President Donald Trump's call for a ban on late-term abortions is unlikely to prevail in Congress, but Republican legislators in several states are pushing ahead with their own tough anti-abortion bills that they hope can pass muster with the Supreme Court. Two bills proposing to outlaw abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, advanced out of House and Senate committees in the Mississippi Legislature this week, with GOP Gov. John Kasich twice vetoed the measure, but his GOP successor, Mike DeWine, has pledged to sign it. Bill Lee and the top two GOP state lawmakers say they support the measure. Nonetheless, anti-abortion legislators and activists across the U.S. believe Trump has bolstered their cause with his appointments of conservative judges Neil Gorsuch, in 2017, and Brett Kavanaugh, in 2018, to the Supreme Court.

Source: Economic Times February 07, 2019 06:00 UTC