By: Hunter Lovell, LSU Manship School News Service
Published: May 6, 2019
BATON ROUGE – A bid to ban abortions after six weeks in Louisiana moved one step closer to being placed on the governor’s desk.
The Louisiana Senate signaled strong bipartisan support in a 31-5 vote in favor of the “fetal heartbeat” bill by Democratic Sen. John Milkovich of Shreveport.
The proposed legislation would ban abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat in the womb, usually at around six weeks. The bill now moves to the House.
Shortly before the Senate passed the bill, it overwhelmingly rejected a bill aimed at abolishing the death penalty.
This rejection followed an emotional hearing in a Senate judiciary committee last week that had supported an end to capital punishment.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Dan Claitor, R-Baton Rouge, needed the approval of 26 senators to pass, but received support from only 13.
Proponents of the bill argued that the Louisiana Public Defender Board has spent $111 million on death penalty cases since 2008, and only one person has been executed since then.
Read more in Fox8 News.
