North Dakota legislators mull ban on all abortions

Lawmakers in North Dakota — where abortion laws are already among the most restrictive in the nation — are now considering a personhood bill that would outright ban the procedure.

The House could soon vote on two separate personhood bills that already passed the Senate, CBS reports. At least one of the bills defines human life as starting at conception — and that, in effect, would ban all abortions.

SPECIAL COVERAGE: Health Care Reform

Abortion activists already vow to challenge the ban in court, if it’s passed into law. And fertility doctors claim the bill as it’s currently worded would prohibit in vitro fertilization procedures — a claim that bill supporters refute.

Sen. Margaret Sitte, who supports the bill, says in the CBS report she was “floored” by accusations that in vitro procedures would be banned. The text, she said, gives clear exemptions for “screening, collecting, preparing, transferring, or cryopreserving a human being created through in vitro fertilization for the purpose of being transferred to a human uterus,” CBS reports.

© Copyright 2013 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.