What The Hell America!

Lawmakers in at least eight states are weighing bills that would treat abortion as a homicide, imposing criminal penalties on both providers and patients, once a Rubicon for the movement. 

The bills, filed in Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina and Texas, stem from the Prenatal Equal Protection Act, model legislation crafted by the Texas-based advocacy group the Foundation to Abolish Abortion. Three similar bills were introduced in Indiana, North Dakota and Oklahoma but failed to pass in committee or on the floor of the legislature. 

In addition to banning abortion, the bills, which argue that life begins at fertilization, could outlaw fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization.

No state abortion ban explicitly criminalizes pregnant people, and efforts to enact such a policy have consistently failed. Polling shows that most Americans support the right to abortion, and that they specifically oppose penalizing people who seek them. 

Still, the number of these homicide bills — last year, only three were introduced across the country, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights — suggests that abortion opponents are growing more receptive to directly punishing people who terminate their pregnancies.

“It’s not surprising, though it’s incredibly chilling and alarming,” said Lizzie Hinkley, the center’s senior state legislative counsel. “Anti-abortion activists are motivated to push the envelope as far as they can.”

In Georgia, where abortion is currently outlawed after six weeks of pregnancy, lawmakers heard hours of testimony on one such bill, which drew opposition even from anti-abortion activists in the state. 

“This is a bad bill. It’s bad for women,” testified Elizabeth Edmonds, who has worked as an anti-abortion lobbyist in the state and still supports abortion restrictions.

That bill is not slated for a committee vote, which it needs to advance. Similar legislation in other states has also not moved forward. 

Still, abortion opponents are still finding support on other types of bills. In Texas, for instance, lawmakers have rallied around a bill that would stop cities and municipalities from supporting people traveling out of state for abortions and another that seeks to prevent people from ordering abortion medications online. In South Carolina, where abortion is currently banned after six weeks of pregnancy, 38 lawmakers backed a bill that would outlaw virtually all abortions. 

Proponents of bills that would treat abortion as homicide — which they call “abolitionist” abortion policy — acknowledge they are still outside of the anti-abortion movement’s mainstream. 

“Most major Pro-Life lobby organizations and leaders still oppose equal protection,” Bradley Pierce, who heads the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, wrote in an email to The 19th. “They oppose abolitionist legislation, which provides that everyone should be equally subject to the law and everyone’s life should be equally protected by the law. Instead, they support a policy that singles out women to grant them legal immunity to commit prenatal homicide.”

But more state lawmakers are expressing interest in reclassifying abortion as homicide and criminalizing pregnant people, Pierce said. The Georgia bill has attracted 21 sponsors, the most support one of his five year-old organization’s bills has ever had, he said. South Carolina’s bill has 10 sponsors. Despite failing to pass, a similar bill in North Dakota received 16 votes. 

A dozen states have banned abortion almost entirely and four more have banned it after six weeks. Two ban it after the end of the first trimester, and still more have imposed other restrictions on the procedure. But workarounds such as travel and telehealth mean that the number of abortions in the United States has actually increased since the fall of Roe v. Wade — a development that has left abortion opponents scrambling for new approaches.

Three years ago, similar abortion bills — also the work of Pierce’s foundation — were introduced in 13 states, only making it out of committee in Louisiana. But even in that state, where lawmakers largely oppose abortion, the prospect of criminal penalties for pregnant people appeared to be a step too far.

“The most prominent national organizations don’t support anything that would criminalize the mother,” Sarah Zargoski, a spokesperson for Louisiana Right to Life, said at the time.

Still, repeated efforts to introduce these bills could chip away at that perspective, Hinkley said. 

“Whether they’re enacted or not this year, they’re going to be normalized in certain circles,” she said.