Louisiana legislature blocks exceptions to law protecting unborn babies

Louisiana’s House of Representatives on Tuesday blocked a bill that would have allowed abortionists in the state to kill unborn children conceived by rape and incest. Louisiana’s current law protects all unborn babies except in pregnancies that threaten the life of the mother.

What would the bill have done to create exceptions? The bill, which New Orleans Democratic state Rep. Delisha Boyd proposed, would not have classified killing an unborn child conceived by rape or incest as an abortion under state law. The proposed law would not have required women to prove someone raped them or that their child was a product of incest with forensic evidence, a police report, or a criminal conviction.

The day before the vote, Boyd shared a Fox News Politics article on social media in which she said she was a product of rape. In the report, she said that her father raped her mother when her mother was just 15 years old. Boyd’s mother then delivered her four years before the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roe v. Wade ruling establishing a constitutional right to abortion. The U.S. Supreme Court almost two years ago overturned Roe in its Dobbs v. Jackson decision.

Dig deeper: Read Leah Savas’ report in Vitals about how Florida pregnancy centers are preparing for more patients after a state heartbeat law went into effect.