In Ohio, anti-abortion-rights groups and 20 Republican lawmakers recently proposed an abortion ban that would, in most cases, consider doctors who perform abortions guilty of aggravated murder and subject to a life sentence or the death penalty, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
The proposal, presented on Thursday, acts as an update to Ohio’s “heartbeat bill” that Gov. Mike DeWine signed in April but US District Judge Michael Barrett later blocked from going into effect. A “heartbeat bill” outlaws abortions as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected, or after about six weeks, when most people still don’t know they’re pregnant.
The new proposal would also require doctors to attempt to reimplant ectopic pregnancies in the uterus, where it’s supposed to grow. Ectopic pregnancies occur when a fertilized egg attaches itself outside the uterus, where it can’t develop.
But the Ohio proposal ignores the fact that reimplanting an ectopic pregnancy is “physiologically impossible,” said Dr. Chris Zahn, the vice president of practice activities at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. In fact, attempting that is extremely dangerous, and the technology needed to do it doesn’t even exist.
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