Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine recently signed into law the state’s controversial Heartbeat Bill or the Human Rights and Heartbeat Protection Act. The law bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected. Experts say you can hear a baby’s heartbeat through vaginal ultrasound as early as six weeks after gestation. At that stage, there aren’t many bodily changes, so many women don’t even know they’re pregnant.
“The signing of this bill today is consistent with that respect for life and the imperative to protect those who cannot protect themselves,” DeWine said.
Critics are ready to go to court
The governor’s office released a statement saying the Heartbeat Bill will go into effect 90 days after it’s filed by secretary of state Mike Pompeo. However, those that oppose the bill, like the American Civil Liberties Union, are ready to dispute it in court. Supporters of the bill are salivating over a courtroom battle because they hope that this is the case that overturns Roe V. Wade.
Similar bills have been introduced before
The heartbeat bill is not the first of its kind, many similar bills have been declared unconstitutional. For example, an Iowa judge rejected a “heartbeat” act earlier this year after it was signed into law in 2018. The same law was also invalidated by the courts after it was enacted in North Dakota in 2013.
These bills don’t hold up
The stringent heartbeat bill has been introduced in several state legislatures only to repeatedly flatline. Yet, it keeps resurfacing. The bill is considered unconstitutional because states cannot ban abortion before viability, which is usually determined between 24 and 28 weeks during pregnancy.
“With all the respect I can muster to my many friends in the heartbeat movement, no heartbeat bill anywhere has ever saved a human life because, to my knowledge, they’ve all been struck down by federal and state judges — and that was predictable,” the chief legal officer and general counsel for the national anti-abortion group American United for Life said. “They are unconstitutional under current federal constitutional law. They were designed as a vehicle to challenge Roe in the Supreme Court, but they won’t get to the Supreme Court unless you can convince four members of the court that a fifth member would go with them to uphold the heartbeat bill.”
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