COLUMBUS, Ohio - Two fetuses will be presented as witnesses before an Ohio legislative committee that is hearing a bill to outlaw abortions after the first heartbeat can be detected inside a woman's womb.

The fetuses will appear live and in color before the committee on a video screen projecting ultrasound images taken from their pregnant mothers' bodies. Janet Folger Porter, head of Faith2Action, an anti-abortion group, said the fetuses will be the youngest witnesses to ever testify when they come in front of the House Health and Aging Committee Wednesday morning.

"Lawmakers are going to be able to see as well as hear the babies' heartbeats," said Porter. "We think this is going to do a lot to keep other babies' heartbeats going in Ohio." She said two Ohio women -- one nine weeks and the other 11 weeks pregnant -- have agreed to be scanned with ultrasound machines for the hearing.

Abortion rights supporters said they are dismayed by what they see as a spectacle dreamed up for media attention.

"I think it's a stunt that trivializes women's health," said Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio. "It's obvious this committee is a lot more interested in making headlines than in giving women better access to health care or doing something to bring jobs to this state or trying to fix the state's budget mess."

She added: "Instead, what Ohioans are getting is an absolute circus in the House health committee." Copeland noted that abortion rights supporters have been denied the chance by the anti-abortion rights committee chair, Rep. Lynn Wachtmann, a conservative Napoleon Republican, to testify via videotape.

The so-called "heartbeat" bill is the first of its type introduced in the nation, and it seeks to ban the procedure as early as six weeks after conception -- the first moment a fetus' heartbeat can be detected. If it becomes law in Ohio -- and it appears to have the votes in the Republican-dominated legislature -- it would be among the earliest stages that a state has tried to ban abortions.

While Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, gives women the right to have abortions by blocking states from outright bans on the procedure, states do have the right to pass laws restricting access to abortions.

For example, Ohio already bans what critics of the procedure call partial birth abortions as well as requiring parental consent for minors in most cases and a 24-hour waiting period before abortions can be performed.

"I think this one is more significant than all of the other bills combined," Porter said. "It will be an arrow in the heart of Roe vs. Wade."

Ohio Right to Life has not endorsed the heartbeat bill, and the group's director has agreed with abortion-rights groups predicting the measure would be overturned by a legal challenge if it became law.

The heartbeat bill is one of four bills restricting abortions in Ohio that will get hearings Wednesday before the House committee. The others would ban abortions after 20 weeks, make it more difficult for minors to get a judge's permission to get an abortion without parental consent and prohibit abortion coverage in health-care plans offered by the state under the new federal health-care law.