Over the past two months, Ohio, Georgia, and Missouri have recently passed stricter versions of their own abortion bills – referred to popularly as “heartbeat bills” – which ban abortion after a heartbeat can be detected in a fetus (often at about six weeks and well before most women even know they are pregnant). Last Tuesday, Alabama governor Kay Ivey signed into law the nation’s strictest abortion law. It bans all abortion except in the case of “serious” health risks to the mother. This law is explicitly positioned to be appealed, which would set it on a trajectory to be heard in the United States Supreme Court. The bill’s sponsor, Republican Representative Terry Collins, said, “The bill is about challenging Roe v. Wade.” While the Supreme Court can select the cases it hears in each session, the recent proliferation of abortion-related legislation increases the likelihood that one of these cases will reach the highest court in the land, on which a majority of conservative judges currently sit.
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