Abortion

North Dakota House Passes Ban on Gender or Genetic Abnormalities, Heartbeat Ban

While parts of the country were being blanketed by snow this weekend, the North Dakota legislature kept right on plowing ahead through a massive list of abortion bans and restrictions.

Rep. Kylie Oversen. www.kylieoversen.com

While parts of the country were being blanketed by snow this past weekend, the North Dakota legislature kept right on plowing ahead through a massive list of abortion bans and restrictions. Friday, the House voted to ban abortions that are allegedly done for so-called “gender selection” or any abortion done in the case of a genetic issue with the fetus, a new specialized ban being introduced with the blessings of Americans United for Life as a pet model legislation bill.

One of the key figures debating the bill was Democratic Rep. Kylie Oversen, who was born with spina bifida. According to Inforum, Rep. Oversen strongly opposed the bill because “the statistics offered were outdated, it is an intrusion of the confidential relationships between the physician and patient and does not provide language to allow a woman to abort her child even after it has died in the womb.”

The Senate also passes a ban on abortions after the point in which an embryonic heartbeat could be detected—in some cases before a woman may even know she was pregnant. That bill passed 63-28-3 with no debate.

Earlier in the week, the Senate voted to approve a bill that would force Red River Women’s Clinic, the state’s only public abortion provider, to obtain hospital admitting privileges in order to continue performing abortions. It also voted to put an amendment out to the voters to ask them if they want to grant legal rights to fertilized eggs, an amendment that has been voted down every time it has come up anywhere in the country. Those bills have yet to be heard in the House.