On Thursday, the Florida Senate is expected to pass a bill to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. A similar abortion ban in Mississippi is currently under review by the United States Supreme Court.
Reuters reported Thursday that the state’s House of Representatives approved the measure last month on a party-line vote. The House currently has a Republican majority. GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign the bill into law after Senate approval. It would then take effect July 1.
Current Florida law allows abortions up to 24 weeks of pregnancy without a mandatory waiting period. Women seeking an abortion can end their pregnancies at their first visit at a clinic.
In a debate session on Wednesday, lawmakers debated amendments to the bill, including one that would make exceptions for victims of rape, incest, and human trafficking. This week, I covered how an amendment added to the abortion bill would require fathers to begin paying child support as soon as abortions are no longer legal in the state.
Other states working on similar 15-week abortion bans include Arizona and West Virginia. Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban is at the center of the Supreme Court lawsuit Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Oral arguments were heard on Dec. 1 and a decision is expected next summer.
“During oral arguments in December, the Supreme Court indicated its willingness to allow Mississippi's law to stand,” Reuters noted. “A ruling in Mississippi's favor would conflict with the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision establishing the right to end a pregnancy before the fetus is viable, typically around 24 weeks.”
In Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s amicus brief filed ahead of the oral arguments, she asked the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey altogether.
“Roe and Casey are egregiously wrong. The conclusion that abortion is a constitutional right has no basis in text, structure, history, or tradition,” Fitch wrote in the brief. “So the question becomes whether this Court should overrule those decisions. It should.”
“The Constitution does not protect a right to abortion. The Constitution’s text says nothing about abortion. Nothing in the Constitution’s structure implies a right to abortion or prohibits States from restricting it,” Fitch continued. “Casey repeats Roe’s flaws by failing to tie a right to abortion to anything in the Constitution. And abortion is fundamentally different from any right this Court has ever endorsed. No other right involves, as abortion does, ‘the purposeful termination of a potential life.’”
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