Georgia Brings Back 20 Week Ban With “Compromise,” Fistfights and Protests Ensue by Robin Marty

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War on Women

Georgia Brings Back 20 Week Ban With “Compromise,” Fistfights and Protests Ensue

by Robin Marty | 1, Add your Comment | Apr 2, 2012

The Republicans in the Georgia legislature managed to find a “compromise” that would allow them to finally pass a 20 week ban on abortions. The Senate proposal to exclude “medically futile” pregnancies was accepted by the House and voted through, effectively banning abortion after 20 weeks for any fetus except those with “profound and ‘irremediable’ anomalies that would be ‘incompatible with sustaining life after birth.’”

With the new law in place, any abortion performed after 20 weeks must be “be done in a way to bring the fetus out alive.” In other words, an abortion would likely be performed by inducing labor in order to attempt to have a live birth of a fetus, despite the fetus having physical anomalies that render it non-viable after birth, and even when the abortion is being performed prior to viability (usually about 24 weeks due to lung development).

No wonder the proposed law actually resulted in fistfights in the lobby. According to the Atlanta Examiner:

Georgia’s Right to Life (GRTL) President Dan Becker and the Perinatal Infertility Coalition of Georgia “had a heated verbal exchange that became physical.” A nearby trooper saved the day, effectively getting both men to cease and desist without force.

And it wasn’t just the lobbyists getting fired up. Senate Democrats, especially women, opposed the bill in their own way. The Atlanta Journal Constitution wrote:

Senate Democratic women for the second time this session walked out after HB 954 passed their chamber. Sporting yellow police tape, they marched into the hallways and, joined with other HB 954 opponents, shouted “we will remember!” loud enough to be heard through closed doors. “The GOP war on women is alive and well in Georgia,” said Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta. Within the hour, the bill passed the House on a 106-59 vote. Democrats turned their backs on McKillip in protest.

The bill will now head to Gov. Nathan Deal’s desk for a signature before becoming law.

The Extraordinarily Strange Rationale for Passing Georgia HB 954

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Editor's Note: This story first appeared at RH Reality Check and is posted under creative commons license. Click here for the photo image source.

Robin Marty

Robin Marty is a freelance writer and editor from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Formerly, she worked as the Director of Special Projects for the Center for Independent Media, a progressive online news organization with sites across the country. Previously hired on as the state coordinator for Minnesota Monitor (now the Minnesota Independent), Robin assisted in the opening of multiple CIM states and has been heavily involved in the recruiting and mentoring of new state coordinators. Robin has been blogging since 2004, when she started The Power Liberal, and currently runs WoMN Focus, a site dedicated to tracking news on female candidates in Minnesota.

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http://hannah.smith-family.com/ Hannah

Instinct-driven people have a perceptual problem. They go by what things look like. So, if things look the same (cows, hogs and humans giving birth), they must be the same. The instinct-driven are directed by superficial optics. ”Monkey see, monkey do.” Our mistake is in letting such people assume decision-making positions.
Why do we do it? Probably because we assume other people are like ourselves and that, when they repeat what they’ve heard, they mean what they are saying. The gift of gab lets them come across as ideal representatives of people whose tongues get tied in public or because they think before they speak.
Then too, we don’t fully appreciate the extent to which the law is being used (has always been used) to deprive people of their human rights. We don’t fully appreciate that the separation of church and state is largely designed to protect individual persons from having the ability to physically coerce put at the disposal of those who would determine what we think. Establishments of religion are, as the founders well knew, not necessarily benign.

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Georgia Brings Back 20 Week Ban With “Compromise,” Fistfights and Protests Ensue

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