Posted on 04/12/2019 2:45:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has kept his promise and signed into law a heartbeat bill which would outlaw abortion when an unborn child’s heartbeat can be detected. This is usually around 6-weeks and can be before some women know they’re pregnant. Many women find out they’re pregnant around 7 or 8 weeks gestation.
While pro-lifers cheer Ohio being the latest state to pass into law one of these heartbeat bills, it is worth noting that it faces legal action. Before the bill was even signed, the ACLU, an abortion advocacy group, was preparing to challenge it in the courts. This is a trend for heartbeat bills which have passed in other states, including Iowa and Kentucky, where they have been blocked. A bill is also waiting for the governor’s signature in Georgia. In fact, heartbeat bills have yet to pass muster in any state where they’ve been passed. Should pro-lifers get their hopes up with such bills, or should they temper their expectations?
“The heartbeat bill is the next incremental step in our strategy to overturn Roe v. Wade,” said Ohio Right to Life Mike Gonidakis. If that is the case, we ought to pray that the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t use such laws to further strengthen the already tight confines the states have to work with presently.
It’s questionable how hopeful to be, especially when the Court, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the liberals on the Court, temporarily blocked a Louisiana abortion law from taking effect. The law, signed into law by a Democratic governor and sponsored by a Democratic state representative, simply sought to regulate abortion facilities and require abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a hospital. The Court struck down a similar Texas law in 2016.
North Dakota passed a heartbeat law way back in 2013. It was, as have other heartbeat bills, blocked by the lower courts. Noteworthy is how the Supreme Court refused to hear the case in 2016, which meant it was permanently struck down.
Has the time come for the Supreme Court to change its mind, to hear a case on heartbeat bills? Five states later, the high court may have to step in. It is worthwhile to wonder if enough has changed since 2016.
Such might be why Tennessee bishops came out against a heartbeat bill being considered in that state. Would anyone accuse the Catholic Church of not being pro-life? Not seriously at least. These bishops are smart to be worried. DeWine’s predecessor, Republican Governor John Kasich, vetoed the heartbeat bill twice, for similar re
Before heartbeat bills were a trend, 20-week abortion bans were, which are common sense and widely supported abortion regulations banning abortions halfway through a pregnancy, when unborn children can feel pain. Late-term abortions are mostly performed on healthy women with healthy fetuses, yet are also significantly dangerous, even deadly, for women, and banning them is supported by majorities of Americans, including those who identify as pro-choice. The United States is one of just seven nations which allows for elective abortions past 20-weeks. Also on that list is China and North Korea. We’re not in good company. While the previously Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a federal 20-week ban, it failed in the U.S. Senate. The bill’s sponsor, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, has reintroduced it.
Unfortunately, a 20-week ban in North Carolina was just found unconstitutional by a federal judge. If I’m watching any abortion bills headed to the Supreme Court, it’s these 20-week bans.
Abortion advocates have accused pro-lifers of trying to ban abortion completely, rather than trying to chip away at Roe v. Wade with more gradual abortion restrictions and regulations, which enjoys more widespread support, and which states used to focus on. But, as states such as New York and Virginia pass or consider extreme legislation permitting abortion up until birth and even infanticide, other, more pro-life states feel the need to go in the opposite direction. Both sides are considered extreme, and too much so for the American public who, while they find abortion to be “morally wrong” are generally in favor of restricting it after the first trimester, or 12-weeks.
While Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey are still the law of the land, the abortion movement has an unfair advantage. I look forward to the day when that is no longer the case. When the day comes that the U.S. Supreme Court is able to let states decide their own abortion laws, so that pro-life legislatures can protect the truly most innocent, vulnerable, and defenseless amongst us, I look forward to bills such as these holding up to constitutional muster.
I have the sinking feeling that the courts will NEVER find in favor of the baby.
The problem is, babies can’t vote. They should give pregnant women two votes. That’s the only way Democrats would ever protect the unborn.
Good for Ohio, but the meddling democrats will never let it stand.
A court challenge will be coming in 3..2..1..
Shoulda waited till Trump had one more Supreme Court pick to hopefully ensure the law stays. We don’t need any more precedents not in our favor.
Nice, but it’s over for the baby. The raging feminazis have won in most areas, and will sue to win in the remaining states.
There is NO doubt that the developing baby is human. It is totally unnatural for a parent to kill that developing baby. No matter what the justification, that will always be true.
Refusing to give the baby a name, or calling him a “foetus” changes nothing.
OHIO PING!
Ohio Governor Signs Heartbeat Bill, But Will It Survive The Courts?
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3741448/posts
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It will force the issue back to the SCOTUS. They will have to decide if they are to “jigger” the Roe-v-Wade ruling, altering “viability” as a standard, or will they conclude as Scalia did that abortion should be, and can be, regulated by the states.
If the “pro-choice” folks want abortion to be “constitutional” they need to do it the right way, if they can - put it in the Constitution via an amendment. I think they never tried that because they doubted they could succeed in that, and I think they could not succeed in that now.
From article - “Both sides are considered extreme, and too much so for the American public who, while they find abortion to be “morally wrong” are generally in favor of restricting it after the first trimester, or 12-weeks.”
Abortion is one of those absolute from on high “laws of nature and nature’s God.” It isn’t subject to vote or polling.
Modern science has pretty much resolved that life begins at conception.
23 pairs of chromosomes from mom and same from dad.....the two have become one. Two lives are now in the balance with all the rights thereof.
Rape? Incest? Irrelevant. The child had no control over parentage. To argue otherwise is the basest from of “blood guilt”.....and we can’t permit that crap to get a foothold.
Birth defect? Do not presume the province of God. His will, not ours in matters of life. Again, letting man/woman pick who lives of dies based on health or quality of life without a veto permitted the subject...can’t open that Pandora’s Box, either.
Lastly, the ever rare health risk to mom. That and only that decision should fall to the woman. Her conscience on how God will treat a mother who chooses self over her own child. But still her decision.
Society has always praised selfless sacrifice of one’s life, the law has never compelled it that I can find.
The nation has one last chance to stop the genocide of pre-separation infants. I don’t know anyone who’s real optimistic that all of those “conservative” SC judges are really that. I have suspicions that some of them are fakes who don’t have a deep, fundamental belief that all lives are equally deserving of protection. Whichever way it goes, there’s a conservative majority now. Any more conservatives won’t really matter; it’s just as likely will get an elitist phony. But there will be clarity. If the nation doesn’t mend its ways and embrace life, we’re not worth saving.
The KEY will be how far they will go to be “protectors of the institution” (SCOTUS) above being protectors of the Constitution.
If the SCOTUS judges make more than they should about the condition referred to as “precedent” - as Roberts makes so important - then the best we might get is some more “jiggering” of how far states can go in regulating abortion, but not an abandonment of Roe.
ONLY by NOT emphasizing precedent as a MUST BE PRIORITY, can the SCOTUS approach abandoning Roe. We will just have to wait and see.
To me the entire matter of the SCOTUS ever putting as much emphasis as it as on “precedent” would be akin to each Congress acting like it’s hands were tied by what any previous Congress had decided; believing they could not overturn laws previous Congresses had enacted. That makes no sense and neither does the SCOTUS over reliance on precedent.
Each session of the SCOTUS should see itself as a new SCOTUS just as each session of Congress sees itself as a new Congress, and each presidential administration sees itself as a new presidency.
But with the SCOTUS there has become an attitude that each new SCOTUS must “protect” at all cost, what any prior SCOTUS decided, and in my eyes that has put that protection, of their institutional reputation, above seeing anew the mandate to protect the Constitution first. No SCOTUS should ever be afraid of, or against, saying a prior SCOTUS got it wrong.
You are 100% correct. The function of the Supreme Court should be to make changes to things that violate the Constitution. “That it’s gone on for a long time” is like saying we’re on that slippery slope and we don’t WANT to turn back.
We must do the right thing and let God take care of the rest. That’s what Ohio is doing. I’m proud to be a Buckeye!
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