Ohio heartbeat bill would ban abortions before women detect pregnancy

An
illustration of a human embryo at week six of
development.

Shutterstock

• A Republican-controlled Ohio House revived a vetoed
  “heartbeat bill” to ban
  abortions in the state.
• The legislation would prevent abortions — including in cases of
  rape and incest — after an embryo’s heartbeat is detected,
  typically around week six of pregnancy.
• Most women don’t know they’re pregnant until seven weeks or later
  in the process.
• About one-fourth of all clinically recognized
  pregnancies spontaneously or naturally abort.
• Providing access to both birth control and elective
  abortions may reduce a typical woman’s lifetime abortion rate
  six-fold.

On Thursday, the Ohio House revived a controversial and vetoed
bill that could dramatically limit women’s reproductive rights if
it becomes law.

The “heartbeat bill,” as the legislation is known, is anti-abortion measure to ban
doctors from performing legal abortions on women with “a
detectable fetal heartbeat,” typically around
six weeks into a pregnancy — and even in cases of rape or
incest.

Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican, vetoed the legislation
2016 and instead signed
alternative anti-abortion legislation that limits women’s’
rights to the procedure after week 20 of a pregnancy.

The resurrected bill will now move on to the state’s
Republican-controlled Senate for consideration, where “its fate
is unclear,” according to the Dayton Daily News.

Below are the key biological stages of pregnancy as they relate
to a developing baby, including when its heartbeat is first
detectable.

Skye Gould/Business Insider

Across all age groups of women, as many as 25% of all clinically recognized
pregnancies end in miscarriage, which means they
spontaneously or naturally abort and fail to lead to a full-term
baby.

Birth control, which prevents pregnancies yet the administration
of
President Donald Trump has moved to restrict and which

many religious groups oppose, leads to a six-fold reduction
in abortions over a woman’s lifetime, according to a study published in July to the
pre-print server bioRxiv.

The study is awaiting peer review by other scientists, but it is
based on the records of 1.2 million pregnancies in Denmark, as
well as records of Mormon frontier women. The six-fold reduction
statistic includes both unintended spontaneous abortions as well
as elective procedures, and it comes from comparing women who had
access to contraceptive drugs and elective abortions to those who
did not.

“Modern birth control with access to elective abortions, markedly
reduces — rather than increases — the lifetime number of
abortions a woman produces,” the study concludes.

The study does not distinguish how having access to birth control
but not elective abortions, as may soon be the case in Ohio,
might affect rates of abortions generally.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on
December 9, 2016.