https://ift.tt/tIhnjUl on Wednesday became the first state to enact a law modeled after a Texas statute that bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy and that can be enforced through lawsuits to avoid constitutional court challenges.
Republican Governor Brad Little signed into law the measure that allows people who would have been family members to sue a doctor who performed an abortion after cardiac activity had been detected in an embryo. Still, he said he had concerns about whether the law was constitutional.
“I stand in solidarity with all Idahoans who seek to protect the lives of preborn babies,” Little wrote in a letter to Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin, who is also president of the Senate.
Yet he also noted: “While I support the pro-life policy in this legislation, I fear the novel civil enforcement mechanism will in short order be proven both unconstitutional and unwise.”
The law in the conservative state is scheduled to take effect 30 days after the signing, but court challenges are expected. Opponents call it unconstitutional, noting six weeks is before many women know they’re pregnant.
Advanced technology can detect the first flutter of electric activity within an embryo’s cells as early as six weeks. This flutter isn’t a beating heart; it’s cardiac activity that will eventually become a heart. An embryo is termed a fetus after the eighth week of pregnancy, and the actual heart begins to form between the ninth and 12th weeks of pregnancy.
The law allows the father, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles of a “preborn child” to each sue an abortion provider for a minimum of $20,000 in damages within four years after the abortion. Rapists can’t file a lawsuit under the law, but a rapist’s relatives could.
‘Vigilante aspect’