New Hampshire’s state House is at it again, once more tacking abortion and contraception restriction onto other bills in an effort to push them into becoming law.

It started with a mandatory 24-hour waiting period that was rejected by the senate earlier in the session, but the Speaker of the House added as an amendment to a finance bill.

Now, anti-choice legislators amended a bill addressing newborn screenings with a 20-week abortion ban, claiming “fetuses at 20 weeks feel pain greater than that felt after birth.”  They eventually removed the amendment when they were told it would kill off the entire bill.

Still, that didn’t stop them from subsequently adding a Blunt Amendment styled “religious objection” bill that allows religious employers from being forced to cover contraception in their insurance plans, as long as the business is “partly or wholly owned by a religious society and for employers formed for a religious intent.”  The amendment was added to a senate bill that unsurprisingly was completely unrelated.

In Minnesota we call this “the circus bill” approach — when anti-choice politicians infamously attached the “Women’s Right to Know Act” and 24 hour waiting period onto a bill that would allow circuses around the same time as the State Fair, a move lauded by Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life. 

Included in the information told to a woman prior to an abortion?  That a “fetus feels pain at 20 weeks.”  It was that non-scientifically based “fact” in the bill that has become the example that anti-choice activists use as supporting arguments and justification behind 20 week abortion bans.