North Dakota Lawmakers Have Plenty of Anti-Abortion Bills to Choose From

<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?searchterm=fetal+heartbeat&search_group=&lang=en&search_source=search_form#id=85265080&src=28699e94bbc20e656d26a8e5d64b31e8-1-1">Sharon Eisenzopf</a>/Shutterstock

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In North Dakota, state legislators may soon have to decide when they believe life begins. Two measures—one implying it begins at conception and another suggesting it starts when a fetal heartbeat is detectable—were up for debate this week in legislative committees.

On Tuesday, state senators discussed three different “personhood” bills in the Judiciary Committee. The Bismark Tribune has the rundown:

  • Senate Concurrent Resolution 4009: This would declare an inalienable right to life at all stages of development. SCR4009 also calls for a 2014 vote to insert language affirming that right into the state Constitution.
  • Senate Bill 2302: Creates a Right To Life Act. SB2302 also bans abortions except in the case of saving a woman’s life in the event of a medical emergency. It also bars the use of chemicals for abortions.
  • Senate Bill 2303: Defines a human being as a person at all stages of development. Would allow an abortion in the event of a medical emergency that could endanger a woman’s life.

    Those are in addition to another bill, SB2305, which would require all doctors performing abortions in the state to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. Much like in Mississippi, where a similar bill became law last year, this bill threatens to shut down the state’s lone abortion provider.

    Over in the North Dakota House, lawmakers debated a “heartbeat” bill on Wednesday that would make it illegal to perform an abortion if the doctor can detect a heartbeat—which can be as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

    Call me a stickler for consistency, but I don’t see how one could vote for both these bills. Does life begin at conception, or when you can hear a heartbeat, or at some other arbitrary, Roe-violating benchmark? I mean, I do get that it’s political; a “heartbeat” bill is probably easier to pass, and it doesn’t threaten birth control and in vitro fertilization in the same way these “personhood” measures do. 

    Meanwhile, as I reported earlier this week, North Dakota lawmakers are also trying to block funding for an educational program designed to prevent pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases in at-risk teenagers because they’re upset that Planned Parenthood would be running the program.

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    WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

    “Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

    That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

    That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

    Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

    This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

    “This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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    And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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