UPDATE, 4/11/19, 4:39p EST: Governor Mike DeWine has signed the heartbeat bill into law. The Washington Times reports:
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed the heartbeat bill Thursday, breaking with his predecessor, Republican John Kasich, who had vetoed the measure twice….
Even before the bill was signed, the ACLU of Ohio said it was preparing a constitutional challenge to the law on behalf of Pre-Term Cleveland and three other Ohio abortion clinics.
[A] legal challenge is what the bill’s backers have always wanted. They hope to provoke a legal challenge with the potential to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion up until viability, usually at 22 to 24 weeks.
4/10/19: An agreed-upon final version of the “heartbeat bill” now heads to Governor Mike DeWine’s desk in the state of Ohio, following the news today that the Ohio Senate voted 18-13 to accept the changes made to the legislation by the House. Governor DeWine has stated that he plans to sign the bill into law. As expected, pro-abortion groups are already threatening lawsuits.
Recently, DeWine told radio host Hugh Hewitt, “Ultimately, this will work its way up to the United States Supreme Court. And they’ll make that decision.”
The bill would ban abortion once the preborn child’s heartbeat can be detected, which is typically around 5-6 weeks gestation.
According to News5Cleveland, “Ohio joins five other states that have passed such restrictive abortion measures” and “makes no exceptions for rape or incest.”
According to The Columbus Dispatch, while the vote in the Senate went largely without incident, the same could not be said for the debate in the House, with abortion proponents painting the motives of pro-lifers as religious. While many may indeed be motivated in part by religious beliefs, it isn’t a religious book that shows the human heartbeat beginning at 16 to 21 days after fertilization; it is science.
The audience, filled with proponents of abortion rights, broke into loud shouts of protest — and unfurled a banner reading “This is not a house of worship!” — after the vote….
Mid-vote, protestors in the upper galleries started chanting “Not the church, not the state, patients must decide their fate” and threw banners over the railings.
Bill co-sponsor State Rep. Niraj Antani stated, “A baby with a beating heart in the womb deserves the opportunity of being born….. [T]oday’s vote will save countless lives. It’s time to end abortion in Ohio.”
As can be seen in the video below, a human being in the first month of pregnancy has a real heartbeat, with blood pumping through a chambered heart.
While abortion advocates have attempted to claim that preborn babies do not have heartbeats until later, this is simply not the case. As Live Action News’ Cassy Fiano-Chesser previously noted, “The American Pregnancy Association… affirms that the heart is formed by the third gestational week, and beats steadily, with blood flowing through the preborn baby’s blood vessels.”
Editor’s Note: The title of this article was updated on 4/11 to reflect the governor’s signature.
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