Three Hollywood production companies have said they will no longer work in Georgia after the governor signed a “fetal heartbeat” bill earlier this week.
How much is television and film production worth to the state? Last year it brought in $2.7 billion on 455 productions, according to CNN.
An editorial in today’s Los Angeles Times was even more direct. It calls for all productions companies to pull up stakes from the “Hollywood of the South.”
The Georgia law is scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2020. Will it happen? So far, similar efforts have been blocked by the courts. Beyond banning abortions after a doctor can detect a heartbeat, about six weeks, here’s what else the bill allows. From Business Insider:
- Allow fetuses to be claimed as dependents for tax purposes.
- Count fetuses as people in official population surveys, which would have implications for political representation.
- Allow for women who perform their own abortions outside of a formal medical setting to be charged with first-degree murder, which could carry a sentence of up to life in prison or the death penalty.
- Allow for prosecutors to charge women whose pregnancies end in miscarriage with second-degree murder, which carries a sentence of 10 to 30 years, if they can prove the miscarriage was a result of “the woman’s own conduct,” like drug or alcohol use.
- Enable state prosecutors to charge a woman who travels out-of-state for an abortion — and anyone who assists her — with conspiracy to commit murder under Georgia’s fetal personhood law.
Journalist Laura Bassett appeared on MSNBC: