Tuesday, May 21, 2019. New York City – Today, over 500 “Stop The Bans” rallies took place across the United States of America.
Women and men gathered at Foley Square Park in Manhattan, New York City, to demand Republicans stop attacking women’s rights.
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Planned Parenthood Action Fund, one of the organizers said, “An increasing number of states across the country are introducing unconstitutional bills that would ban abortion at six weeks of pregnancy — before most women even know they’re pregnant. In just the first three months of 2019, 16 states filed, moved, or enacted six-week abortion bans.
Each of these bills would become the most extreme abortion ban in the country if enacted and enforced. The politicians behind these bans have one goal: to push abortion out of reach, outlawing it in all but name.
Six-week abortion bans are nothing new — but in 2019, their number has increased at an unprecedented pace.
In 2011, Ohio politicians introduced the nation’s first six-week ban (and have since proposed four similar bills). Ohio’s initial attempts never went into effect, but they paved the way for other states to push equally dangerous copycat laws.
North Dakota was the first state to enact a six-week ban in 2013. Iowa became the second in 2018. Courts blocked both laws for being unconstitutional, but the six-week bans have kept coming — and their numbers have skyrocketed.
Some of these bills also criminalize abortion providers, and would keep women from accessing abortion in instances of rape and incest, without exceptions. Other six-week bans, like the one in Georgia, would require women to undergo a medically unnecessary transvaginal ultrasound — and would require sexual-assault survivors to obtain and provide an official police report. Moreover, the Georgia bill would subject all people who experience the termination of a pregnancy to criminal liability, exposing any woman who has a miscarriage to the risk of criminal charges.”
