By Estella Johnson

This group of articles, in the bulleted posts below, discusses one of the most blatant attacks on a woman’s right to choose: the six-week ban, also known as the heartbeat bill. These bills—which several states have tried to establish as law in the past decade— would make abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected illegal. Detection of a heartbeat can typically occur as early as six weeks. This is so early in a pregnancy that many women do not even realize that they are pregnant. For this reason, these six weeks bans are effectively a ban on all abortions. The articles in this section focus specifically on attempts to implement six week bans in the states of Iowa and North Dakota. Although the North Dakota ban has now been permanently blocked by the courts, the fight to keep abortion legal in Iowa continues.