A Home panel heard hours of testimony Wednesday on a invoice that may develop Georgia’s regulation to fully ban and criminalize abortion, whereas even some anti-abortion teams oppose the measure.
No vote was taken on Home Invoice 441, and no vote is deliberate, however the shock late-session listening to drew a whole bunch of individuals to the state Capitol Wednesday who both pushed for the long-shot invoice or urged lawmakers to keep away from a invoice that they warned would undermine a widespread proposal to guard entry to in-vitro fertilization.
Signal-toting supporters of the invoice sang hymns and prayed aloud as opponents handed out stickers that mentioned “assist and compassion – not punishment” and held their very own counter-protest indicators in a cramped committee room earlier than the over-capacity crowd was ushered out into the hallway to attend their flip to have their say.
The general public airing of the controversial invoice Wednesday was tense and got here the day earlier than the Senate is predicted to finalize a bipartisan measure designed to guard entry to IVF. That invoice, Home Invoice 428, handed unanimously within the Home and was supported by the sponsors of the proposed whole ban on abortion.
“Tens of hundreds of infants, made within the picture of God, proceed to be murdered in our state yearly, all throughout the bounds of the present regulation. That have to be modified,” mentioned the invoice’s sponsor, Rep. Emory Dunahoo, a Gillsville Republican.
Georgia’s present regulation bans most abortions as soon as fetal cardiac exercise is detected, which is at about six weeks and earlier than many ladies know they’re pregnant. The regulation, which took impact in 2022 after Roe v. Wade was struck down, permits for just a few restricted exceptions, together with some – within the circumstances of rape and incest – that may be wiped away by Dunahoo’s invoice.
Below his invoice, abortions after fertilization could be deemed a murder. A pregnant lady might be charged with against the law, except she will show she was compelled into having the abortion.
However even distinguished anti-abortion advocates in Georgia argue the invoice goes too far. The Georgia Life Alliance submitted a letter to the Home Judiciary Non-Civil Committee opposing the invoice and objecting to the listening to even being held.
“No matter one’s beliefs on entry to abortion, girls and women shouldn’t be additional traumatized from their abortion by the worry of felony prosecution,” wrote Claire Bartlett, the group’s government director, and Bryan Tyson, the group’s board chairman.
A former anti-abortion lobbyist in Georgia additionally testified towards the invoice Wednesday.
“That is simply actually dangerous laws, whether or not a lady has been sexually assaulted or is pregnant and going through a disaster,” mentioned Elizabeth Edmonds. “This isn’t compassion. This isn’t how Jesus would love us.”
A number of metro Atlanta medical doctors urged lawmakers to oppose the invoice, saying it will finish IVF remedy in Georgia.
Throughout IVF, medical doctors usually harvest and fertilize a number of eggs within the hope that no less than one leads to a profitable being pregnant. Unused embryos, that are solely days previous and barely seen to the bare eye, are sometimes allowed to thaw out and be destroyed.
Dr. Karenne Fru, who’s the founder and proprietor of a fertility clinic in Sandy Springs, mentioned she tells all her sufferers that they might begin out with 20 eggs however wind up with two embryos.
“Am I responsible of homicide? That makes me a serial killer. What? My entire life is doing God’s work,” Fru mentioned in impassioned feedback. “He mentioned, ‘Go forth and procreate.’ I’m doing that. Please. Simply let me proceed to do this. I can not go to jail as a result of I need to assist folks turn out to be mother and father, and this invoice criminalizes what I do.”
Rep. Charlice Byrd, a Woodstock Republican who’s a co-sponsor of the invoice, questioned one other one of many medical doctors how the measure would have an effect on IVF entry.
Dr. Kathryn C. Calhoun mentioned granting embryos full authorized personhood from the time of fertilization and making abortion a murder would deter medical doctors from providing seemingly authorized procedures.
Calhoun defined that it might probably take many embryos to achieve success and that typically these embryos cease rising within the lab as a result of they don’t seem to be wholesome sufficient to outlive.
“If our embryologists or our medical doctors or any of the suppliers in our clinic might be held criminally chargeable for the truth that an embryo didn’t make it in a dish by no fault of their very own, however simply by biology or God’s will or no matter you all need to consider about that, we wouldn’t be capable of observe,” Calhoun mentioned. “The menace and the hazard could be too actual to ourselves and our personal households to observe that within the state of Georgia.”
The invoice is a part of a nationwide effort backed by Finish Abortion Now, which is likely one of the male-run teams pushing for stringent anti-abortion restrictions and penalties. And lots of the proponents who spoke in favor of the invoice Wednesday had been from exterior of Georgia.
However not all of the supporters had been out-of-towners. Nikki Crannell mentioned she and her husband, who reside in Gainesville, reached out to the group. The couple mentioned they acknowledge it may take years of advocacy to get such a invoice handed in Georgia.
Crannell mentioned she has issues about IVF.
“These infants are infants made within the picture of God too and are simply sitting within the freezer, who additionally want a proper to life,” Crannell mentioned.
With the session set to finish April 4, Wednesday’s listening to will possible be essentially the most motion the invoice will get this yr, although it is going to nonetheless technically be in play when lawmakers return subsequent January. Extra average Republicans like Rep. Sharon Cooper say they’ve little interest in going additional than Georgia’s present regulation.
Cooper, who chairs the Home Public and Neighborhood Well being Committee, additionally mentioned she agrees with issues that Dunahoo’s invoice would threaten IVF entry.
“I consider that we’ve got gone so far as we must always go on that concern,” the Marietta Republican informed a reporter Wednesday, referring to abortion. “And that invoice additionally interferes with, or would intervene with, people who find themselves attempting to get pregnant utilizing in vitro, and I’m actually towards that. And it’s a listening to solely, however I actually hope that that’s all it’s, a listening to.”
The Senate is ready to vote on a invoice that may shield entry to IVF remedy however wouldn’t regulate it. That invoice is a precedence of Home Speaker Jon Burns, a Newington Republican who reiterated his assist for the proposal Wednesday when requested via his spokesperson concerning the listening to on the strict abortion invoice.
“Whereas the Home’s invoice codifying protections for IVF remains to be shifting via the legislative course of, it is going to no doubt strengthen the flexibility of numerous Georgia households to carry life into the world,” Burns mentioned in an announcement.
However reproductive rights advocates like Allison Coffman, who’s the manager director of the Amplify Georgia Collaborative, argued that it’s dangerous to even maintain a listening to on what she described as one of the excessive types of an abortion ban.
“We’re letting it see the sunshine of day,” Coffman mentioned. “We’re saying that that is one thing that this committee, that this Legislature thinks is vital sufficient to place to public dialogue.”
Georgia Recorder reporter Ross Williams contributed to this report.
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