{"id":1607,"date":"2013-02-22T20:32:53","date_gmt":"2013-02-23T01:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/hlpr\/?p=1607"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:22:06","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:22:06","slug":"state-attacks-on-choice-not-letting-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2013\/02\/22\/state-attacks-on-choice-not-letting-up\/","title":{"rendered":"State Attacks on Choice Not Letting Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Craig Auster<\/p>\n<p><\/em>This past month, our nation celebrated the 40<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary of the Supreme Court\u2019s\u00a0<em>Roe v. Wade<\/em>\u00a0decision that guaranteed American women the right to choose to have an abortion.\u00a0 Yet, despite 40 years of\u00a0<em>Roe\u00a0<\/em>as the law of the land<em>,\u00a0<\/em>state legislatures are continuously trying to find new ways to undermine women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n<p>The latest attempt to end a woman\u2019s right to chooseis coming in the form of so-called \u201cfetal heartbeat\u201d bills.\u00a0 In direct violation of the right to an abortion during the first 24 weeks that is guaranteed to American woman under\u00a0<em>Roe,\u00a0<\/em>the \u201cfetal heartbeat\u201d legislation would criminalize abortions as soon as the fetus\u2019s heartbeat can be detected.\u00a0 According to WebMD, you can hear a fetus\u2019s heartbeat as early as 10 weeks.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nBoth the courts and the public have continuously turned back attempts to limit choice.\u00a0 Even in deeply conservative Southern states, voters in Mississippi voted down a \u201cpersonhood\u201d initiative and a Georgia court struck down a \u201cfetal pain\u201d law within the last year.\u00a0 Despite this, five states \u2013 Arkansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio and Wyoming \u2013 are considering these even more extreme \u201cfetal heartbeat\u201d bills.<\/p>\n<p>These state legislatures insist on wasting time and taxpayer money trying to undermine choicedespite the fact that\u00a0<em>Roe\u00a0<\/em>is the law of the land and that abortion was only picked as the top issue by 17% of voters in 2012 (and likely more than half of that 17% are pro-choice voters).\u00a0 When it comes to effective and meaningful policymaking, too many state legislators are on an ideological crusade rather than looking to serve the interests of the public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Craig Auster This past month, our nation celebrated the 40th\u00a0anniversary of the Supreme Court\u2019s\u00a0Roe v. Wade\u00a0decision that guaranteed American [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-pV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}