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As constituents clamor for ivermectin, Republican politicians embrace the cause
When state senators in South Carolina held two hearings in September about COVID-19 treatments, they got an earful on the benefits of ivermectin — which many of the lawmakers echoed, sharing experiences of their own loved ones.
The demands for access to the drug were loud and insistent, despite federal regulators’ recent warning against using the drug to treat COVID.
Ivermectin is a generic drug that has been used for decades to treat river blindness, scabies, and even head lice. Veterinarians also use it, in different formulations and dosages, to treat animals for parasites like worms.
At one of the South Carolina hearings, Pressley Stutts III reminded the panel that his father, a prominent GOP leader in the state, had died of COVID a month earlier. He believed ivermectin could have helped him. But doctors at the hospital wouldn’t discuss it.
“I went every bit as far as I could without getting myself thrown in jail trying to save my father’s life,” he told the panel, as lawmakers offered condolences.
“What is going on here?” he asked, with the passion in his voice growing. “My dad’s dead!”
After the pandemic began, scientists launched clinical trials to see if ivermectin could help as a treatment for COVID. Some are still ongoing. But providers in mainstream medicine have rejected it as a COVID treatment, citing the poor quality of the studies to date, and two notorious “preprint” studies that were circulated before they were peer-reviewed, and later taken off the internet because of inaccurate and flawed data.
On Aug. 26, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised clinicians not to use ivermectin, citing insufficient evidence of benefit and pointing out that unauthorized use had led to accidental poisonings. Vaccination, the CDC reiterated, is still the best way to avoid serious illness and death from the coronavirus.
But many Americans remain convinced ivermectin could be beneficial, and some politicians appear to be listening to them.
“If we have medications out here that are working — or seem to be working — I think it’s absolutely horrible that we’re not trying them,” said Republican state Sen. Tom Corbin in South Carolina. He questioned doctors who had come to the Statehouse to counter efforts to move ivermectin into mainstream use.
The doctors challenged the implied insult that they weren’t following best practices: “Any implication that any of us would do anything to withhold effective treatments from our patients is really insulting to our profession,” said Dr. Annie Andrews, a professor at the Medical University of South Carolina who has cared for COVID patients throughout the pandemic.
Instead of listening to the medical consensus, some politicians in states like South Carolina seem to be taking cues from doctors on the fringe. During one September hearing, state senators patched in a call from Dr. Pierre Kory.
Last year, Dr. Kory started a nonprofit called the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, which promotes ivermectin. He said he’s not making money by prescribing the drug, though the nonprofit does solicit donations and has not yet filed required financial documents with the IRS.
Dr. Kory acknowledged his medical opinions have landed him on “an island.”
He first testified about ivermectin to a U.S. Senate committee in December. That video went viral. Although it was taken down by YouTube, his Senate testimony prompted patients across the country to ask for ivermectin when they fell ill.
By late August, outpatient prescriptions had jumped 24-fold. Calls to poison control hotlines had tripled, mostly related to people taking ivermectin formulations meant for livestock.
Dr. Kory said he has effectively lost two jobs over his views on ivermectin. At his current hospital in Wisconsin, where he runs the intensive care unit two weeks a month, managers called him to a meeting in September, where he was informed he could no longer prescribe ivermectin. He’d been giving it to “every patient with COVID,” he said.
“After the pharma-geddon that was unleashed, yeah, they shut it down,” he told the South Carolina lawmakers. “And I will tell you that many hospitals across the country had already shut it down months ago.”
Framing the ivermectin fight as a battle against faceless federal agencies and big pharmaceutical corporations appealed to Americans already suspicious of the science behind the pandemic and the approved COVID vaccines.
Dr. Kory suggests success stories with COVID treatments in other parts of the world have been suppressed to instead promote the vaccines.
In an interview with NPR, Dr. Kory said he regrets the flashpoint he helped ignite.
“I feel really bad for the patients, and I feel really bad for the doctors,” he told NPR. “Both of them — both the patients and doctors — are trapped.”
Patients are still demanding the treatment, but doctors sympathetic to their wishes are being told by their health systems not to try it.
Now conservatives in elected office are sensing political payoff if they step in to help patients get the drug. State legislatures, including those in Tennessee and Alaska, are debating various ways to increase access to ivermectin — with proposals such as shielding doctors from repercussions for prescribing it, or forcing pharmacists to fill questionable prescriptions.
The Montana State News Bureau reported that the state’s Republican attorney general dispatched a state trooper to a hospital in Helena where a politically connected patient was dying of COVID. Her family was asking for ivermectin.
In a statement, St. Peter’s Hospital said doctors and nurses were “harassed and threatened by three public officials.”
“These officials have no medical training or experience, yet they were insisting our providers give treatments for COVID-19 that are not authorized, clinically approved, or within the guidelines established by the FDA and the CDC,” the statement added.
On Oct. 14, the Republican attorney general in Nebraska addressed the controversy, issuing a nearly 50-page legal opinion arguing that doctors who consider the “off-label” use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for COVID are acting within the parameters of their state medical licenses, as long as the physician obtains appropriate informed consent from a patient.
Some patients have filed lawsuits to obtain ivermectin, with mixed success. A patient in Illinois was denied. But other hospitals, including one in Ohio, have been forced to administer the drug against the objections of their physicians.
Even as they gain powerful political supporters, some ivermectin fans say they’re now avoiding the health care system — because they’ve lost faith in it.
Lesa Berry, of Richmond, Va., had a friend who died earlier this year of COVID. The doctors refused to use ivermectin, despite requests from Ms. Berry and the patient’s daughter.
They know better now, she said.
“My first attempt would have been to keep her out of the hospital,” Ms. Berry said. “Because right now when you go to the hospital, they only give you what’s on the CDC protocol.”
Ms. Berry and her husband have purchased their own supply of ivermectin, which they keep at home.
This story is from a partnership that includes NPR, Nashville Public Radio and KHN. KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
When state senators in South Carolina held two hearings in September about COVID-19 treatments, they got an earful on the benefits of ivermectin — which many of the lawmakers echoed, sharing experiences of their own loved ones.
The demands for access to the drug were loud and insistent, despite federal regulators’ recent warning against using the drug to treat COVID.
Ivermectin is a generic drug that has been used for decades to treat river blindness, scabies, and even head lice. Veterinarians also use it, in different formulations and dosages, to treat animals for parasites like worms.
At one of the South Carolina hearings, Pressley Stutts III reminded the panel that his father, a prominent GOP leader in the state, had died of COVID a month earlier. He believed ivermectin could have helped him. But doctors at the hospital wouldn’t discuss it.
“I went every bit as far as I could without getting myself thrown in jail trying to save my father’s life,” he told the panel, as lawmakers offered condolences.
“What is going on here?” he asked, with the passion in his voice growing. “My dad’s dead!”
After the pandemic began, scientists launched clinical trials to see if ivermectin could help as a treatment for COVID. Some are still ongoing. But providers in mainstream medicine have rejected it as a COVID treatment, citing the poor quality of the studies to date, and two notorious “preprint” studies that were circulated before they were peer-reviewed, and later taken off the internet because of inaccurate and flawed data.
On Aug. 26, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised clinicians not to use ivermectin, citing insufficient evidence of benefit and pointing out that unauthorized use had led to accidental poisonings. Vaccination, the CDC reiterated, is still the best way to avoid serious illness and death from the coronavirus.
But many Americans remain convinced ivermectin could be beneficial, and some politicians appear to be listening to them.
“If we have medications out here that are working — or seem to be working — I think it’s absolutely horrible that we’re not trying them,” said Republican state Sen. Tom Corbin in South Carolina. He questioned doctors who had come to the Statehouse to counter efforts to move ivermectin into mainstream use.
The doctors challenged the implied insult that they weren’t following best practices: “Any implication that any of us would do anything to withhold effective treatments from our patients is really insulting to our profession,” said Dr. Annie Andrews, a professor at the Medical University of South Carolina who has cared for COVID patients throughout the pandemic.
Instead of listening to the medical consensus, some politicians in states like South Carolina seem to be taking cues from doctors on the fringe. During one September hearing, state senators patched in a call from Dr. Pierre Kory.
Last year, Dr. Kory started a nonprofit called the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, which promotes ivermectin. He said he’s not making money by prescribing the drug, though the nonprofit does solicit donations and has not yet filed required financial documents with the IRS.
Dr. Kory acknowledged his medical opinions have landed him on “an island.”
He first testified about ivermectin to a U.S. Senate committee in December. That video went viral. Although it was taken down by YouTube, his Senate testimony prompted patients across the country to ask for ivermectin when they fell ill.
By late August, outpatient prescriptions had jumped 24-fold. Calls to poison control hotlines had tripled, mostly related to people taking ivermectin formulations meant for livestock.
Dr. Kory said he has effectively lost two jobs over his views on ivermectin. At his current hospital in Wisconsin, where he runs the intensive care unit two weeks a month, managers called him to a meeting in September, where he was informed he could no longer prescribe ivermectin. He’d been giving it to “every patient with COVID,” he said.
“After the pharma-geddon that was unleashed, yeah, they shut it down,” he told the South Carolina lawmakers. “And I will tell you that many hospitals across the country had already shut it down months ago.”
Framing the ivermectin fight as a battle against faceless federal agencies and big pharmaceutical corporations appealed to Americans already suspicious of the science behind the pandemic and the approved COVID vaccines.
Dr. Kory suggests success stories with COVID treatments in other parts of the world have been suppressed to instead promote the vaccines.
In an interview with NPR, Dr. Kory said he regrets the flashpoint he helped ignite.
“I feel really bad for the patients, and I feel really bad for the doctors,” he told NPR. “Both of them — both the patients and doctors — are trapped.”
Patients are still demanding the treatment, but doctors sympathetic to their wishes are being told by their health systems not to try it.
Now conservatives in elected office are sensing political payoff if they step in to help patients get the drug. State legislatures, including those in Tennessee and Alaska, are debating various ways to increase access to ivermectin — with proposals such as shielding doctors from repercussions for prescribing it, or forcing pharmacists to fill questionable prescriptions.
The Montana State News Bureau reported that the state’s Republican attorney general dispatched a state trooper to a hospital in Helena where a politically connected patient was dying of COVID. Her family was asking for ivermectin.
In a statement, St. Peter’s Hospital said doctors and nurses were “harassed and threatened by three public officials.”
“These officials have no medical training or experience, yet they were insisting our providers give treatments for COVID-19 that are not authorized, clinically approved, or within the guidelines established by the FDA and the CDC,” the statement added.
On Oct. 14, the Republican attorney general in Nebraska addressed the controversy, issuing a nearly 50-page legal opinion arguing that doctors who consider the “off-label” use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for COVID are acting within the parameters of their state medical licenses, as long as the physician obtains appropriate informed consent from a patient.
Some patients have filed lawsuits to obtain ivermectin, with mixed success. A patient in Illinois was denied. But other hospitals, including one in Ohio, have been forced to administer the drug against the objections of their physicians.
Even as they gain powerful political supporters, some ivermectin fans say they’re now avoiding the health care system — because they’ve lost faith in it.
Lesa Berry, of Richmond, Va., had a friend who died earlier this year of COVID. The doctors refused to use ivermectin, despite requests from Ms. Berry and the patient’s daughter.
They know better now, she said.
“My first attempt would have been to keep her out of the hospital,” Ms. Berry said. “Because right now when you go to the hospital, they only give you what’s on the CDC protocol.”
Ms. Berry and her husband have purchased their own supply of ivermectin, which they keep at home.
This story is from a partnership that includes NPR, Nashville Public Radio and KHN. KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
When state senators in South Carolina held two hearings in September about COVID-19 treatments, they got an earful on the benefits of ivermectin — which many of the lawmakers echoed, sharing experiences of their own loved ones.
The demands for access to the drug were loud and insistent, despite federal regulators’ recent warning against using the drug to treat COVID.
Ivermectin is a generic drug that has been used for decades to treat river blindness, scabies, and even head lice. Veterinarians also use it, in different formulations and dosages, to treat animals for parasites like worms.
At one of the South Carolina hearings, Pressley Stutts III reminded the panel that his father, a prominent GOP leader in the state, had died of COVID a month earlier. He believed ivermectin could have helped him. But doctors at the hospital wouldn’t discuss it.
“I went every bit as far as I could without getting myself thrown in jail trying to save my father’s life,” he told the panel, as lawmakers offered condolences.
“What is going on here?” he asked, with the passion in his voice growing. “My dad’s dead!”
After the pandemic began, scientists launched clinical trials to see if ivermectin could help as a treatment for COVID. Some are still ongoing. But providers in mainstream medicine have rejected it as a COVID treatment, citing the poor quality of the studies to date, and two notorious “preprint” studies that were circulated before they were peer-reviewed, and later taken off the internet because of inaccurate and flawed data.
On Aug. 26, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised clinicians not to use ivermectin, citing insufficient evidence of benefit and pointing out that unauthorized use had led to accidental poisonings. Vaccination, the CDC reiterated, is still the best way to avoid serious illness and death from the coronavirus.
But many Americans remain convinced ivermectin could be beneficial, and some politicians appear to be listening to them.
“If we have medications out here that are working — or seem to be working — I think it’s absolutely horrible that we’re not trying them,” said Republican state Sen. Tom Corbin in South Carolina. He questioned doctors who had come to the Statehouse to counter efforts to move ivermectin into mainstream use.
The doctors challenged the implied insult that they weren’t following best practices: “Any implication that any of us would do anything to withhold effective treatments from our patients is really insulting to our profession,” said Dr. Annie Andrews, a professor at the Medical University of South Carolina who has cared for COVID patients throughout the pandemic.
Instead of listening to the medical consensus, some politicians in states like South Carolina seem to be taking cues from doctors on the fringe. During one September hearing, state senators patched in a call from Dr. Pierre Kory.
Last year, Dr. Kory started a nonprofit called the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, which promotes ivermectin. He said he’s not making money by prescribing the drug, though the nonprofit does solicit donations and has not yet filed required financial documents with the IRS.
Dr. Kory acknowledged his medical opinions have landed him on “an island.”
He first testified about ivermectin to a U.S. Senate committee in December. That video went viral. Although it was taken down by YouTube, his Senate testimony prompted patients across the country to ask for ivermectin when they fell ill.
By late August, outpatient prescriptions had jumped 24-fold. Calls to poison control hotlines had tripled, mostly related to people taking ivermectin formulations meant for livestock.
Dr. Kory said he has effectively lost two jobs over his views on ivermectin. At his current hospital in Wisconsin, where he runs the intensive care unit two weeks a month, managers called him to a meeting in September, where he was informed he could no longer prescribe ivermectin. He’d been giving it to “every patient with COVID,” he said.
“After the pharma-geddon that was unleashed, yeah, they shut it down,” he told the South Carolina lawmakers. “And I will tell you that many hospitals across the country had already shut it down months ago.”
Framing the ivermectin fight as a battle against faceless federal agencies and big pharmaceutical corporations appealed to Americans already suspicious of the science behind the pandemic and the approved COVID vaccines.
Dr. Kory suggests success stories with COVID treatments in other parts of the world have been suppressed to instead promote the vaccines.
In an interview with NPR, Dr. Kory said he regrets the flashpoint he helped ignite.
“I feel really bad for the patients, and I feel really bad for the doctors,” he told NPR. “Both of them — both the patients and doctors — are trapped.”
Patients are still demanding the treatment, but doctors sympathetic to their wishes are being told by their health systems not to try it.
Now conservatives in elected office are sensing political payoff if they step in to help patients get the drug. State legislatures, including those in Tennessee and Alaska, are debating various ways to increase access to ivermectin — with proposals such as shielding doctors from repercussions for prescribing it, or forcing pharmacists to fill questionable prescriptions.
The Montana State News Bureau reported that the state’s Republican attorney general dispatched a state trooper to a hospital in Helena where a politically connected patient was dying of COVID. Her family was asking for ivermectin.
In a statement, St. Peter’s Hospital said doctors and nurses were “harassed and threatened by three public officials.”
“These officials have no medical training or experience, yet they were insisting our providers give treatments for COVID-19 that are not authorized, clinically approved, or within the guidelines established by the FDA and the CDC,” the statement added.
On Oct. 14, the Republican attorney general in Nebraska addressed the controversy, issuing a nearly 50-page legal opinion arguing that doctors who consider the “off-label” use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for COVID are acting within the parameters of their state medical licenses, as long as the physician obtains appropriate informed consent from a patient.
Some patients have filed lawsuits to obtain ivermectin, with mixed success. A patient in Illinois was denied. But other hospitals, including one in Ohio, have been forced to administer the drug against the objections of their physicians.
Even as they gain powerful political supporters, some ivermectin fans say they’re now avoiding the health care system — because they’ve lost faith in it.
Lesa Berry, of Richmond, Va., had a friend who died earlier this year of COVID. The doctors refused to use ivermectin, despite requests from Ms. Berry and the patient’s daughter.
They know better now, she said.
“My first attempt would have been to keep her out of the hospital,” Ms. Berry said. “Because right now when you go to the hospital, they only give you what’s on the CDC protocol.”
Ms. Berry and her husband have purchased their own supply of ivermectin, which they keep at home.
This story is from a partnership that includes NPR, Nashville Public Radio and KHN. KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
‘Heartbeat bills’ give state lawmakers pause on antiabortion tactics
But the rush to regulate has exposed division among groups and lawmakers who consider themselves staunch abortion opponents.
On April 11, Ohio became the latest state to ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. For a long time, Ohio Right to Life supported a more gradual approach to restrict the procedure and deemed what’s come to be called a “heartbeat bill” too radical – until this year. Restricting abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected basically bans the procedure after 6 weeks’ gestation – before many women know they’re pregnant.
“We see the court as being much more favorable to prolife legislation than it has been in a generation,” spokeswoman Jamieson Gordon said. “So we figured this would be a good time to pursue the heartbeat bill as the next step in our incremental approach to end abortion on demand.”
The Ohio law contains no exception for pregnancies that are the result of rape or incest; it does have an exception for the life of the mother.
Some say the rush to pass these bills is about lawmakers competing to get their particular state’s law before the Supreme Court. The state that helps overturn Roe v. Wade would go down in history.
More than 250 bills restricting abortions have been filed in 41 states this year, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research and advocacy group.
“After the appointment of Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh, there really is just an environment in state legislatures to roll back abortion rights. And so we’re seeing these bans just fly through,” said Elizabeth Nash, who monitors state laws at Guttmacher.
But the speed of passage of some of these laws masks divisions about strategy and commitment to the cause within the antiabortion movement.
Tennessee infighting over ‘heartbeat bill’
In Tennessee, for instance, there’s a philosophical split between pragmatists and idealists.
A “heartbeat bill” in the state has had high-profile support, including from Tennessee’s new governor. But the Republican attorney general warned such a law would be difficult to defend in court. And several Republicans, swayed by that logic, voted no for the legislation.
“This is an issue that is extremely important to me. It’s the reason I got into politics many years ago,” Republican state Rep. Bill Dunn said as the House approved the measure over his objection earlier this year. Dunn has said he wants to stop abortion, but that will require strategy. He pointed out that no heartbeat bill has ever been enforced. And recent laws in Iowa and Kentucky have been immediately blocked in court. The same is expected for Ohio.
“No. 1, it’ll probably never save a life if we go by what’s happened in the past,” Rep. Dunn argued on the Tennessee House floor.
But it was money that ultimately stopped the heartbeat bill this year in Tennessee. (It stalled in committee, though the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee agreed to review the bill this summer.)
Senate Speaker Randy McNally, who also opposes abortion, said he has no interest in wasting tax dollars to make a point.
Even worse, in the view of Republicans who voted against the heartbeat bill, the state could end up paying the legal fees for groups that defend abortion.
“That is a big concern,” Sen. McNally said. “We don’t want to put money in their pockets.
The last time Tennessee had a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, it cost roughly $1.9 million. The experience was enough to give a few antiabortion crusaders some pause. They voted last week with Democrats for a 1-year delay on a heartbeat bill, vowing to study the issue over the summer.
Name-calling in Oklahoma
Even if it doesn’t result in a case that upends abortion law, heavily Republican legislatures like Oklahoma’s want to be ready.
“If Roe v. Wade ever gets overturned, we won’t be prepared,” Republican Senate Pro Tempore Greg Treat said while explaining his so-called trigger bill at a committee hearing in February.
Treat’s legislation, modeled after existing laws in a handful of states, would “trigger” a state ban on abortion and make it a felony if Roe were overturned. A handful of states, including Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota, already have trigger laws on the books.
Oklahoma has some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation, such as mandatory counseling and a 72-hour waiting period. But the most conservative antiabortion activists in the state want more immediate action. So they targeted Sen. Treat and other self-described “prolife” Republicans with protests, billboards and flyers, accusing them of not being antiabortion enough.
“I’ve been called every name in the book these past few weeks,” Sen. Treat said. “I’ve had my Christianity questioned. I’ve had a member of my own caucus hold a press conference and call me a hypocrite.”
In response, Sen. Treat abandoned the trigger bill.
Now he’s trying something else – an amendment to the state constitution that would reinforce that nothing in Oklahoma law “secures or protects” the right to abortion. But that’s still not antiabortion enough for some.
“It’s going to add on to that legacy that we have of death and just status quo prolife policy that does nothing,” said Republican state Sen. Joseph Silk.
Not far enough in Georgia
In Georgia, a “heartbeat bill” passed the legislature, but has paused at Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk. Supporters of abortion rights don’t want him to sign it, of course, but some antiabortion activists aren’t happy either.
“It really just does not go far enough in the protection of innocent human life,” said Georgia Right to Life executive director Zemmie Fleck, who argued that certain exceptions in his state’s bill – for abortions after rape or incest if the woman makes a police report – weaken it.
Gov. Kemp has until May 12 to sign or veto the measure.
Cost-as-no-objection Kentucky
The American Civil Liberties Union in Kentucky sued the day after a “heartbeat bill” was signed into law by Republican Gov. Matt Bevin. But even during his annual speech to the Kentucky legislature in February, Gov. Bevin acknowledged his intent to challenge Roe v. Wade.
“Some of these will go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. But at the end of the day, we will prevail because we stand on the side of right and we stand on the side of life,” he said.
Kentucky has become accustomed to defending abortion restrictions in court. Currently, one law that makes it a felony for a doctor to perform a common abortion in the second trimester has been suspended indefinitely.
It is unclear how much it costs Kentucky to defend abortion laws that are immediately challenged. In an emailed statement, Gov. Bevin administration spokesman Woody Maglinger wrote that the state is using in-house lawyers, and hasn’t hired outside counsel. He declined to provide a cost estimate on hours spent on these cases.
“It is impossible to place a price tag on human lives,” Mr. Maglinger wrote.
This story is part of a partnership that includes Nashville Public Radio, NPR, and Kaiser Health News. Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
But the rush to regulate has exposed division among groups and lawmakers who consider themselves staunch abortion opponents.
On April 11, Ohio became the latest state to ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. For a long time, Ohio Right to Life supported a more gradual approach to restrict the procedure and deemed what’s come to be called a “heartbeat bill” too radical – until this year. Restricting abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected basically bans the procedure after 6 weeks’ gestation – before many women know they’re pregnant.
“We see the court as being much more favorable to prolife legislation than it has been in a generation,” spokeswoman Jamieson Gordon said. “So we figured this would be a good time to pursue the heartbeat bill as the next step in our incremental approach to end abortion on demand.”
The Ohio law contains no exception for pregnancies that are the result of rape or incest; it does have an exception for the life of the mother.
Some say the rush to pass these bills is about lawmakers competing to get their particular state’s law before the Supreme Court. The state that helps overturn Roe v. Wade would go down in history.
More than 250 bills restricting abortions have been filed in 41 states this year, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research and advocacy group.
“After the appointment of Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh, there really is just an environment in state legislatures to roll back abortion rights. And so we’re seeing these bans just fly through,” said Elizabeth Nash, who monitors state laws at Guttmacher.
But the speed of passage of some of these laws masks divisions about strategy and commitment to the cause within the antiabortion movement.
Tennessee infighting over ‘heartbeat bill’
In Tennessee, for instance, there’s a philosophical split between pragmatists and idealists.
A “heartbeat bill” in the state has had high-profile support, including from Tennessee’s new governor. But the Republican attorney general warned such a law would be difficult to defend in court. And several Republicans, swayed by that logic, voted no for the legislation.
“This is an issue that is extremely important to me. It’s the reason I got into politics many years ago,” Republican state Rep. Bill Dunn said as the House approved the measure over his objection earlier this year. Dunn has said he wants to stop abortion, but that will require strategy. He pointed out that no heartbeat bill has ever been enforced. And recent laws in Iowa and Kentucky have been immediately blocked in court. The same is expected for Ohio.
“No. 1, it’ll probably never save a life if we go by what’s happened in the past,” Rep. Dunn argued on the Tennessee House floor.
But it was money that ultimately stopped the heartbeat bill this year in Tennessee. (It stalled in committee, though the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee agreed to review the bill this summer.)
Senate Speaker Randy McNally, who also opposes abortion, said he has no interest in wasting tax dollars to make a point.
Even worse, in the view of Republicans who voted against the heartbeat bill, the state could end up paying the legal fees for groups that defend abortion.
“That is a big concern,” Sen. McNally said. “We don’t want to put money in their pockets.
The last time Tennessee had a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, it cost roughly $1.9 million. The experience was enough to give a few antiabortion crusaders some pause. They voted last week with Democrats for a 1-year delay on a heartbeat bill, vowing to study the issue over the summer.
Name-calling in Oklahoma
Even if it doesn’t result in a case that upends abortion law, heavily Republican legislatures like Oklahoma’s want to be ready.
“If Roe v. Wade ever gets overturned, we won’t be prepared,” Republican Senate Pro Tempore Greg Treat said while explaining his so-called trigger bill at a committee hearing in February.
Treat’s legislation, modeled after existing laws in a handful of states, would “trigger” a state ban on abortion and make it a felony if Roe were overturned. A handful of states, including Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota, already have trigger laws on the books.
Oklahoma has some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation, such as mandatory counseling and a 72-hour waiting period. But the most conservative antiabortion activists in the state want more immediate action. So they targeted Sen. Treat and other self-described “prolife” Republicans with protests, billboards and flyers, accusing them of not being antiabortion enough.
“I’ve been called every name in the book these past few weeks,” Sen. Treat said. “I’ve had my Christianity questioned. I’ve had a member of my own caucus hold a press conference and call me a hypocrite.”
In response, Sen. Treat abandoned the trigger bill.
Now he’s trying something else – an amendment to the state constitution that would reinforce that nothing in Oklahoma law “secures or protects” the right to abortion. But that’s still not antiabortion enough for some.
“It’s going to add on to that legacy that we have of death and just status quo prolife policy that does nothing,” said Republican state Sen. Joseph Silk.
Not far enough in Georgia
In Georgia, a “heartbeat bill” passed the legislature, but has paused at Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk. Supporters of abortion rights don’t want him to sign it, of course, but some antiabortion activists aren’t happy either.
“It really just does not go far enough in the protection of innocent human life,” said Georgia Right to Life executive director Zemmie Fleck, who argued that certain exceptions in his state’s bill – for abortions after rape or incest if the woman makes a police report – weaken it.
Gov. Kemp has until May 12 to sign or veto the measure.
Cost-as-no-objection Kentucky
The American Civil Liberties Union in Kentucky sued the day after a “heartbeat bill” was signed into law by Republican Gov. Matt Bevin. But even during his annual speech to the Kentucky legislature in February, Gov. Bevin acknowledged his intent to challenge Roe v. Wade.
“Some of these will go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. But at the end of the day, we will prevail because we stand on the side of right and we stand on the side of life,” he said.
Kentucky has become accustomed to defending abortion restrictions in court. Currently, one law that makes it a felony for a doctor to perform a common abortion in the second trimester has been suspended indefinitely.
It is unclear how much it costs Kentucky to defend abortion laws that are immediately challenged. In an emailed statement, Gov. Bevin administration spokesman Woody Maglinger wrote that the state is using in-house lawyers, and hasn’t hired outside counsel. He declined to provide a cost estimate on hours spent on these cases.
“It is impossible to place a price tag on human lives,” Mr. Maglinger wrote.
This story is part of a partnership that includes Nashville Public Radio, NPR, and Kaiser Health News. Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
But the rush to regulate has exposed division among groups and lawmakers who consider themselves staunch abortion opponents.
On April 11, Ohio became the latest state to ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. For a long time, Ohio Right to Life supported a more gradual approach to restrict the procedure and deemed what’s come to be called a “heartbeat bill” too radical – until this year. Restricting abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected basically bans the procedure after 6 weeks’ gestation – before many women know they’re pregnant.
“We see the court as being much more favorable to prolife legislation than it has been in a generation,” spokeswoman Jamieson Gordon said. “So we figured this would be a good time to pursue the heartbeat bill as the next step in our incremental approach to end abortion on demand.”
The Ohio law contains no exception for pregnancies that are the result of rape or incest; it does have an exception for the life of the mother.
Some say the rush to pass these bills is about lawmakers competing to get their particular state’s law before the Supreme Court. The state that helps overturn Roe v. Wade would go down in history.
More than 250 bills restricting abortions have been filed in 41 states this year, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research and advocacy group.
“After the appointment of Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh, there really is just an environment in state legislatures to roll back abortion rights. And so we’re seeing these bans just fly through,” said Elizabeth Nash, who monitors state laws at Guttmacher.
But the speed of passage of some of these laws masks divisions about strategy and commitment to the cause within the antiabortion movement.
Tennessee infighting over ‘heartbeat bill’
In Tennessee, for instance, there’s a philosophical split between pragmatists and idealists.
A “heartbeat bill” in the state has had high-profile support, including from Tennessee’s new governor. But the Republican attorney general warned such a law would be difficult to defend in court. And several Republicans, swayed by that logic, voted no for the legislation.
“This is an issue that is extremely important to me. It’s the reason I got into politics many years ago,” Republican state Rep. Bill Dunn said as the House approved the measure over his objection earlier this year. Dunn has said he wants to stop abortion, but that will require strategy. He pointed out that no heartbeat bill has ever been enforced. And recent laws in Iowa and Kentucky have been immediately blocked in court. The same is expected for Ohio.
“No. 1, it’ll probably never save a life if we go by what’s happened in the past,” Rep. Dunn argued on the Tennessee House floor.
But it was money that ultimately stopped the heartbeat bill this year in Tennessee. (It stalled in committee, though the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee agreed to review the bill this summer.)
Senate Speaker Randy McNally, who also opposes abortion, said he has no interest in wasting tax dollars to make a point.
Even worse, in the view of Republicans who voted against the heartbeat bill, the state could end up paying the legal fees for groups that defend abortion.
“That is a big concern,” Sen. McNally said. “We don’t want to put money in their pockets.
The last time Tennessee had a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, it cost roughly $1.9 million. The experience was enough to give a few antiabortion crusaders some pause. They voted last week with Democrats for a 1-year delay on a heartbeat bill, vowing to study the issue over the summer.
Name-calling in Oklahoma
Even if it doesn’t result in a case that upends abortion law, heavily Republican legislatures like Oklahoma’s want to be ready.
“If Roe v. Wade ever gets overturned, we won’t be prepared,” Republican Senate Pro Tempore Greg Treat said while explaining his so-called trigger bill at a committee hearing in February.
Treat’s legislation, modeled after existing laws in a handful of states, would “trigger” a state ban on abortion and make it a felony if Roe were overturned. A handful of states, including Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota, already have trigger laws on the books.
Oklahoma has some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation, such as mandatory counseling and a 72-hour waiting period. But the most conservative antiabortion activists in the state want more immediate action. So they targeted Sen. Treat and other self-described “prolife” Republicans with protests, billboards and flyers, accusing them of not being antiabortion enough.
“I’ve been called every name in the book these past few weeks,” Sen. Treat said. “I’ve had my Christianity questioned. I’ve had a member of my own caucus hold a press conference and call me a hypocrite.”
In response, Sen. Treat abandoned the trigger bill.
Now he’s trying something else – an amendment to the state constitution that would reinforce that nothing in Oklahoma law “secures or protects” the right to abortion. But that’s still not antiabortion enough for some.
“It’s going to add on to that legacy that we have of death and just status quo prolife policy that does nothing,” said Republican state Sen. Joseph Silk.
Not far enough in Georgia
In Georgia, a “heartbeat bill” passed the legislature, but has paused at Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk. Supporters of abortion rights don’t want him to sign it, of course, but some antiabortion activists aren’t happy either.
“It really just does not go far enough in the protection of innocent human life,” said Georgia Right to Life executive director Zemmie Fleck, who argued that certain exceptions in his state’s bill – for abortions after rape or incest if the woman makes a police report – weaken it.
Gov. Kemp has until May 12 to sign or veto the measure.
Cost-as-no-objection Kentucky
The American Civil Liberties Union in Kentucky sued the day after a “heartbeat bill” was signed into law by Republican Gov. Matt Bevin. But even during his annual speech to the Kentucky legislature in February, Gov. Bevin acknowledged his intent to challenge Roe v. Wade.
“Some of these will go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. But at the end of the day, we will prevail because we stand on the side of right and we stand on the side of life,” he said.
Kentucky has become accustomed to defending abortion restrictions in court. Currently, one law that makes it a felony for a doctor to perform a common abortion in the second trimester has been suspended indefinitely.
It is unclear how much it costs Kentucky to defend abortion laws that are immediately challenged. In an emailed statement, Gov. Bevin administration spokesman Woody Maglinger wrote that the state is using in-house lawyers, and hasn’t hired outside counsel. He declined to provide a cost estimate on hours spent on these cases.
“It is impossible to place a price tag on human lives,” Mr. Maglinger wrote.
This story is part of a partnership that includes Nashville Public Radio, NPR, and Kaiser Health News. Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.