Family planning clinics which receive taxpayer funds must stop referring women for abortions in the US, with immediate affect.
The Trump administration announced the change today, saying that it will now begin enforcing the new regulation hailed by religious conservatives but widely denounced by medical professionals, medical organisations and women’s rights groups.
The head of a national umbrella group which represents all of the tax funded clinics said the Trump's government is following 'an ideological agenda' which could disrupt basic health care for many low-income women. A huge blow given that nearly half of the women who get an abortion in the USA live below the poverty line.
This movement will strike a heavy blow against Planned Parenthood, a charity which also receives taxpayer funding, which provides wrap around female healthcare including breast cancer screening, abortions referral and birth control.
An ongoing legal battle will go on to decide whether US employers can opt out of offering free birth control to women workers on the basis of religious or moral objections and would grant health care professionals wider leeway to opt out of procedures that offend their religious or moral scruples, such as hormones for trans people.
Back in May, Alabama passed a bill that moved to restrict abortion in nearly all cases, including instances of rape or incest. There are now six states in America where abortion is illegal at the point at which an embryonic heartbeat can be detected – around six weeks from conception.
One of those states, Georgia, went one step further, with a bill that considers the fetus to be a person requiring the full legal recognition, at the point of conception. It means, among other things, that anyone who harms the “natural person” conceived could be punished as they would for a crime against any other living human.
It is important to understand that, though lawmakers voted for the bill to be passed and enshrined into the state constitution, it is not expected to be enacted until 2020 – and there is now expected to be a lengthy period of legal action to appeal it. Experts cannot predict an exact timeframe but, in Alabama specifically, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood actions are expected to take months or years. The ACLU is confident they can overturn it.
Some lawmakers have said that the point of the legislation is to punish doctors who carry out terminations, rather than pregnant women. However, the implications of these bills are truly horrifying – here are just some of the potential realities facing women in America right now…
9 Potential Realities Of Americau2019s "Abortion Ban" Laws That Will Horrify You
1 of 10Multiple states in America are signing bills to render abortion illegal at six weeks
2 of 10Multiple states in America are signing bills to render abortion illegal at six weeks
Governor Kay Ivey signed into a law, a controversial abortion bill that could punish doctors who perform abortions with life in prison. Under the bill, doctors could face 10 years in prison for even attempting to terminate a pregnancy.
3 of 10Multiple states in America are signing bills to render abortion illegal at six weeks
Doctors in the same state who go ahead and complete the termination of a pregnancy, could be facing a life sentence. The act is legislated as a "Class A Felony" – others in the same category include first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping and first-degree rape. For context, second degree rape – having sex with a minor or with someone who is incapable of consent due to mental disability or incapacity is a much lesser sentence of no more than 20 years in prison. Sexual abuse and incest is punishable by up to ten years in prison.
4 of 10Multiple states in America are signing bills to render abortion illegal at six weeks
This is often a point at which a woman will not yet realise she is pregnant – especially if she has an irregular cycle or has taken the contraceptive or morning after pill and attributes a missed period to that. The number of weeks a woman is pregnant is calculated from the first day of her last period – though, conception usually takes place around two weeks after that when an egg is released. So for the first two weeks of pregnancy we're not really pregnant at all. Week five is the time that a woman will likely realise her period is late and, consequently, that she is pregnant. This leaves one week, if she is lucky, to procure an abortion.
5 of 10Multiple states in America are signing bills to render abortion illegal at six weeks
The law in Georgia goes one step further than some of the other states that have imposed a six-week time limit on abortions, and considers fetus to be a "natural person", requiring full legal recognition, from the point of conception. Although the intention of the law as it is written, may not to be to punish women who are pregnant, as a worst-case scenario, women could find themselves criminally liable for carrying out their own abortion. Many have pointed out that further difficulties may arise when ascertaining whether a person has miscarried or aborted a pregnancy – sometimes the same drugs used to perform a termination are used during miscarriage to help the process. Laws similar to this have, in the past, led to gravely unjust and horrifying consequences for women. For instance in El Salvador, a country that still bans abortion outright, where women have been wrongly jailed after suffering miscarriages. Three women accused of having abortions and convicted of aggravated homicide were freed just this year, in March, after having served up to 11 years in prison.
6 of 10Multiple states in America are signing bills to render abortion illegal at six weeks
Again, this may not be the primary intention of the law, but legal journalist Mark Joseph Stern writes for Slate that, 'A woman who miscarries because of her own conduct – say using drugs while pregnant – would be liable for second degree murder, punishable by 10-30 years imprisonment.'
7 of 10Multiple states in America are signing bills to render abortion illegal at six weeks
Again, this is because lawmakers have voted to give foetuses 'full legal recognition' under Georgia law – making the abortion illegal even if it takes place out of state.
8 of 10Multiple states in America are signing bills to render abortion illegal at six weeks
This could even be true of someone who simply drives another person to a clinic to procure a termination.
9 of 10Multiple states in America are signing bills to render abortion illegal at six weeks
There are also currently three abortion clinics in Alabama. In the 1990s there were more than 20.
10 of 10Multiple states in America are signing bills to render abortion illegal at six weeks
Louisiana looks set to follow suit with a similar bill.