A bill reducing the amount of time during a pregnancy in which an abortion is allowed -- along with an amendment adding an exception for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest -- cleared a Senate committee on Wednesday.
Sen. Jason Rapert, the Senate sponsor of House Bill 1439, said the amendment was being offered "in consultation with the governor's office and some members."
It would preserve the exception for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest in the current law, which bars abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Like the current law, HB1439 also includes an exception for when an abortion is necessary to preserve the life of the woman or prevent the irreversible "impairment of a major bodily function."
HB1439 would ban doctors from performing an abortion on a woman more than 18 weeks after the first day of the woman's last period.
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That would shorten the time when an abortion is allowed by about four weeks compared with the current law, which bans abortions after 20 weeks of the probable time when the egg cell was fertilized.
Rapert said the change is being proposed "based on continuing science and continuing acknowledgment of the abilities of these babies to feel pain."
Gloria Pedro, Arkansas manager of public policy and organizing for Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes, told the Senate Committee on Public Health, Welfare and Labor that the bill would violate the U.S. Constitution and interfere with a woman's ability to make medical decisions.
"The reality is that abortion later in pregnancy is rare, and it often happens under complex circumstances, the kind of situations where a woman and her doctor need every medical option available to them," Pedro said.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based research group that supports abortion rights, 17 other states ban abortions more than 20 weeks after fertilization. Two other states, Mississippi and North Carolina, bar it more than 18 weeks after fertilization.
Sponsored in the House by Rep. Robin Lundstrum, R-Elm Springs, HB1439 passed the House 77-13 on Feb. 25. The all-Republican Senate committee on Wednesday approved it in a voice vote, with no members dissenting. It next goes to the full Senate.
A Section on 03/07/2019