Southern legislator setting stage for Roe's demise

Despite there being no right to abortion in the Constitution, the high court's 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade forced abortion on all 50 states – resulting over the years in the killing of more than 65 million babies in the womb. Now, Arkansas State Senator Jason Rapert has introduced SB6 to put the court to the test.

"This bill is actually a rewrite of the trigger bill that we passed in our state just two years ago that I sponsored – and that bill said that as soon as Roe v. Wade is overturned by the United States Supreme Court that Arkansas immediately would abolish abortion except to save the life of a mother," he explains.

Rapert's new bill is the trigger that would put the new law into effect if and when Roe is overturned. SB6 seeks to abolish abortion now, but is designed to be challenged in court to hopefully convince the nation's highest court to considering abolishing its 1973 ruling.

The Republican legislator points out that the Supreme Court "realized it made a bad decision [regarding] slavery in the 1800s, came back and overturned their own precedent on that issue and abolished slavery." In the same way, he tells One News Now, "it's time for America to abolish abortion as well."

According to Rapert, there's a good chance of that happening because of the number of conservative judges appointed to the federal bench. Based on his calculation, six of the nine judges on the Supreme Court are conservative.

Study shows abortion NOT an 'essential medical service'

Due to the pandemic, 33 states banned elective medical procedures; 13 of those states included surgical abortions in their ban. A recent study by researchers at the University of Kansas reveals that had the effect of reducing visits to abortion clinics, likely resulting in fewer abortions.

Dr. Randall K. O'Bannon of National Right to Life Committee tells One News Now that those conducting the study compared a several-month period from 2019 to the same period this year – and discovered a big drop in foot traffic.

"They dropped everywhere in the United States, whether the governor had put in some sort of condition that said only to be limited to 'essential services' or whether just generally people were avoiding doctor visits and so forth," O'Bannon shares. "But it fell like 32% across the board. That's about a third."

And in states where governors banned medical visits unless they were essential, the visits dropped another 23%. O'Bannon says it remains to be seen if that means more babies were born – "but it's an indication that there probably were," he adds.

"[It shows that women are] not going and having abortions," he continues. "They're certainly not going to have those abortions at the clinics – and these authors actually … took that data and they estimated that abortions were going to drop probably a hundred thousand or more."

If that's the case, it would represent about 1/8th of the predicted tally of annual abortions.

As O'Bannon states of the study: "When these [abortion] services are not pushed or not readily available, many women will choose to carry and bear their babies, making clear that women do not consider abortion to be an 'essential medical service.'"