Republicans Eye Nationwide 6-Week Abortion Ban
Overturning Roe v. Wade is not the GOP's end goal; it's the beginning of their plan.
AbortionPolitics
In what may be the most notable example of “saying the quiet part out loud” in recent memory, anti-abortion activists and lawmakers are now openly strategizing on how to pass a nationwide six-week abortion ban if Republicans retake power in the midterms (which is looking likely).
The Washington Post reports that big players in the anti-abortion movement won’t be satisfied if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, letting individual states decide whether to ban abortion—they want to pass a national ban on abortion after six weeks that would be imposed even in blue states. If such a bill were to pass and be signed into law by a Republican president, it would eliminate the hope of abortion-rights havens and subject millions of pregnancy-capable people to surveillance, criminalization, and the health risks of pregnancy.
While some anti-abortion activists want to pursue abortion bans at 15 weeks—the law at the center of the Supreme Court case and like those recently passed in Arizona, Florida, and Kentucky—others say that doesn’t go far enough. Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, which is set to become the first state to successfully copy Texas’s six-week ban, told the Post that Republican senators have had multiple meetings about pursuing a national six-week ban and he would support such legislation. An anonymous source said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) would introduce the bill in the Senate; Ernst didn’t respond to the Post’s request for comment.