Rumors have been going around that Georgia’s new fetal
heartbeat law contains a number of onerous provisions. Opponents of the law
claim that it would allow authorities to lock up women who have miscarriages or
cross state lines to get abortions. If that sounds stupid enough to raise red
flags with you, you aren’t alone. Rather than taking the internet’s word for
it, I decided to go straight to the source to find the truth.
The text of HB 481, the “Living Infants Fairness and
Equality (LIFE) Act,” is readily available and the full bill runs less than 10
pages. With much of the text struck through from previous versions, it’s a
quick read so I encourage others to read the bill as well. Quotations in this
article are taken from the Georgia
General Assembly website’s current version of the bill as of May 11, 2019. Here’s
what the law actually says.
The core provision of
the law is the statement, “ Unless otherwise provided by law, any natural
person, including an unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat, shall be
included in population based [sic] determinations.” This means that unborn
children with a detectable heartbeat are considered to be people for legal
purposes. For example, the law specifically states that “any unborn child with
a detectable human heartbeat… shall qualify as a dependent minor” for purposes
of filing a Georgia income tax return.
The law also defines what an abortion is and is not. The new
law defines abortion as the “act of using, prescribing, or administering any
instrument, substance, device, or other means with the purpose to terminate a
pregnancy with knowledge that termination will, with reasonable likelihood,
cause the death of an unborn child.”
Further, the law provides two exceptions that it says will not be considered to be an abortion. These
are “removing a dead unborn child caused by spontaneous abortion” and “removing
an ectopic pregnancy.”
The law defines “spontaneous abortion” as “the naturally
occurring death of an unborn child, including a miscarriage or stillbirth.”
This definition puts lie to the claim that women could be prosecuted for a
miscarriage.
The law is not a total abortion ban as it does provide
limited exceptions that allow an abortion to take place after a heartbeat has
been detected. These include cases of “rape or incest in which an official
police report has been filed alleging the offense” and the “probable
gestational age of the unborn child is 20 weeks or less” or when a “physician
determines, in reasonable medical judgment, that the pregnancy is medically
futile.”
The law defines “medically futile” to mean “in reasonable
medical judgment, an unborn child has a profound and irremediable congenital or
chromosomal anomaly that is incompatible with sustaining life after birth.” Note
that abortions performed when the pregnancy is deemed to be medically futile
are not subject to the 20-week limitation.
The law further stipulates that “if the child is capable of
sustained life, medical aid then available shall be rendered” and requires that
abortions “performed after the first trimester” take place “in a licensed
hospital, in a licensed ambulatory surgical center, or in a health facility
licensed as an abortion facility by the Department of Community Health” and be
performed by a licensed physician. If abortions are performed in violation of
these requirements, the woman is entitled to collect civil damages, but this
excludes the accidental results of treatment or if a “woman sought an abortion
because she reasonably believed that an abortion was the only way to prevent a
medical emergency.”
“Medical emergency” is defined as “a condition in which an
abortion is necessary in order to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or
the substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function
of the pregnant woman.” This exception does specifically exclude mental and
emotional conditions as well as the threat that the “that the pregnant woman
will purposefully engage in conduct which she intends to result in her death or
in substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”
Penalties under the law are focused on abortionists, not
mothers. The bill states, “In addition to any criminal or civil penalties
provided by law, failure by any physician to conform to any requirement of this
Code section constitutes unprofessional conduct for purposes of… to medical
licensing sanctions."
The law does amend the Georgia code to stipulate, “For the homicide of an unborn child, the right to recover for
the full value of the life of such child shall begin at the point at which a
detectable human heartbeat.” This does open the question of whether an abortion
can be considered homicide when the law goes into effect next year. The law
does not specifically address this question, but the implication considering a
child to be a person is that it would.
While the new law does not specify penalties for the “homicide
of an unborn child,” previous
Georgia law already declared “feticide” and “voluntary manslaughter of an
unborn child” to be a felony with a penalty of between one and 20 years. As
previously written, the law excluded abortions, people providing medical
treatment, and “any woman with respect to her unborn child” from prosecution. The
State of Georgia would obviously have no jurisdiction in abortionist that take
place in other states.
The outlandish claims being propagated by the pro-abortion
crowd are easily debunked by reading the law’s text. The law contains reasonable
exceptions for rape, incest, stillbirths, and medical emergencies. The law
specifically protects women in the case of miscarriage and when their life is
deemed to be in danger. Finally, the law does not create a criminal penalty for
either abortionists or women who seek abortions. Instead, the focus is on
preventing physicians from performing elective abortions under the threat of losing
their medical licenses and facing civil penalties.
This myth is busted.
Originally published
on the
Resurgent
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