Texas Senate Bill 8, known more commonly as the heartbeat bill, was passed on May 19th, 2021, but went into effect September 1st. The bill bans abortions when a fetal heartbeat is detected, which the bill defines as, “cardiac activity or the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heat within the gestational sac.”
Many pro-choice and abortion rights advocates point out that fetal heartbeats can be determined usually around six weeks after conception, a period of time when many women are not even aware that they are pregnant. While the bill doesn’t ban abortion outright, it creates a very small window of time for a woman to determine that they’re pregnant and have an abortion performed.
Perhaps even more controversial is that the bill makes no exceptions for women that have become pregnant through sexual assault, rape, or incest. The governor was asked, “why force a rape or incest victim to carry a pregnancy to term?”
He responded by saying, “It doesn’t require that at all, because obviously it provides at least six weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion… let’s make something very clear. Rape is a crime, and Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them…. goal number one in the state of Texas is to eliminate rape.”
Abbott’s statement that Texas will work to eliminate all rapists in defense of the controversial law has drawn the ire of many of its opponents. Experts point to the reality that most rapes go unreported to the police, and that Abbott has not come out with any concrete plans to eliminate all rapists from Texas.