Three days after the Arkansas House of Representatives passed the Human Heartbeat Protection Act, Jason Rapert, the freshman state senator who sponsored the bill, took to Twitter to boast that the new law "stands to save thousands of lives". Its chances of doing so, however, depend first on surviving a court challenge. The law, which passed on March 6th, bans abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy-the age by which an ultrasound examination can usually detect a fetal heartbeat-except to save the life of the mother and in pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.
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