Mike Kelly’s federal bill would ban abortions after fetal heartbeat is detected

U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, a Butler County Republican, has re-introduced a bill to ban abortions when a fetal heartbeat is detected.

“Our founders understood that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are our most fundamental rights,” Kelly said in a statement. “First among these is life.”

Kelly, who introduced the same legislation in the previous House session, is pushing the bill along with Reps. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and Kat Cammack, R-Fla.

There are 62 co-sponsors on the Heartbeat Protection Act, including Pennsylvania Republican Reps. Glenn “GT” Thompson, John Joyce, Lloyd Smucker and Guy Reschenthaler.

Republicans have been emboldened to pursue anti-abortion legislation across the country following last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

However, with Republicans holding a slim majority in the House and having internal conflicts — as shown by the fight over electing a House Speaker — the bill’s prospects are uncertain.

If the bill would get out of the House, it would certainly not go anywhere in the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate.

Kelly said the bill “ensures the most vulnerable among us have the same life-affirming protections that every other American enjoys.”

Smith, co-chairperson of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, said that science “has made the humanity of unborn children more visible and irrefutable than ever,” including that there is a “functional and detectable beating heart at six weeks gestational age.”

That claim is the subject of debate, with many in the medical community saying that the sounds heard at six weeks are not heartbeats, but early activity as the heart just begins to develop.

Planned Parenthood on its website says that “part of the embryo starts to show cardiac activity” at five to six weeks of pregnancy. “It sounds like a heartbeat on an ultrasound, but it’s not a fully-formed heart — it’s the earliest stage of the heart developing,” Planned Parenthood says.

Smith, though, said the bill is “an important step toward replacing abortion violence with compassion and empathy for both women and their defenseless unborn children.”

Women who violate the law would not be prosecuted, but physicians who perform abortions after detecting fetal heartbeats at six weeks could be.

The bill would not apply to cases involving rape or incest or in which the life of the mother is at risk.

Abortion opponents quoted in the statement praised the bill, with Jeanne Mancini, the president of March for Life, calling it a “compassionate proposal” that would “protect children whose hearts are developed to the point that they already beat over one hundred times per minute in their mother’s womb.”