North Dakota Bans Abortion for Genetic Defects

Babies with genetic diseases or developmental disorders deserve love, kindness, and respect... but embryos and fetuses are not babies. They exist inside the pregnant woman, wholly dependent on her alone for biological life-support. They do not have a right to life. Rather, the pregnant woman has a right to do whatever she pleases with her own body.

Fetal abnormalities are a darn good reason to terminate a pregnancy, as most people are not financially or emotionally prepared to care for a severely handicapped child, potentially in perpetuity. (Hence, the 90% abortion rate in such cases.)

North Dakota has banned such abortions. For people unable to travel out-of-state, the results will be disastrous.

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North Dakota Passes Personhood Legislation

Here's some very bad news from North Dakota, particularly for couples suffering from infertility:

North Dakota's Senate approved two anti-abortion bills on Monday that would ban the destruction of human embryos and outlaw abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on the disputed premise that at that point a fetus can feel pain.

Senators voted 30-17 to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The measure is a challenge to the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion up until viability, usually at 22 to 24 weeks.

The embryo measure narrowly passed 24-23, with the full Senate present. The measure's aim is to prohibit the intentional destruction of embryos and to regulate in-vitro fertilization, in which a woman's egg is fertilized outside her body. The bill defines a human being as "an individual member of the species homo sapiens at every stage of development."

For more on what's wrong with such "personhood" laws, read The "Personhood" Movement Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters that Rights Begin at Birth, Not Conception by Ari Armstrong and myself.

Also, worse might be coming from North Dakota:

The North Dakota House this month also passed a bill that would ban doctors from performing an abortion if a fetal heartbeat were detected. The House also has passed a bill would prevent women from having abortions based on gender selection or a genetic defect, such as Down syndrome.

Every restriction on abortion means forcing the burdens of pregnancy -- and likely motherhood -- on unprepared, incapable, and unwilling women. That's a violation of their right to life, and it's a serious moral evil.

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