Fetal heartbeat bill a missed opportunity

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

A piece of pro-life legislation recently passed in Ohio would’ve banned abortions after a doctor could detect a fetal heartbeat. On Tuesday, Republican Gov. John Kasich vetoed that proposal, but signed into law another bill that bans abortion after 20 weeks of gestation. Some pro-life groups supported the 20-week ban over the so-called heartbeat bill because they didn’t believe the latter would survive a challenge in court.

John Stonestreet criticized Kasich’s move on social media, and this week he told me why.

“I don’t think we should play political games with unborn children. … So what that it doesn’t survive a legal challenge immediately in the lower courts?” Stonestreet said. “This was one of those opportunities, timing wise, where something could have been taken to the Supreme Court perhaps in the context of a changed court.” In another year or so, a successor for Justice Antonin Scalia could be in place, and the outlook of the court could shift.

“Why not give it a shot? We have that culture in place where we can start lobbing these challenges at Roe v. Wade and perhaps make a difference,” Stonestreet said. He argued that even if the law did not stand up in court, it could start an important cultural conversation.

“The fundamental question, whenever we’re talking about abortion, is what are the unborn? Are they whole, living, valuable human beings or not? And that’s the conversation we need to be having at the legal level,” Stonestreet said. “We don’t need anymore to be playing this foolish strategic game … when it comes to common-sense restrictions.”

Listen to “Culture Friday,” in which John Stonestreet and Nick Eicher also discuss the controversy over the “Fairness for All” approach to religious liberty, on the Dec. 16 episode of The World and Everything in It.