A group of Republican congressmen urged support for what is believed to be the first federal “heartbeat” bill in the US on Tuesday, arguing that it would in effect “eliminate” abortion across the country.

Though the bill is unlikely to pass Congress, its introduction is an indicator of how emboldened far-right opponents of abortion feel now that a party hostile to reproductive rights has control of the three main branches of government in Washington.

“We think this bill properly applied does eliminate a large, large share of the abortions – 90% or better – of the abortions in America,” Steve King, a congressman for Iowa, said at a press conference outside the Capitol. He was joined by a slate of Republican congressmen who support the bill and anti-abortion activists who carried red heart-shaped balloons.

King introduced the bill earlier this month but held his press conference on Tuesday, days after millions of women marched in cities across America and the world to protest the new administration and its attitude towards women’s rights. It is also the week of the 44th anniversary of Roe v Wade, the 1973 supreme court decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

The Iowa Republican said he hoped the bill would end up before the supreme court and suggested it could be a vehicle for overturning Roe v Wade, which he has called “unconstitutional”. Donald Trump has said he intends to appoint a “pro-life” justice to fill the supreme court vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia.

“By the time we march this thing down to the supreme court, the faces on the bench will be different – we just don’t know how much different, but I’m optimistic,” said King.

The bill would prevent doctors from performing abortions when a heartbeat is detected, in some cases as early as six weeks – before some women even know they’re pregnant. Supporters of abortion have argued that such measures would not eliminate abortion but instead would make it harder and more dangerous for women to receive them.

Under the bill, a doctor who “knowingly performs an abortion and thereby kills a human fetus” without determining a heartbeat, informing the patient of the heartbeat or who proceeds regardless would face up to five years in prison. It includes a narrow exception when the physical health of the woman is endangered but it excludes “psychological or emotional conditions”.

The measure is modeled after legislation that failed in Ohio that aimed to ban abortions from as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. The bill passed the state legislature but was vetoed by Ohio governor John Kasich, who instead signed into law a separate and restrictive 20-week abortion ban.

Similar legislation passed the state legislatures in Arkansas and North Dakota in 2013, and was struck down by the the eighth circuit court of appeals as unconstitutional.

Opponents of abortion are divided over “heartbeat” bills. Some anti-abortion activists believe they represent a strategy for overturning Roe v Wade because they present a head-on challenge to one of Roe’s central tenets. Roe prohibits laws that ban abortion wholesale before the fetus is viable, at around 24 weeks.

But more mainstream members of the anti-abortion rights movement regard heartbeat laws as a waste of time, because they are so patently unconstitutional. James Bopp, the former chief counsel for the National Right to Life Committee, has written that early bans on abortion could wind up being “a powerful weapon in the hands of pro-abortion lawyers that would jeopardize all current laws on abortion”.

Proponents of heartbeat bills have even accused mainstream anti-abortion groups of working to defeat such measures. Heartbeat bills have been introduced and fizzled out in such conservative strongholds as Alabama, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Texas and Wyoming. And notably Americans United for Life, the legal engine of the anti-abortion rights movement, does not include early bans on abortion in the model legislation it offers to lawmakers.

However, after Kasich vetoed Ohio’s six-week ban in favor of signing a ban on abortion at 20 weeks, abortion rights supporters speculated that the “heartbeat bill” benefited Kasich by allowing him to appear more moderate when he signed the 20-week bill.

Diane Horvath-Cosper of Physicians for Reproductive Health, said restricting access to abortion did not necessarily mean it happened less often, but it did make obtaining a termination more dangerous. She said the measure would almost certainly be found unconstitutional, and is doubtful it will gain traction.

“The goal of introducing legislation like this is that it makes everything else look moderate by comparison – so when a congressman introduces a 20-week [abortion ban] bill, it looks moderate by comparison,” she said. “That is exactly what happened in Ohio.”

The Republican legislators were joined by a handful of anti-abortion activists on Capitol Hill on Tuesday who said that Trump’s inaugural promise to “make America safe again” was an assurance that he would be a partner in rolling back women’s reproductive rights.

“There is such great hope that we’re not just going to be talking about whether we fund abortion or how much we regulate abortion – this bill will protect every child whose heartbeat can be heard,” Janet Porter, the head of the far-right conservative group Faith2Action, said during the press conference.

“The heartbeat bill is the first step to ‘make America safe again’ for every child whose heartbeat can be heard,” said Porter, who helped design the bill. Porter has pushed for heartbeat bills on the state level and aided in crafting the first heartbeat bills in Ohio. She once arranged for two pregnant women to receive live ultrasounds before an Ohio state house committee, so lawmakers could hear the fetal heartbeats.

During the campaign, Trump was inconsistent in his views on abortion – at one point threatening to punish women who received them before walking the remark back after a firestorm of controversy from both sides of the debate. However, on Monday, during his first workday in office, he reinstated the global gag order, an executive order that bans international not-for-profit organizations from providing abortion services or offering information about abortions if they receive US funding.

After the press conference, the House voted 238-183, mostly along party lines, to codify the Hyde amendment, which bans the use of federal Medicaid dollars to pay for abortions. An analysis by the Guttmacher Institute estimates that it has prevented 7.5 million poor and low-income women from accessing an abortion.

“Making [the Hyde Amendment] permanent is not just important for the moral fabric of our country, but you’ll see millions more lives saved by us taking this important action,” House GOP whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana told reporters before the vote on Tuesday.

The amendment is not currently law – it is a rider attached to Congress’s annual appropriations bills. Codifying the provisions would make it harder to repeal. For the first time in 2016, the Democratic platform called for a repeal of the amendment.

“One of the things that I am just completely sick and tired of is men dictating to women as if we are stupid and cannot make informed choices for ourselves,” Democratic representative Linda Sanchez of California told reporters on Tuesday.



“Women are responsible. Women are smart. Women know what is best for them. And women can make their own choices.”

