US Republican senator proposes ban on abortion after 15 weeks

New legislation that would put in place a federal, nationwide ban on most abortions after 15 weeks across the United States has been introduced by a Republican senator.

The legislation would include exceptions in the case of rape, incest and the risk to the life and physical health of the mother.

Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina, said his proposals would bring the United States to a position at federal level that was “fairly consistent with the rest of the world”.

Mr Graham’s legislation would leave in place state laws with stricter abortion restrictions but supersede those that allowed the procedure after 15 weeks. This would result in the outlawing of many abortions that are currently legal.

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The White House and Democrat politicians immediately criticised the proposed new abortion bill.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that the proposals would strip away women’s rights in all 50 states.

“While president Biden and vice-president Harris are focused on the historic passage of the Inflation Reduction Act to reduce the cost of prescription drugs, healthcare, and energy — and to take unprecedented action to address climate change — Republicans in congress are focused on taking rights away from millions of women. The president and vice-president are fighting for progress, while Republicans are fighting to take us back.”

As the US Congress is currently controlled by Democrats, there is no chance of Mr Graham’s proposed legislation being passed.

However, if Republicans take back control of the house of representatives and the senate after the midterm elections next month, they could push through a vote of such proposals.

Any such legislation would almost certainly be vetoed by US president Joe Biden during the remainder of his term in office.

Mr Graham’s legislation maintains there is substantial medical evidence that an unborn child is capable of experiencing pain at least by 15 weeks gestational age, if not earlier.

It maintains that if there is reasonable medical judgment that the unborn child has the potential to survive outside the womb, the physician carrying out an abortion in the exempted circumstances must also have a second doctor present who is trained in neonatal resuscitation.

The proposed legislation comes nearly three months after the US Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling, overturned a federal constitutional right to abortion which had been originally set out 50 years ago.

The ruling in June essentially allowed states to make their own laws in relation to terminations.

The supreme court move has galvanised Democrat voters in advance of the elections in November and made abortion a significant election issue.

The ending of the federal right to abortion has seen a number of Republican-controlled states introducing legislation that is far more restrictive than that proposed by Mr Graham, in some cases allowing no exemptions for cases of rape or incest.

In Oklahoma and Texas, Republicans have enacted laws prohibiting abortion at fertilisation.

However, there has been a backlash, even in the some conservative states, to abortion restrictions. After a flood of women registered to vote in deeply conservative Kansas after the supreme court’s decision, for instance, the state rejected a proposal to remove the right to abortion from its constitution.