Last month I noted that Michigan legislative Democrats were planning on passing a package of bills designed to repeal a bunch of restrictions on abortion & other reproductive healthcare:
Dems to end 24-hour abortion waiting period, ban on Medicaid funding of procedure
LANSING — Michigan Democrats said Wednesday they will repeal laws that require a 24-hour waiting period to have an abortion performed, impose what they say are costly and unnecessary regulatory burdens on abortion clinics, prohibit abortions funded by Medicaid, and ban private health insurers from automatically covering abortions under standard policies.
Last Tuesday I noted that a package of bills designed to codify various ACA protections into state law here in Michigan (most of which are low-hanging fruit of my own healthcare wish list which I posted back in February) had managed to make it halfway through the legislative process: Five of them have passed the Michigan House, but not the Senate; the other three have passed the Michigan Senate...but not the House. I applauded the state legislature for pushing these bills halfway through and encouraged them to get the other half of the job done.
UPDATE 11/29/19: This horrific and batshit insane Ohio bill is making the news again six month later thanks to a new Guardian article about it.
The only silver lining I can find here is that the bill doesn't appear to have made any further progress in that time--according to the official Ohio Legislature website, so far it's only been "introduced" and "referred to committee", and those happened back in April. The Guardian article has the number of co-sponsors the same as it was in May as well (19, plus the primary sponsor of the bill).
UPDATE: It's been pointed out that the Supreme Court has ruled that minors can't receive the death penalty, so I guess that means "only" life in prison for them. If they're 18 or older, however...
On the other hand, several people have noted that an 11-year old pelvis isn't generally developed enough to even deliver a baby safely, along with other health risks, so it could very well be a death sentence regardless, so I'm leaving the headline as is.
The tagline for ACASignups.net is "healthcare policy data, analysis & snark", so naturally many of my blog posts have tongue-in-cheek, sarcastic headlines.
This is not one of those times. The headline above is absolutely, sickeningly true.
On a couple of days ago, both houses of the Ohio state legislature--the House and Senate alike--voted to ban abortion outright six weeks after conception. There's no exception for rape. There's no exception for incest. There is an exception for the life of the mother (not her health, mind you...just her actual ability to keep breathing)...but that's it. Yesterday this bill was signed into law by GOP Governor Mike DeWine.
The six-week abortion ban known as the "heartbeat bill" is now law in Ohio. That makes Ohio the sixth state in the nation to attempt to outlaw abortions at the point a fetal heartbeat can be detected.
