Republican lawmaker to reintroduce bill effectively banning abortion at 6 weeks

On Dec. 4, Rep. Stephanie Borowicz sent a memo to her colleagues in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives announcing her intention to reintroduce House Bill 320, legislation of a type referred to misleadingly as “heartbeat bills,” in the upcoming legislative session.

H.B. 320 would amend Pennsylvania law to require doctors to conduct a “fetal heartbeat examination” of a patient and her fetus before carrying out an abortion. If a doctor detected a so-called heartbeat, they would be prohibited from proceeding with the abortion.

“This will eliminate the need to set a gestational age in legislation and will honor the science which shows that more than 90 percent of all pregnancies are viable in which a heartbeat is detected,” Borowicz’s memo reads.

Borowicz has a history of extreme positions. In 2022, she introduced a bill inspired by Florida’s anti-LGBTQ “Don’t Say Gay” law, which would make it unlawful for educators to teach about sex education or gender identity before the sixth grade. In June 2024, Borowicz stormed out of a ceremony honoring U.S. Capitol Police officers who defended the building from rioting supporters of President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021. She and several other Republican lawmakers were heard screaming, “Say her name,” in reference to Ashli Babbit, an insurrectionist who was fatally shot during the attack. 

This year, Borowicz opposed legislation that would give students in public schools menstrual products free of charge, saying it “leads to communism.” 

Anti-abortion activists use the inaccurate and misleading term “fetal heartbeat” to refer to electrical activity in a fetus that precedes the formation of a heart and is detectable at around six weeks’ gestation when a person is often not yet aware that they are pregnant.

“What we’re really detecting is a grouping of cells that are initiating some electrical activity,” Dr. Jennifer Kerns told NPR in 2022. “In no way is this detecting a functional cardiovascular system or a functional heart.”

“This bill, which is introduced each year, does not align with our essential health care needs, public opinion, or the most basic understanding of the reproductive system,” said Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania executive director Signe Espinoza in an email to the Pennsylvania Independent. “Most people do not even know they are pregnant at the gestation at which this bill would ban abortion; no politician has the right to interfere with your care, let alone before you even know you need it.”

David Cohen, a professor at Drexel Thomas R. Kline School of Law, told the Pennsylvania Independent that the proposal won’t pass. 

Cohen said lawmakers such as Borowicz make these announcements “so they can be praised by anti-abortion groups and get anti-abortion voters.”

Borowicz introduced an earlier version of the anti-abortion legislation in 2019, and she introduced another in 2021. Both failed. “The chances are zero, like literally zero,” Cohen said. “The Democrats control the House, and Josh Shapiro is the governor. And even if somehow this were ever to get out of the Legislature, Josh Shapiro would not sign it. … And I don’t say that about most things.”