, prohibit abortion after the detection of what the bills call the fetal heartbeat,which usually happens about six weeks into pregnancy. This time period is about two weeks after a woman’s missed period, when many women do not yet know they are pregnant.
Supporters of this type of abortion ban refer to the legislation as “heartbeat bills,” while many abortion rights activists say the term is inaccurate because an embryo’s heart has not fully formed at that point.
An ultrasound will usually show electric activity in an embryo’s forming heart at about six weeks of pregnancy, said Jen Villavicencio, an OB/GYN and member of The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She said although that activity is not the same as a heartbeat that pumps blood, she often uses the term “heartbeat” with her patients at that point because they are familiar with that terminology.
Villavicencio said it technically is an inaccurate description.
“I think that when you are legislating biology in this way, you need to be really, really precise,” she said.
Doctors date a pregnancy from the first day of
a woman’s last period, not from the date when she had sexual intercourse. Most women are at least four weeks pregnant when they discover the pregnancy, Villavicencio said.
Many women do not realize it until the fifth or sixth week, she said, especially if they did not expect to become pregnant. Women are taught to suspect pregnancy if they miss their period, but other factors — like stress, obesity or new medications — can also disrupt a woman’s menstrual cycle.
