Don’t Let Republicans Normalize 6-Week Abortion Bans!
Just a few years ago, six-week bans were considered too "radical" even by the GOP's own standards. Florida is set to pass yet another one this week.
AbortionPolitics

Florida is on the brink of enacting a bill that would ban abortion at six weeks after the last menstrual period—before many people would even realize they’re pregnant. The state Senate passed the bill, which also restricts telehealth access to the abortion pill, on Monday; the House, whose version of the bill doesn’t even offer a rape exception, will vote on it this week. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has, of course, vowed to sign the ban into law.
As Republicans radically shift the Overton window to the right in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned, I would just like to remind everyone that six-week abortion bans are violent, extreme, and unacceptable. They amount to a total ban on a safe, common health care procedure—especially in a state like Florida, where a pregnant person has to make two in-person doctor visits and endure a 24-hour waiting period in between to access abortion, which Vox’s Rachel M. Cohen points out is “a challenging logistical burden at 15 weeks and would be nearly impossible at six.” And as numerous doctors have pointed out—a six-week-old embryo is a clump of cells that is roughly the size of half a TicTac mint. It is not a person.
It’s worth remembering right now that just a few years ago, many Republican lawmakers and anti-abortion activists regarded six-week bans as being too extreme for their political calculations. In 2018, then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) vetoed one such bill, with a handful of Republicans in the legislature opposing it, too. NPR noted that even Ohio’s Right to Life chapter deemed the so-called fetal “heartbeat” bill “too radical.”