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Arkansas Adopts US’s Most Restrictive Abortion Law

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Photo Credit: Helga WeberArkansas soon will have the nation’s most restrictive abortion law – a near-ban on the procedure from the 12th week of pregnancy onward – unless a lawsuit or court action intervenes.

Lawmakers in the Republican-dominated Legislature defied Gov. Mike Beebe, overriding the Democrat’s veto. The House voted 56-33 on Wednesday to override Beebe’s veto, a day after the Senate voted to do the same.

The votes come less than a week after the Legislature overrode a veto of a separate bill banning most abortions starting in the 20th week of pregnancy. That bill took effect immediately after the final override vote, whereas the 12-week ban won’t take effect until this summer.

Abortion rights proponents already have said they’ll sue to block the 12-week ban from taking effect. Beebe warned lawmakers that both measures would end up wasting taxpayers’ money with the state defending them in court, where, he said, they are likely to fail.

The measures’ supporters, who expected court challenges, were undaunted. “Not the governor, nor anyone else other than the courts, can determine if something is constitutional or unconstitutional,” Rep. Bruce Westerman, a Republican from Hot Springs, said in urging his colleagues to override Beebe.

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Rubio Introduces Bill to Stop Secret Abortions on Teenagers

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Photo Credit: Life NewsSenator Marco Rubio is introducing a a major pro-life bill, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, today that would stop secret abortions on teenagers.

The bill would require an abortion practitioner to notify a parent before performing an abortion on a minor who resides in a different state. It would also make it a crime for a non-parent to transport a minor across state lines to evade a parental notification law.

National Right to Life originally helped develop the bill in 2005 and the House of Representatives approved it 2005 and again in 2006, but died in the Senate when most Democratic senators supported a filibuster.

In a February 12 letter urging senators to co-sponsor the new bill, NRLC said, “Parental notification or parental consent laws, consistent with existing Supreme Court case law, are in effect in more than half the states. However, these laws are often circumvented — activity that is actively encouraged by abortion clinics’ out-of-state advertising in non-notification states, highlighting the avoidance of parental notification as a selling point. Only Congress has the authority to deal with this interstate activity, and the CIANA would do so.”

In the House of Representatives, the CIANA will be re-introduced by Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, also a Florida Republican. During the 2011-2012 Congress, her bill gathered 172 cosponsors in the House.

Read more from this story HERE.

Planned Parenthood Challenges New South Dakota Abortion Law

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A law scheduled to go into effect July 1 to require women to wait 72 hours and consult a crisis pregnancy center adviser before getting an abortion violates First Amendment rights, according to a lawsuit filed Friday by Planned Parenthood in U.S. District Court in Sioux Falls, S.D.

Calling South Dakota’s abortion laws the most burdensome in the nation, Planned Parenthood said that HB 1217 aims to misinform pregnant women with the intent of dissuading them from getting an abortion.

“Under the pretext of ensuring the patient’s decision to have an abortion is ‘voluntary, uncoerced, and informed,’ the law has both the purpose and the effect of severely restricting access to abortion services, and violates patients’ and physicians’ First Amendment rights against compelled speech and patients’ right to informational privacy,” Planned Parenthood said in a written statement.

HB 1217 was passed in March and aims to toughen the state’s current 24-hour mandatory waiting period. The law requires physicians to provide women with a list of “pregnancy help centers” where they must go to get “written proof” that they sought counseling before getting an abortion.

A woman must also be given the opportunity to view a sonogram and receive literature describing the risks associated with abortion.

Read More at Fox News