WASHINGTON — For the third time since 2013, the House on Tuesday passed legislation to ban abortions 20 weeks or more into a pregnancy, a threshold the bill’s Republican authors say is the point at which fetuses become capable of experiencing pain.
While it is the first time the House, controlled by the GOP since 2011, has passed the bill under a president willing to sign it, the legislation is not expected to gain traction in the Senate.
“Very late term abortions are an extreme and barbaric practice,” Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), the bill’s sponsor, said in a statement. “The U.S. is only one of 7 countries on Earth, including North Korea and China, which allow elective abortions after 20 weeks.”
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