Bucking her party’s fervently pro-choice stance on abortion at the national level, a Democratic state lawmaker in Louisiana is hailing that state’s enactment of legislation that would prohibit abortion after detection of a fetal heartbeat.
Appearing on “The Story with Martha MacCallum” Monday on the Fox News Channel, Louisiana state Rep. Katrina Jackson said a majority of Democrats in the state’s legislature are also pro-life.
he Louisiana House of Representatives on May 29 on a 79-23 vote passed SB184, which would restrict abortion once a fetal heartbeat has been detected. It was signed into law the next day by the state’s pro-life Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards.
Louisiana state lawmakers rejected an amendment to the bill that would have granted an exception in the case of rape or incest.
In the state Senate, which passed the measure 31-5 on May 6, amendmentswere included to require an ultrasound prior to an abortion and to stipulate that the definition of an abortion would not include the termination of a pregnancy under extreme life-threatening circumstances.
One of the country’s strictest state bans, Louisiana’s law joins a wave of restrictive abortion policies, mostly in conservative states.
Jackson boasted to MacCallum in the June 3 interview about the robust pro-life support among Louisiana Democrats.
“In Louisiana … a majority of Democrats in the Louisiana legislature are pro-life. We generally refer to ourselves as ‘whole-life Democrats,’ and so it’s not difficult for us. It’s part of our Christian values, our sincerely held belief that abortion is wrong, and so we fight for it, but we are a little different in Louisiana in how we approach this issue,” she said.
Jackson, an African American state legislator who represents the 16th District of Louisiana, has served in the state House of Representatives since 2011.
