Not to be outdone by Arkansas lawmakers — who recently overrode their governor to impose a 12-week abortion ban, the strictest in the country — abortion opponents in North Dakota want to go even further.

So far this year, anti-choice lawmakers in Arkansas and North Dakota have practically tripped over each other to see which state can impose more abortion restrictions. Arkansas initially pulled into the lead by imposing two stringent restrictions, a 20-week abortion ban and, later, a stricter 12-week ban. But North Dakota may be ready to raise the stakes once again. Republican lawmakers are advancing a “fetal heartbeat” measure to outlaw the procedure after just six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even realize they’re pregnant, and they expect to have enough support to push it though:

House Bill 1456 would make it a felony for a doctor to perform a nonemergency abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can be as early as five or six weeks. House Bill 1305 would prohibit abortions sought because a fetus has been or could be diagnosed with any genetically inherited defect, disease or disorder.

The Republican-led state Senate will vote today on the measures, said state Representative Bette Grande of Fargo, who co-sponsored the bills in the Republican-controlled House, where both have passed. Grande said she expects the Senate to approve both and the governor, also a party member, to sign them.

“The heartbeat is society’s marker for life,” Grande, a Republican, said by telephone from Fargo.

So-called “fetal heartbeat” bans are blatantly unconstitutional. Even though Roe v. Wade guarantees the right to legal abortion services until the point of viability, typically around 23 or 24 weeks of pregnancy, heartbeat bans narrow that window by as much as 17 weeks. North Dakota’s heartbeat measure will also have the unintended consequence of mandating transvaginal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions, since there’s no other way to detect a fetal heartbeat at such an early stage of pregnancy.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the only egregious affront to reproductive rights that women in North Dakota have to worry about. State lawmakers are also considering an even more radical “personhood” measure that would outlaw abortion altogether, as well as some forms of contraception. And, despite the fact that there’s just one abortion clinic left in the state, anti-choice Republicans are attempting to advance legislation that would force it to close its doors.

Testifying against the mounting abortion restrictions currently moving through the legislature, one Fargo-area doctor warned that North Dakota’s attacks on choice will ultimately force women in the state to resort to dangerous, “backroom” abortion procedures. Unfortunately, even while Roe technically still stands, North Dakota lawmakers could essentially roll back the clock to a time before women had the right to safely determine their own reproductive decisions.

State Sen. Jason Rapert (R-AR) is the architect of the nation’s most stringent abortion legislation — Arkansas’ “fetal heartbeat” ban outlawing all abortion services after just 12 weeks, which could take effect as early as this spring. But Rapert isn’t content with potentially banning one out every 10 abortions in his state. Now, he’s looking to continue his attacks on women’s health by cutting off funding to Arkansas-area Planned Parenthood clinics.

So far this year, Arkansas Republicans have already pushed through several stringent abortion restrictions — a 20-week “fetal pain” ban, the record-breaking 12-week ban, and a measure to prevent insurance coverage of abortion services — but they have even more waiting in the wings. Now, Rapert wants to target Planned Parenthood with an initiative that will ultimately strip funding from preventative care and comprehensive sexual education programs:

Rapert is now calling for the state to prohibit any state or federal funds from going toward any entity that performs abortions. It’s a measure that’s aimed at cutting off public funding to Planned Parenthood, which doesn’t perform surgical abortions in Arkansas but distributes the abortion pill at two facilities in the state. Arkansas’ only clinic that performs surgical abortions is in Little Rock.

The proposal would cut off money Planned Parenthood receives from the state for non-abortion programs, including federal grants disbursed by the state to the group for education programs in Little Rock schools on sexually transmitted diseases. [...]

Planned Parenthood officials vowed to fight the legislation.

“For many Arkansas women we care for, we are the only health care provider they rely on every year for affordable care including well woman exams, lifesaving cancer screenings, contraception, and STD prevention,” said Jill June, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland. “Planned Parenthood will fight this dangerous bill just as we fought Senator Rapert’s abortion ban — politics should never come between a woman and her medical care.”

Arkansas Republicans have been celebrating their victories in the 2012 election, when they won both chambers of the state legislature for the first time in nearly 200 years, by obsessing over undermining women’s reproductive rights. So far, the abortion restrictions that the Arkansas GOP has enacted this session are more stringent than any other laws adopted in the state’s recent history — including during the 10 years that anti-choice Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) was in office. (It’s also worth noting that although current Gov. Mike Beebe is a Democrat, he has a mixed history on abortion rights and signed the new insurance coverage ban.)

Rapert is open about the fact that his party is moving full steam ahead with its anti-abortion agenda. “For years in the state of Arkansas, these types of bills have been filed but have never been able to see the light of day because they were killed in committee who were not pro-life,” the state lawmaker explained. “That’s why you see these bills making it today.”

Unfortunately, despite the fact that ensuring women have access to affordable reproductive services will actually help lower abortion rates, Rapert’s decision to go after Planned Parenthood is unsurprising now that abortion opponents have successfully transformed the organization into a symbol in their ongoing attack on reproductive rights. Fortunately, courts have blocked most state-level efforts to defund the national organization — but anti-Planned Parenthood crusades like Rapert’s have still eliminated some essential women’s health services in Texas, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Tennessee.

Arkansas, the new home to the nation’s strictest abortion ban, will cut off women’s access to legal abortion services after 12 weeks. The law could go into effect as early as this spring after the legislature overrode Gov. Mike Beebe’s (D) veto on Wednesday.

Arkansas Republicans still deny that the law restricts women’s abortion rights, although it places the ban well before a fetus reaches viability. State Rep. Ann Clemmer (R), one of 56 representatives who voted to override, told radio station KUAR that the 12-week abortion ban does not affect women’s choice “at all”:

“I really believe that we are not eliminating choice at all. We’re just saying after 12 weeks, the choice is over. You have a choice for the first 12 weeks. That’s almost three months. We’re talking the second trimester here — we’re talking about second trimester. abortions.”

Watch it, courtesty of KUAR:

Actually, Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff notes that Arkansas’ measure would ban roughly one in every 10 abortions in the state. A slew of states already ban abortions after 20 weeks, but Arkansas goes much further in restricting women’s rights despite having no scientific grounding for banning legal abortion services a full two months earlier.

Aside from Clemmer’s diminishing of the consequences of an outright 12-week abortion ban, the law itself is clearly unconstitutional. Roe v. Wade guarantees women’s right to a legal abortion until viability, which is generally 24 weeks of pregnancy. In fact, a federal judge determined Idaho’s ban on late-term abortions was unconstitutional on the same day Arkansas voted to override Beebe’s veto. According to the decision, Idaho put “an absolute obstacle in the path of women seeking such abortions.”

Arkansas lawmakers have voted to override Gov. Mike Beebe’s (D) veto of a 12-week abortion ban, ensuring that the legislation will go into effect this spring. SB 134 represents the worst abortion restriction in the nation — cutting off women’s access to legal abortion services well before the point of viability, which is typically around 24 weeks of pregnancy — and it is the first “fetal heartbeat” abortion measure to go into law. Here’s everything you need to know about this egregious attack on Arkansas’ women’s reproductive rights:

1. The governor vetoed it because it is unconstitutional. Earlier this week, Beebe vetoed the bill because, as he explained, banning abortion at 12 weeks “blatantly contradicts the United States Constitution.” Under Roe v. Wade, women have a constitutionally protected right to legal abortion services until the medically accepted point of viability. But under Arkansas law, legislatures can override their governor’s vetoes with a simple majority vote in each chamber, and that’s what happened this week.

2. This isn’t the first stringent abortion ban that Arkansas Republicans have forced past the governor. Just last week, lawmakers voted to override Beebe’s veto of a 20-week “fetal pain” abortion ban, ensuring the measure would immediately become law. Beebe also rejected that legislation over concerns about undermining Roe v. Wade, and the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue if it went into effect. But that wasn’t enough to stop Arkansas Republicans — and that wasn’t enough to stop them from pushing for an even stricter 12-week abortion ban to supersede the 20-week ban, either.

3. “Fetal heartbeat” bans aren’t rooted in any scientific logic. “When there is a heartbeat there, you have a living human being,” the bill’s sponsor, State Sen. Jason Rapert (R), told the Associated Press to justify his support for the policy. But there’s no reason to ban abortion procedures after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. Heartbeat measures are simply a dangerous attempt to redefine the medical terms of pregnancy and roll back women’s right to abortion on a state level.

4. Arkansas is now home to the worst abortion ban in the country. Radical heartbeat bills popped up in states around the country at the beginning of this legislative session, but Arkansas and North Dakota are the only states to successfully advance heartbeat measures — and Arkansas is the very first state to actually enact one into law. The original version of the bill sought to ban abortions after just six weeks, and Rapert ended up amending it after a massive outcry. But pushing back the deadline by six weeks is hardly an improvement. Banning abortion services at just 12 weeks still goes much further than the 20-week bans abortion bans on the books in seven other states, making Arkansas’ law the strictest in the nation.

5. Republicans are fully aware they’re inviting a host of legal challenges. Several advocacy groups, including the ACLU and the Center for Reproductive Rights, have already threatened legal action against Arkansas if the state moves forward with the heartbeat measure. When the governor vetoed both the 20-week and 12-week abortion bans, he indicated he would rather avoid the court battles those measures would bring — particularly since two other states are currently engaged in legal fights over their own 20-week bans. But Arkansas Republicans, who won back both chambers of the legislature in the 2012 election, have been so eager to advance their anti-abortion agenda that they simply don’t care.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe (D) has vetoed a “fetal heartbeat” bill that would have outlawed abortion services at just 12 weeks of pregnancy, the point when a fetal heartbeat can be detected with an abdominal ultrasound. Because a 12-week ban would go too far to circumvent women’s right to legal abortion services under Roe v. Wade — which protects women’s right to choose until around 24 weeks of pregnancy — Beebe explained that the bill “blatantly contradicts the United States Constitution.”

Nevertheless, the GOP-controlled legislature in the state could override the governor’s veto to enact the unconstitutional law anyway. After Beebe vetoed a 20-week abortion ban last month, state lawmakers used a simple majority to override his veto and ensure that the stringent ban would immediately take effect.

And anti-choice Republicans, who won majorities in both of Arkansas’ chambers in 2012, aren’t stopping there. If they successfully push the heartbeat ban past the governor, the 20-week ban will seem tame in comparison. In that case, Arkansas would earn the unfortunate distinction of having most restrictive abortion ban in the nation.

Arkansas’ GOP-controlled legislature has voted to override their governor’s veto of a “fetal pain” abortion ban, ensuring the legislation will immediately take effect. Gov. Mike Beebe (D) vetoed the measure on Tuesday, explaining he felt the 20-week ban would run afoul of women’s constitutional right to an abortion under Roe v. Wade, but Arkansas lawmakers can override the governor with a simple majority in both chambers.

Arkansas will join the seven other states that currently have “fetal pain” laws on the books, which are based on the junk science that fetuses can feel pain at 20 weeks of pregnancy. Under Roe v. Wade, abortion rights are protected until the point of viability, which typically occurs around 24 weeks — so fetal pain bans are an effective way to chip away at women’s reproductive rights. Two of those measures are currently being blocked from taking effect, the same constitutional challenge that Beebe suspects may await Arkansas.

“We made the best case we could in our veto letter and explained the legal problems with the law and what that could cost our people,” a spokesman for the governor told Reuters. “The final say, however, remains with the legislature.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas has already pledged to challenge the new law. But the anti-choice GOP lawmakers in the state are unconcerned about potential legal challenges. The House voted 53-28 on Wednesday afternoon to override Beebe’s veto, and the Senate voted 19-14 on Thursday morning.

Unfortunately for the women in Arkansas, their Republican lawmakers may not stop there. The state is also considering an even more stringent “heartbeat” ban to outlaw the abortion procedure after just 12 weeks, at the point when a fetal heartbeat can be detected with an abdominal ultrasound. That would represent one of the harshest abortion bans in the entire nation, and the legislature could once again push it past Beebe even if he vetoes it.