title: Twitch Plays Pokémon

text: An active community of players also emerged on communities and social networks such as Reddit, which have liveblogged the proceedings and developed memes and other works around occurrences in the game. One item in Red's inventory from the start of the game was the Helix Fossil, which was used later in the game to revive Omanyte, but is otherwise functionless. The Helix Fossil was selected so frequently that it became an inside joke among players, and at times humorously calling it a deity which the player-character was constantly consulting for advice, and it quickly became the players' "religion". Players went as far as treating the fossil as a symbol representing a sect which supports Anarchy mode, while treating its counterpart, the Dome Fossil (which revives Kabuto), as a deity to those who support Democracy mode. Fans even published "bibles" for the Helix religion. Certain Pokémon captured by Red during the gameplay have also gained fan followings. Two Pokémon that were obtained early in the game, and then later accidentally released were the Charmeleon and Rattata, "ABBBBBBK(" and "JLVWNNOOOO", further nicknamed "Abby" and "Jay Leno". The team's Pidgeot, one of the highest level Pokémon in the group and often successful in battles, was named "Bird Jesus" by the community; concurrently, the team's Zapdos was nicknamed "AA-j" but referred to as "Archangel of Justice" or "Anarchy Bird". Their Flareon was dubbed the "False Prophet", as players had accidentally obtained it instead of Vaporeon, which was needed so they could teach it the "Surf" move needed to travel on water, and it had later caused the release of the Charmeleon and Rattata. During the eleventh day of the event (23 February), which fell on a Sunday, the players inadvertently released a dozen of the captured Pokémon, effectively deleting the creatures from the game, an event that later became known as "Bloody Sunday". The practice of nicknames continued into "Crystal", which included a new Pidgeot nicknamed "Brian", and a Feraligatr nicknamed "Lazorgator".


title: Twitch Plays Pokémon

text: Media outlets have described the proceedings of the game as being "mesmerizing," "miraculous," and "beautiful chaos," with one viewer comparing it to "watching a car crash in slow motion." Ars Technica felt that it encapsulated "the best and worst qualities of our user-driven, novelty-hungry age," providing hours of arguable time-wasting entertainment through a word-of-mouth viral distribution. The stream has been compared to the infinite monkey theorem in that effectively random input to a game still ultimately comes out with forward progress in the game. Twitch vice president of marketing Matthew DiPietro praised the stream, considering it "one more example of how video games have become a platform for entertainment and creativity that extends WAY beyond the original intent of the game creator. By merging a video game, live video and a participatory experience, the broadcaster has created an entertainment hybrid custom made for the Twitch community. This is a wonderful proof of concept that we hope to see more of in the future."


title: Twitch Plays Pokémon

text: "Twitch Plays Pokémon" has also inspired imitators with other video games, such as "Pokémon Blue", "QWOP", "Tetris" (including one which used the actual command inputs from the original Twitch Plays "Pokémon" stream), "Street Fighter II", "" (itself made significantly difficult by its nature as a first-person shooter), "", "Dark Souls", "Fallout 3", "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds", "Teamfight Tactics", "", "Pokémon Go" (which used location spoofing to simulate the movement of a real person in response to viewers' commands), and "Microsoft Flight Simulator". Similar Twitch Plays have been used for taking care of a virtual pet Tamagotchi, and installing Arch Linux onto a virtual machine through text commands entered one letter at a time. Inspired by this last application, another experimental "Stock Stream" was started in May 2017 to allow Twitch viewers to vote every five minutes on the trading of stocks on the New York Stock Exchange from an initial $50,000 fund provided by the stream's developer, placing some rules to avoid triggering any financial regulations. A similar approach using Twitter, with the Twitter's user icon serving as the game's output and user commands taken from tweets sent to the account, was launched in January 2021 using "Pokémon Red".


title: Twitch Plays Pokémon

text: The term "crowdplay" has been ascribed to similar games where the actions of the crowd directly influence the gameplay. tinyBuild used the "Twitch Plays" model to release "Punch Club", holding back release of the game until either a preset date or completion of the game running via a public "Twitch Plays" stream. "Punch Club" later added the ability for viewers to bet on in-game fights using virtual "Twitch" currency, following a similar betting model used by Oxeye Game Systems for "Cobalt". Telltale Games premiered a new "crowd play" feature for its adventure games starting with its 2016 "Batman" game, allowing stream viewers to vote on selected decisions within the game. In January 2016, Twitch created a specialized directory for various "Twitch Plays" streams, with their VP of Developer Success Kathy Astromoff stating that the company has recognized the growth of similar experiments, and enabling such experiments to be easily found by its userbase. Further, in March 2016, Twitch announced a new "stream first" initiative to help developers create games that are aimed for integration of streaming and chat atop more traditional gameplay, basing the format on the prior success of "Twitch Plays Pokemon" streams. Amazon.com, which acquired Twitch in 2014, developed the Amazon Lumberyard game engine that includes direct support for Twitch streaming to allow viewers to influence games via the associated chat, taking cues from the popularity of "Twitch Plays".


title: Twitch Plays Pokémon

text: Another homage, Fish Plays "Pokémon", surfaced in August 2014 as part of a HackNY hackathon. The stream, which consists of a fishcam in which the position of a betta fish in a fish bowl is used to control "Pokémon Red", peaked around 20,000 concurrent viewers.


title: Twitch Plays Pokémon

text: A Helix Fossil emote with the shortcut "PraiseIt" was later made available as a Twitch chat emote in celebration of the original "Pokémon Red" run.


title: Twitch Plays Pokémon

text: From "Platinum" to "Black 2", the stream showed a second game, "Pokémon Stadium 2", alongside the main game. Unlike other games, inputs for Stadium 2 were chosen at random and were not controlled by the chat. Instead, players on the chat were given virtual currency that could be used to place bets on the outcome of Stadium 2 matches. After "Pokémon X" concluded on 1 August 2014, a similar system was implemented, with "Pokémon Battle Revolution" taking the place of Stadium 2, as it added more features such as better graphics. This time, instead of inputs being entirely random, players who bet on the current match could vote on which move would be used by their team each turn; the system would randomly choose one of the bettors' choices, but players who had placed higher bets had a higher chance of their move being chosen. The developer has created a modded version of "Pokémon Battle Revolution" known as "Pokémon Battle Revolution 2.0". It is meant to fix glitches and add various improvements such as additional battle arenas. During the interim, the stream showed "Harvest Moon GB", "Pokkén Tournament", "EarthBound", "Robopon Sun", and save states of the first four runs in reverse order.


title: Twitch Plays Pokémon

text: In addition, an extra game is showcased to the side of any game currently being played. This game is a romhack of "Pokémon Pinball" dubbed simply "Pokémon Pinball Generations", which adds two new boards based on the second generation of Pokémon. As such, all Pokémon from Generation II are now obtainable in-game, and Pokémon badges are awarded randomly when a Pokémon is caught during a Pinball playthrough.


title: Faith (South Korean TV series)

text: Faith (; also known as The Great Doctor) is a 2012 South Korean television drama starring Lee Min-ho and Kim Hee-sun. It was broadcast by SBS from August 13 to October 30, 2012, on Mondays and Tuesdays at 21:55 (KST) time slot for 24 episodes. It is about a modern-day plastic surgeon, who is kidnapped and brought back in time to the Goryeo period, 700 years in the past, where she falls in love with her kidnapper, a warrior who is the leader of the royal guard.


title: Faith (South Korean TV series)

text: The title "Sin-ui", can mean "faith", as in belief in justice. The Hanja means "Divine Doctor", but in Hangul it also means "divine healer" or "great doctor".


title: Faith (South Korean TV series)

text: After King Gongmin of Goryeo (Ryu Deok-hwan) marries the Yuan princess, Noguk (Park Se-young), they return to Goryeo. On their way, they are attacked, and the queen is fatally injured. According to the advice of his royal advisor, the king orders the Captain of the Royal Guard, Choi Young (Lee Min-ho), to pass through a mystical portal ("heaven's gate") and find the "heaven's doctor". Choi Young travels to the future and brings back Yoo Eun-soo (Kim Hee-sun), a modern-day doctor from Seoul, to save the queen's life. He promises that he will return her to her world once she saves the queen, but the royal advisor schemes and persuades King Gongmin to force Eun-soo to stay as she can be useful to him.


title: Faith (South Korean TV series)

text: As Eun-soo accustoms herself to her new surroundings, she and Choi Young gradually fall in love with each other. But problems arise as others become fascinated with her as the "Heaven's doctor", and Eun-soo becomes a pawn in the political power plays between King Gongmin, the Yuan overlords, the sociopathic nobleman Ki-Chul (Yu Oh-seong) and Prince Deok-Seung (Park Yoon-jae), King Gongmin's uncle. Constantly risking his life, Choi Young thwarts numerous attempts by Ki-Chul and Deok-Seung, who are out to have Eun-soo in their possession.


title: Faith (South Korean TV series)

text: The series follows how Choi Young and Eun-soo evade and overcome impending problems and whether or not they succeed in getting her to heaven's door in time before it closes for good.


title: Faith (South Korean TV series)

text: "Faith" was '90s drama queen Kim Hee-sun's comeback project, her first TV appearance in five years after her marriage and childbirth.


title: Faith (South Korean TV series)

text: The production of "Faith" was riddled with problems. The initial budget was 10 billion won (about US$10 million) but the series got its budget slashed, and was pushed back multiple times because of the leading actor.


title: Faith (South Korean TV series)

text: The drama was announced in 2009 with Lee Joon-gi as a main lead. However, the actor had to be replaced because he was drafted in the army. Born in 1982, Lee would normally have time to enlist until the end of 2010 but he received his papers early, shortly after beginning his new film project. This forced him to drop "Faith", as well as his horse-racing movie "Grand Prix", which had already begun shooting. Lee had tried to postpone enlistment to finish these two projects by the end of the year, but was unable to do so.


title: Faith (South Korean TV series)

text: He was replaced by Kang Ji-hwan ("Coffee House") who, however, had to withdraw after a request by the Entertainment Management Association because of his ongoing contract dispute and legal fight with his former and current management companies. The antagonist, Kim Seung-soo, also left, with the majority of the original cast at that time. This was a severe blow to the budget, as 10 million won had reportedly been spent on promotion with Kang as the lead.


title: Faith (South Korean TV series)

text: Actors like Oh Ji-ho and Lee Sang-yoon were considered for the main role, before finally deciding for Lee Min-ho. It seems that at that time the story itself was rewritten to some extent. A released trailer with Kang Ji-hwan showed a different atmosphere, much darker, more epic and dramatic than what was finally filmed.


title: Faith (South Korean TV series)

text: Filming for "Faith" began on May 24, 2012 and it aired from August 13 to October 30, 2012. The ratings were mediocre but rarely dropped below 10%.


title: Faith (South Korean TV series)

text: On October 19, a little before the end, the news was published that Lee Phillip (who played Dr. Jang Bin), sustained an eye injury and had to pull out of the drama. The injury did not arise during drama filming, but because he was scheduled for surgery next week he would not be able to continue shooting. Many viewers agreed that "It's too bad that he leaves so close to the drama's finale without getting to be a part of it. On the other hand, it's both fortunate for the drama and a damn shame for him that he's barely a presence in the show to begin with, despite the setup hinting at a much meatier role".


title: Faith (South Korean TV series)

text: The writer Song Ji-na uploaded the original script on her website and it was obvious that there were considerable changes in the final product, some of them because of lack of money. However, Faith had financial problems almost from its start and they did not finish after the drama wrapped. Six months after the end of its airing, many of the cast and crew of that drama had not been paid. The acting, editing, and producing salaries which had not been paid amounted to 1.7 billion won. Drama producer and direction Kim Jong-hak, whose credits include Eyes of Dawn, Sandglass, Daemang (2002) and Legend (2007), was accused of double-contracting the Faith OST rights (to two separate companies) in the fall of 2012 became the subject of a police investigation for embezzlement and breach of trust. Kim was sued in February 2013 under the charge that he had embezzled 2 billion for personal use and summoned by police for ongoing investigation. He took his own life on July 23, 2013, by carbon dioxide, in a gositel room. This tragic death and many of the "ills" of Korean dramas have been attributed to the outsourcing of production to independent companies which struggle to cover the exorbitant cost of writers and stars.


title: Faith (South Korean TV series)

text: "Faith" was sold to 6 Asian countries including Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia, with 90% of the total pre-sales amount of coming from Japan.


title: Alexander Sarcophagus

text: The Alexander Sarcophagus is a late 4th century BC Hellenistic stone sarcophagus from the necropolis near Sidon, Lebanon. It is adorned with bas-relief carvings of Alexander the Great and scrolling historical and mythological narratives. The work is considered to be remarkably well preserved, and has been used as an exemplar for its retention of polychromy. It is currently in the holdings of the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.


title: Alexander Sarcophagus

text: According to many scholars, both the provenance and date of the Alexander Sarcophagus remain uncontested, landing it firmly in the city of Sidon and having been most likely commissioned after 332 BC. The pertinent and continuous depiction of Abdalonymus, the King of Sidon, helps narrow down the time period in which this sarcophagus was most likely created. We know that Abdalonymus was appointed to this position by Alexander the Great in 333 to 332 BC, and is said to have died in roughly 311 BC (although the exact date is unknown). It was demonstrated by archaeologist and scholar Karl Schefold to have been made before Abdalonymus's death, due to its still-classical manner being purportedly uninfluenced by the style of Lysippos. Schefold argues that the sarcophagus retains a more conservative approach to its composition and iconography, contrasting against the stylistic progression marked by the work of Lysippos. He also asserts that his tomb would have been prepared before his death, although the vague timeline of Abdalonymus's life leaves this open-ended.


title: Alexander Sarcophagus

text: The Alexander Sarcophagus was found in a subterranean necropolis that was divided into two hypogea, an underground temple or tomb that consists of a series of rooms. It likely functioned as a royal necropolis, which also assists in supporting the scholarly debate regarding the possible patron of this sarcophagus.


title: Alexander Sarcophagus

text: This sarcophagus in particular is one of four massive carved sarcophagi that formed two pairs. These pairs were discovered during the 1887 excavations conducted by Osman Hamdi Bey and Yervant Voskan at the necropolis near Sidon, Lebanon.


title: Alexander Sarcophagus

text: Although it has been widely accepted that this was not the actual sarcophagus of Alexander the Great himself from early on in its analysis, there has been great scholarly debate surrounding who the patron of the sarcophagus was. It was originally thought to have been the sarcophagus of Abdalonymus (died 311 BC), the king of Sidon appointed by Alexander immediately following the Battle of Issus (333). Scholar Andrew Stewart asserts that the Alexander Sarcophagus was patronized by Abdalonymus for a number of reasons: mainly, for the reason that Near Eastern kings regularly commissioned their tombs ante-mortem in consideration of their “posthumous reputations.” This is a commonly supported claim that has been continuously upheld by many scholars, but it has also been equally contested. For example, Waldemar Heckel argues that the sarcophagus was made for Mazaeus, a Persian noble and governor of Babylon. In order to support this assertion, Heckel questions why a sarcophagus for Abdalonymus, a king from Sidon, would feature so many Persian figures and iconographies, arguing that the dress, facial features, and activities of the central figure is more historically aligned with Persian rather than Phoenician nobility. The answer to this, according to Heckel, is that the relevance of these figures and iconographies would be more fitting for the Persian nobleman instead. In support, he theorizes that one of the side friezes depicts the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC, showing the strength of Mazaeus' military leadership in directing the Persian army.


title: Alexander Sarcophagus

text: One aspect of the sarcophagus’s history that remains widely debated is which ancient Mediterranean culture may have created it. According to Schefold, six Ionian sculptors' hands have been distinguished, working in an Attic idiom. Stewart concurs with Schefold, claiming that the unification of the varying stylistic elements is associated with Attic sculpture. However, according to archaeologist Margaret C. Miller, the sarcophagus was produced probably by a Rhodian workshop, in this case working at Sidon. It is helpful to note here, that Sidon was a Phoenician city-state, which has led other scholars like Caroline Houser to argue its stylistic origins being rooted in Phoenicia. It has been argued that the majority of the sculptural detailing can be attributed to ancient Greek styles, drawing back to the capture of this Near Eastern city by the ancient Greeks. Due to the cross-cultural influences in Greek art at the time, however, there are conflicting attributes within the sarcophagus itself. For example, the lions found on the corners of the roof have specifically Asian attributes. There are also several mythologized creatures, such as “three ram horns growing on feline heads” that would have been entirely foreign to the fauna of the ancient Hellenistic world.


title: Alexander Sarcophagus

text: The roof ridge of the Alexander Sarcophagus, made of two “massive blocks” of marble, is lined with alternating statuettes of women’s heads (possibly the goddess Atargatis) and eagles. Different narratives decorate the friezes on each side and pediment of the sarcophagus, each lending to different interpretations of the overall theme of the sarcophagus itself. These different interpretations have varied due to the complex styles and subject matters. Some scholars have interpreted these narratives as biographically relating to the life of Abdalonymos, with the series beginning in 333/332 BC with the Battle of Issus and ending in 306/305 BC. Andrew Stewart argues that the sarcophagus offers no unified program or obviously coherent message at all, as the scenes in each relief contradict the other, with iconography mixing both Western and Eastern standards. It is of note that the themes of battle and hunt are consistent throughout the friezes: one long side and one short side depicts each of these scenes.


title: Alexander Sarcophagus

text: The relief carvings on one long side of the piece depict Alexander fighting the Persians at the Battle of Issus. Volkmar von Graeve has compared the motif to the famous Alexander Mosaic at Naples; he concludes that the iconography of both derives from a common original, a lost painting by Philoxenos of Eretria. The comparison between the mosaic and sarcophagus has gained traction in the scholarly field, supported by other scholars such as Andrew Stewart. Alexander is shown mounted, wearing a lion skin on his head, and preparing to throw a spear at the Persian cavalry. There remains debate surrounding the importance of the historicity of the figures seen in the hunting and battle scenes. While historians such as von Grave interpret them as accurate portrayals of historic figures, other historians like Schefold focus on them as mythic subjects of the battles and royal hunt. Some scholars, as well, believe that a second mounted Macedonian figure near the center represents Hephaestion, Alexander's older close friend. A third mounted Macedonian figure is often identified as Perdiccas, one of the generals in Alexander’s army.


title: Alexander Sarcophagus

text: The opposite long side shows Alexander, recognized as the “horseman at the center left,” and the Macedonians hunting lions together with Abdalonymus and the Persians. Stewart has also presented that this may be an example of Alexander hunting in the Sidonian game park in 332. This is a unique depiction of the Macedonians and Persians collaborating in the hunt. This is significant due to the fact that the scene on the opposite end has been largely interpreted as the Battle of Issus, which is broadly understood as a symbol of Macedonian defeat of the Persians.


title: Alexander Sarcophagus

text: One of the short ends leads the eye towards the mythic lion hunt, portraying a scene in which Abdalonymus hunts a panther. On the other short end is a battle, perhaps the Battle of Gaza in 312 BC- if this is the case, the pediment above that end would be showing the murder of Perdiccas in 320 BC. It has been conjectured that Abdalonymus ultimately died in the Battle of Gaza, although this is unsubstantiated. If this the case, however, then this pediment would be the depiction of his last moments in battle. The other pediment on the lid above shows Abdalonymus in an unidentified battle.


title: Alexander Sarcophagus

text: The Alexander Sarcophagus is constructed of Pentelic marble retaining traces of its polychromy, in the form of a Greek temple. Evidence of polychromy, referring to the colorful paintwork found on statuary (especially ancient statuary), has been found on the sarcophagus, and would have actually been seen during the unearthing of the sarcophagus during its excavation in 1887. The Greek-Macedonian warriors depicted on the sarcophagus are shown fighting in the nude, as was typical of Greek iconography. They were, however, painted, showing the colorful details of their skin tones, hair colors, helmets, and shields. The Persians these warriors fought against, on the other hand, were painted with bright, vibrant armor. The polychromy depicts the detailed patterns of their pants and skirts, as well as the intricate paint work done on their shields.


title: Fray Tormenta

text: Sergio Gutiérrez Benítez (born May 9, 1945) is a Mexican Catholic priest who supported an orphanage for 23 years as a lucha libre wrestler. While performing, he wore a red and yellow mask and used the ring name Fray Tormenta ("Friar Storm"). He made only sporadic in-ring appearances in the 2000s before retiring completely from wrestling in July 2011, but he still wears his mask even in his duties as a priest. Fray comes from the latin Fraire, which translates to brother, and has as its English equivalent in this context friar. Mendicant orders, such as Franciscans and Dominicans, in former Spanish colonies like in Latin America put Fray before their religious name.


title: Fray Tormenta

text: Sergio Gutiérrez Benítez was born to José Gutiérrez García and Emilia Benítez on May 9, 1945, in San Agustín Metzquititlán, Hidalgo as the sixteenth of their seventeen children. He had long been inspired to become a masked luchador after watching two 1963 Mexican films, "El Señor Tormenta" (Mister Storm) and "Tormenta En El Ring" (Storm In The Ring) both of which featured the story of a poor Mexican priest who supported the children of his orphanage by fighting as a lucha libre wrestler at night. At age 22, Gutiérrez, at the time a drug addict and alcoholic, became interested in the priesthood and was inducted into the Piarists Order. His theological training took him to Rome, and then Spain, and for a while he taught philosophy and history at Roman Catholic universities in Mexico. He later became a secular priest in the Diocese of Texcoco, where he founded an orphanage named "La Casa Hogar de los Cachorros de Fray Tormenta", which would serve as the home of 270 children. In need of money to take care of the children, the father became the masked wrestler known as Fray Tormenta.


title: Fray Tormenta

text: In 1991, French filmmakers made a movie loosely based on his life called "" ("The Man In The Golden Mask") starring Jean Reno.


title: Fray Tormenta

text: In 2006, American film maker Jared Hess made another film based on the story of Fray Tormenta called "Nacho Libre", starring Jack Black. The Paramount film was produced by Jack Black, Mike White, and David Klawans. Benítez appears in the movie where he portrays a retired wrestler.


title: Fray Tormenta

text: In 2007, Fray Tormenta appeared in the film "Padre Tormenta" as a priest who dons the luchador's mask and enters the ring to raise funds for the orphanage he directs.


title: Fray Tormenta

text: Currently, Fray Tormenta stars as a supporting character in the Mexican comic book series "Místico: El Principe de Plata y Oro" as a mentor to the lucha libre wrestler Místico.


title: Fray Tormenta

text: In real life, although Fray Tormenta is now retired from professional wrestling he still works at the orphanage as a priest, and has inspired one of his children to take up his mantle so that the legend of Fray Tormenta can live on. The masked wrestler, whose real name is unknown, calls himself Fray Tormenta Jr. Although semi-retired from wrestling since 2001, he still wrestled occasionally and on January 11, 2011 won his second "Lucha de Apuesta", by defeating Bugambilia, Super Crazy, X-Fly, Bestia 666 and Boy Danger, to win Bugambilia's hair. On July 3, 2011, Tormenta teamed with El Pantera and Solar to defeat Black Terry, Negro Navarro and Scorpio, Jr. at International Wrestling Revolution Group's "Festival de las Mascaras". After the match Gutiérrez announced that he had wrestled his final match. On June 20, 2012, Tormenta made an appearance for Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL), officially giving his blessing to the second incarnation of Místico.


title: Fray Tormenta

text: The video game characters King from "Tekken", Crasher Wake from "Pokémon", Tizoc from "Fatal Fury", Leon from "F-Zero", and Greco from "Chrono Cross" were inspired by his story, as were the movies "Nacho Libre" with Jack Black playing Ignacio/Nacho as the Fray Tormenta inspired character and the French film L'Homme au masque d'or () with Jean Reno playing Father Victorio Gaetano.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: A six-week abortion ban or early abortion ban, called a "heartbeat bill" or "fetal heartbeat bill" by proponents, is a form of abortion restriction legislation in the United States. These bans make abortion illegal as early as six weeks gestational age (two or three weeks into a pregnancy), which is when proponents claim that a "fetal heartbeat" can be detected.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Janet Porter, an anti-abortion activist from Ohio, is considered to be the person that first authored this type of legislation. Efforts to introduce her model law succeeded in passing through political branches of government in about a dozen states, but in most cases the courts struck down or blocked similar legislation. However, the Texas law and analogues subsequently adopted in other states succeeded due to a unique enforcement mechanism that makes challenging the law extremely difficult, and which was upheld by the Supreme Court. In some states, the heartbeat bills' effect (whether blocked or not) has been minimized by more stringent total abortion bans that were announced following the decision in "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization"; in other states, such as Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee, judges lifted the injunctions against the previously passed laws.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Anti-abortion groups argue that heartbeat "is the universally recognized indicator of life" and as such must be protected. Reproductive rights advocates, on the other hand, say that these bans are "de facto" complete abortion bans, since many women do not even know that they are pregnant six weeks after their last menstruation, which is four weeks post-fertilization.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: The heartbeat bills are based on model legislation created by Faith2Action, a conservative Christian ministry from Ohio advocating for abortion restrictions. Its founder and leader, Janet Porter, said that she was frustrated by what she saw was slow progress in banning pregnancy termination around the United States. The activist thus authored the Ohio House Bill 493 in 2011, and arranged for heart-shaped balloons and fetuses' "testimony" in the legislature, but the bill failed to get out of the Senate because the lawmakers feared the bill was unconstitutional. Her efforts were not considered mainstream at the time, and the Ohio Right to Life, an anti-abortion group which previously employed Porter, opposed such legislation. While that proposal failed, a flurry of copycat legislation was proposed in several other states, which has not abated since then.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: In 2013, North Dakota became the first state to pass legislation banning abortions after six weeks. In 2015, the law was ruled unconstitutional under the precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court decision "Roe v. Wade" (1973). Eleven states have proposed bills for six-week abortion bans since 2018; since 2019, such bills have passed including bills in Ohio, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Alabama, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Texas, most of which lie either partly or entirely in the Bible Belt. Utah and Arkansas voted to limit the procedure to the middle of the second trimester. As of June 2021, except for the Texas bill, none of the laws were in effect due to court intervention. The Guttmacher Institute writes that "state policymakers are testing the limits of what the new U.S. Supreme Court majority might allow and laying the groundwork for a day when federal constitutional protections for abortion are weakened or eliminated entirely." Texas has taken a novel approach in their wording of the legislation; rather than have the government enforce the law, private citizens are to be allowed to sue the provider or anyone that helps the woman to get an abortion. "The Texas Tribune" writes that "supporters of the bill hope this novel provision will trip up legal challenges to the legislation, as without state officials enforcing the ban, there will be nobody for pro-women's rights groups to sue."


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Because the start of pregnancy is measured from the date of a woman's last menstruation (generally about two weeks before conception), six weeks into a pregnancy equals four weeks of embryonic development, and only two weeks after a woman's first "missed" period, when many women are unaware that they are pregnant. Most women who have an abortion do so after six weeks' gestation. Reproductive rights advocates contend that because of these and other reasons, the "fetal heartbeat bills" are "de facto" bans on abortion.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: While some of these laws ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy and are called "fetal heartbeat" laws by their proponents who claim that a fetal heartbeat can be detected at six weeks, doctors have said that the term "fetal heartbeat" at that stage is false and intentionally misleading. A conceptus is not called a fetus until after ten weeks of pregnancy, before which the proper term is an embryo. Additionally, since at six weeks the embryo has no heart, only a group of cells which will become a heart, calling it a heartbeat is also misleading. The heart will only have formed enough to be able to hear a real fetal heartbeat by 17–20 weeks of gestation.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Jennifer Keats, an OB-GYN at University of California, San Francisco, stated that the embryo's cardiovascular system at six weeks is "very immature". Keats described the cardiac activity as "a group of cells with electrical activity. That's what the heartbeat is at that stage of gestation... We are in no way talking about any kind of cardiovascular system."


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Ted Anderson, formerly president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), said that "ACOG does not use the term 'heartbeat' to describe these legislative bans on abortion because it is misleading language, out of step with the anatomical and clinical realities of that stage of pregnancy." and "Pregnancy and fetal development are a continuum; What's interpreted as a heartbeat in these bills is actually electrically induced flickering of a portion of fetal tissue that will become the heart as the embryo develops."


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Controversy exists surrounding six-week abortion bans in part because there is debate on the point at which an embryo heartbeat can be detected. In 2013, when the Wyoming House of Representatives considered a "heartbeat bill", Norine Kasperik said that "she heard different answers [as] to when a heartbeat is detectable", and in her view "there seemed to be variation by medical equipment used". Mary Throne asked: "Is this abortion illegal at 22 days with a highly invasive ultrasound or is it illegal at 9 weeks when we hear a heartbeat with a stethoscope?" Other critics of the bills have claimed that they ignore that not all embryos' heartbeats become detectable at the same time, even when measured using the same methods.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: The Center for Reproductive Rights has stated that there is some inconsistency with regard to these laws; specifically, the Arkansas law requires providers to use an abdominal ultrasound to attempt to detect a fetal heartbeat, while the North Dakota law allows the use of any available technology, including a transvaginal probe, which makes it possible to detect a fetal heartbeat earlier than an abdominal ultrasound can. With specific regard to the North Dakota law, detecting an embryo's heartbeat at six weeks into a pregnancy requires the use of a transvaginal ultrasound, which some members of the abortion-rights movement say is unnecessarily invasive.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: It is estimated that there are 25–32thousand pregnancies from rape per year in adult women, although the number may be considerably higher because many women do not report a rape. Most women develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following rape, and find a decision especially difficult so soon after the trauma of the rape and the physical and mental trauma that they may experience for an extended period of time.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: In the United States, there are an estimated 25–32thousand pregnancies from rape per year in adult women. Many victims receive little to no aftercare and most experience various forms of PTSD. A third of these pregnancies are not discovered until the second trimester. Any delay in detection reduces women's options, especially outside major urban centers, but many women are still recovering from being raped when they are called on to decide whether to have an abortion. It is known that most women do not report sexual assault, and many times it is hard to bring an assault case to trial. Teenage girls are especially unlikely to report assault, even though 74% of women who had intercourse before age 14 and 60% of those who had sex before age 15 report having had a forced sexual experience. One study conducted in the 1970s that looked at California data found that "on average, only 413 men were arrested annually for statutory rape in California, even though 50,000 pregnancies occurred among underage women in 1976 alone".


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Alabama's "heartbeat bill", passed in 2019, makes abortions illegal even in cases of rape and incest. Furthermore, it requires that judges terminate the parental rights of a man convicted of first-degree rape and certain other sex crimes, leaving a loophole that allows rapists to seek custody of a child conceived through their assault. However, because the law requires a conviction, activists say that since most sexual assaults are never reported, much less produce a finding of guilt in court, many victims are left vulnerable. Activists fear that a victim could find herself in a situation where she would be forced to bear a child of rape and then be forced to co-parent the child with her rapist.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Responding to criticism of the Texas "heartbeat bill" which also includes women or girls who have been raped, Governor Greg Abbott asserts that the Act will not force a woman who has been raped to carry a pregnancy to term because the state will "work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets."


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Critics of six-week abortion bans say that, since "Roe v. Wade" established that states must allow abortion until the point of viability (between 24 and 28 weeks into the pregnancy), such bills "blatantly contradict" Supreme Court precedent. The 2013 North Dakota law banning abortions after six weeks was ruled in District Court to be "clearly invalid and unconstitutional based on the United States Supreme Court precedent in "Roe v. Wade"."


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Proponents of six-week abortion bans contend that the constitutional precedent of "Roe v. Wade" should be re-examined in light of advancements in law and science. Ohio governor Mike DeWine argued that the main purposes of the bills are to "protect the most vulnerable among us, those who don't have a voice" and that the "government's role should be to protect life from the beginning to the end."


title: Heartbeat bill

text: A related though distinct type of law is that introduced at the state level in all 50 states in the US in October 2011, which would require any woman seeking an abortion to see and hear their conceptus's heartbeat. Supporters included the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Americans United for Life, and the Susan B. Anthony List. Another such bill was introduced in Texas. A similar type of legislation, the Heartbeat Informed Consent Act, was introduced at the national level around the same time by Michele Bachmann; however, it died in committee. Another law of this variety, introduced by Sharon Weston Broome, was passed by legislators in Louisiana in 2012, as an amendment to a 2010 bill requiring women seeking an abortion to receive an ultrasound of their conceptus. Similar laws have been passed in states such as Georgia in 2005; and a law that mandated both an ultrasound of the "unborn child" and listening to its heartbeat before an abortion could be procured was laid on the table in 2012 in Pennsylvania. This last bill became controversial when Tom Corbett, Pennsylvania's governor, stated that "You just have to close your eyes" and dismissed accusations that the bill would be unnecessarily obtrusive. Furthermore, while the anti-abortion movement claims that bills mandating a woman listen to her conceptus' heartbeat would increase the likelihood of them changing their mind, the abortion-rights community, with the support of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, opposes "informed-consent" bills because they threaten to, if passed, "significantly jeopardize the open dialogue within the physician-patient relationship."


title: Heartbeat bill

text: "Informed consent" laws requiring women seeking abortions to have the physician play a recording of her conceptus' heartbeat have met with challenges in court, notably in Texas, when the CRR filed a lawsuit against it, leading to a court case entitled "Texas Medical Providers Performing Abortion Services v. Lakey". Prior to Sam Sparks condemning the law in January 2012, however, a federal district court had ruled that the law violated the First Amendment in August 2011. This decision was reversed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, led by Edith Jones. Another similar law was challenged in North Carolina in "Stuart v. Huff", in which a federal district court ruled that the law was in violation of the First Amendment. This case, unlike the one in Texas, has not yet been appealed. This has led to some debate among different anti-abortion groups regarding strategy; specifically, while some of these groups, like the Kansas Coalition for Life, have supported the passing of this legislation, others, like Kansans for Life, are concerned that "enacting a fetal heartbeat ban would prompt a court ruling undoing some limits on abortion and providers." Paul Linton, former general counselor for AUL, has argued that fetal heartbeat laws "have no chance in the courts." He, like most mainstream anti-abortion advocates (including James Bopp), prefers instead a legislative strategy that chips away at "Roe v. Wade".


title: Heartbeat bill

text: On May 27, 2015, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling and permanently blocked the law from being enforced. In January 2016, The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case, leaving the Eighth Circuit's ruling in place.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: On May 15, 2018, eleven days after Iowa Governor, Kim Reynolds, signed SF 359 into law, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, Inc., Jill Meadows, and Emma Goldman Clinic (petitioners) filed a lawsuit seeking declaratory and injunctive relief in state court arguing the fetal heartbeat law violated the Iowa State Constitution. On June 1, 2018, Polk County District Court Judge Michael Huppert entered a preliminary injunction which temporarily blocked the law from going into effect. On January 22, 2019, the county district judge declared the law to be in violation of the Iowa Constitution and entered a permanent injunction prohibiting its enforcement. In holding the law unconstitutional the judge cited the Iowa Supreme Court's 2018 ruling in a challenge to a different abortion-restriction in which the state's court of last resort held that "a woman's right to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy is a fundamental right under the Iowa Constitution." Anti-abortion proponents have said they hope this litigation creates a pathway for "Roe v. Wade" to be reexamined by the U.S. Supreme Court, but University of Iowa law professor Paul Gowder and other legal experts have said that it is almost impossible that it could end up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, as the U.S. Supreme Court does not review Supreme Court decisions concerning state constitutional questions.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: In response to Judge Michael Huppert's ruling that Iowa's heartbeat abortion ban violates the state Constitution, anti-abortion legislators have filed legislation to amend the state constitution to state "that the Constitution of the State of Iowa does not secure or protect a right to or require the funding of abortion." The resolutions proposing to amend Iowa's constitution are SJR 9 and HJR 5 which were filed on January 24, 2019, and February 6, 2019, respectively.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: In July 2015, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court decision blocking HB 1456 from going into effect. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case and the law remains permanently blocked.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: There have been multiple lawsuits challenging enforcement of the 2021 Texas Heartbeat Act. Several of these are still pending or active.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: House Bill 490 prohibiting abortions after a heartbeat can be detected was passed by a vote of 73–29 in the Alabama House on March 4, 2014. In doing so they became the first state to pass such a bill. The bill later died in committee.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: In 2019, Alabama passed an abortion law that is more far-reaching than a heartbeat law. On April 2, 2019, House Bill 314 banning abortions at every stage of pregnancy and criminalizing the procedure for doctors (except in the case of medical emergency or lethal fetal anomaly), was introduced into the House. The bill passed the House on April 30 (74–3), passed the Senate on May 14, and was signed into law by Governor Kay Ivey on May 16.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: A fetal heartbeat bill, banning abortion after twelve weeks, was passed on January 31, 2013, by the Arkansas Senate, vetoed in Arkansas by Governor Mike Beebe, but, on March 6, 2013, his veto was overridden by the Arkansas House of Representatives. A federal judge issued a temporary injunction against the Arkansas law in May 2013, and in March 2014, it was struck down by federal judge Susan Webber Wright, who described the law as unconstitutional.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Two fetal heartbeat bills were filed in the Florida Legislature in 2019. Rep. Mike Hill filed a fetal heartbeat bill (HB 235) on January 10, 2019, in the Florida House of Representatives. A companion bill (SB 792), was filed in the Florida Senate on February 6, 2019, by Sen. Dennis Baxley. The bills, which are identical, would have made it a third-degree felony for a doctor to perform an abortion on a woman after a fetal heartbeat is detected, unless the "woman has been diagnosed with a condition that would create a serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function if the woman delayed terminating her pregnancy." Both bills died in committee.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has pledged to sign legislation that would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat was detected.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Rep. Ed Setzler introduced HB 481 in the Georgia House of Representatives on February 25, 2019. A similar bill is expected to be filed in the Georgia State Senate by Sen. Bruce Thompson soon. During his campaign for Governor, Brian Kemp, now the Governor of Georgia, "vow[ed] to sign the toughest abortion laws in the country" and when asked about litigation said, "bring it! I'll fight for life at the Capitol and in the courtroom." After being passed in the House on March 7, 2019, HB 481 was passed out of a Senate committee on March 18, 2019. It was subsequently passed by the entire state Senate, after which it was narrowly passed by the House 92–78. The bill was signed by Governor Kemp on May 7, 2019, bringing into effect one of the strictest abortion laws in the country at the time.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: The bill would prohibit abortions after a heartbeat can be detected in a conceptus, which is usually when a woman is six weeks pregnant.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Democratic opponent of the Georgia bill, former governal candidate Stacey Abrams, called the bill a "forced pregnancy bill."


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Rep. Gregory Chaney introduced HB 366 on April 13, 2021, that would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected. The bill passed the house by a vote of 53–16 on April 16, 2021, and the senate on April 21, 2021, by a vote of 25–7 and was later signed into law by Governor Brad Little on April 29, 2021. The law included exceptions for cases of rape, incest, and when the mother's life is in danger. The law goes into effect if another similar ban is upheld by appellate court.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: On May 4, 2018, governor Kim Reynolds signed into law a bill that would ban abortion in Iowa after a fetal heartbeat is detected, starting July 1, 2018. On January 22, 2019, a county district judge declared the law to be in violation of Iowa's State Constitution and entered a permanent injunction prohibiting its enforcement. "See" the Iowa Lawsuit section of this article under the Legal challenges heading for more details related to the litigation over Iowa's fetal heartbeat bill.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: The bill was introduced and referred to committee in February 2013. The bill was presented to the Kansas house in March 2013. The bill was known as House Bill 2324, "An act prohibiting an abortion of an unborn human individual with a detectable fetal heartbeat."


title: Heartbeat bill

text: One outspoken advocate of such bills is Mark Gietzen, who has tried to gather as many signatures as possible in order to get Sam Brownback to convene a special session of Congress in order to consider the bill. Gietzen also advocated for a fetal heartbeat law to be passed during a special session of the Kansas legislature, to be held on September 3, 2013. HB 2324 died in committee in May 2014.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Two bills which seek to prohibit abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected have been filed in the Kentucky General Assembly in 2019. Sen. Matt Castlen introduced SB 9 in the Kentucky Senate on January 8, 2019. On February 14, 2019, SB 9 passed out of the Kentucky Senate by a 31–6 vote. The bill was received in the House on February 15, 2019. Damon Thayer, the Senate Republican floor leader said SB 9 "absolutely" was a priority for the chamber and said he would be delighted if it became law and ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court as a means to overturn to Roe v. Wade "It would be the pinnacle of my career," he said. On March 14, 2019, the Kentucky House passed SB 9 by a vote of 71–19. As of April 2019, the ACLU filed suit to challenge it and a federal judge blocked enforcement until the final ruling in district court.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: A similar bill by Rep. Robert Goforth was introduced in the Kentucky House of Representatives. The bill, HB 100, which was prefiled on December 13, 2018, was referred to the Health and Family Services Committee on January 10, 2019. When asked about the heartbeat bill, Rep. Goforth, who announced his candidacy for Governor of Kentucky on January 8, 2019, the same day the bill was introduced, said he would be pleased if Kentucky or one of the other states considering similar measures enacted such a law and, in the event of court challenge, took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to overturn Roe v. Wade.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Previous fetal heartbeat bills filed in Kentucky have failed to pass. A fetal heartbeat bill, HB 132, was introduced on January 7, 2014, by Joseph Fischer. The bill was referred to the House Health and Welfare Committee on March 19, 2014, where the bill died. In 2013, Rep. Fischer introduced the same bill with the same bill number (Hb 132) on January 11, 2013. The bill was referred to the House Health and Welfare Committee on February 20, 2013, where the bill died.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Two fetal heartbeat bills have been filed in the Maryland House of Delegates in 2019. On February 8, 2019, Ric Metzgar filed HB 933. On February 8, 2019, Robin L. Grammer, Jr. filed HB 978, a bill entitled "Keep Our Hearts Beating Act."


title: Heartbeat bill

text: In 2018, three heartbeat bills were filed in Mississippi; all of which died in committee. In 2017, three heartbeat bills were filed in Mississippi; all of which died in committee. In 2014, Sen. Joey Fillingane, filed a heartbeat bill in the Mississippi State Senate. The bill died in committee. In 2013, HB 6, was introduced in January and died in committee on February 5, 2013.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Another fetal heartbeat bill filed in 2019, HB 529 by Robert Foster died the House Judiciary A Committee on February 5, 2019.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: SB 2116, by Sen. Angela Burks Hill was referred to the Public Health and Welfare Committee on January 11, 2019.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: HB 732, by Rep. Chris Brown was referred to the Public Health and Human Services Committee on January 17, 2019. After passing out of their respective committees on February 5, 2019, both SB 2116 and HB 732, were passed out of the Mississippi Senate and Mississippi House on February 13, 2019. On March 19, 2019, the Senate concurred in the House amendments to SB 2116, and on March 22, 2019, the fetal heartbeat bill was signed into law by Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Two fetal heartbeat bills have been filed in Missouri on January 9, 2019. SB 139 was filed in the Missouri Senate by Sen. Andrew Koenig; the bill is pending in the Health and Pensions Committee. HB 126 was filed in the Missouri House of Representatives by Rep. Nick Schroer. On January 30, 2019, HB 126 was referred to the Children and Families Committee, and on February 12, 2019, a public hearing on the bill was completed. On February 21, 2018, HB 126 was voted out of committee to the full House with the recommendation that it "do pass." On February 27, 2019, HB 126 was passed out of the Missouri House and was sent to the state Senate. Missouri's House Speaker Elijah Haahr has said he supports the "heartbeat bill" calling it a top priority for the 2019 session. When asked if he would sign a fetal heartbeat bill, Governor Mike Parson said, "I've been pro-life my entire career, and I support that all the time."


title: Heartbeat bill

text: The bill was signed on May 24, 2019, with an effective date of August 28, 2019. The bill bans abortions after 8 weeks, with no exceptions for rape or incest.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: North Dakota HB 1456 was signed into law in March 2013 by Jack Dalrymple, who stated that it was "a legitimate attempt by a state legislature to discover the boundaries of Roe v. Wade." A federal district court found that it clearly violated the constitutional protections afforded in Roe v. Wade and it was quickly blocked.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: In July of that year, a lawsuit had been filed with regard to the law by the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), on behalf of the only abortion clinic in North Dakota, Red River Women's Clinic. In July 2015, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the bill. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, but the court denied a writ of certiorari in January 2016 and let stand the decision of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: In Ohio, a fetal heartbeat bill, HB 125, was co-authored by Janet Porter, was introduced in the state legislature in October 2011. The bill was shelved by the Republican majority Senate to avoid controversy. This bill was notably supported by Jack Willke. The original Bill was authored by Janet Porter of Faith2Action; former Governor John Kasich vetoed it twice prior to its passing.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: A related law was signed in Ohio in 2013 (HB 248) by John Kasich, which mandates, among other things, that doctors who do not test for a fetal heartbeat must be subject to criminal penalties; specifically, "The doctor's failure to do so would be a first-degree misdemeanor, carrying up to six months in jail, for the first violation and a fourth-degree felony, carrying up to 18 months in jail, for subsequent violations." A further fetal heartbeat bill, based on Porter's original, was introduced on August 14, 2013, by Lynn Wachtmann and others.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: On March 25, 2015, another heartbeat bill (House Bill 69) passed the Ohio House of Representatives. The Guardian reported that "The bill is unlikely to go any further, facing stiff opposition in the senate as well as from John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio."


title: Heartbeat bill

text: On December 6, 2016, the Ohio Senate added a heartbeat ban provision to an unrelated bill, House Bill 493, previously passed by the Ohio House of Representatives. The bill was returned to the House and passed by the House the same day. The bill as passed would make abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat a fifth-degree felony except in cases where a physician judges the abortion necessary "to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to prevent a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman." On December 13, 2016, Kasich vetoed the bill, on the basis that it was unconstitutional and would almost certainly be struck down if challenged in court. The Ohio House of Representatives considered whether to override Kasich's veto, which would require a three-fifths vote in both the House and the Senate. However, the House leadership opted not to call lawmakers back to Columbus before the end of the year, ensuring Kasich's veto would stand.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: The bill passed the Ohio Senate with a vote of 21 yeas, out of 33 seats in the senate; it received 10 nays:


title: Heartbeat bill

text: In the House of Representatives, the bill passed the Ohio House with a vote of 56 yeas, out of 99 seats in the house; it received 39 nays:


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Two fetal heartbeat bills were introduced in the Ohio General Assembly in 2019, marking the 133rd Session of the Ohio General Assembly as the fifth time such legislation has been proposed in the state. On February 11, 2019, Christina Hagan and Ron Hood filed HB 68, which was introduced in the Ohio House of Representatives on February 12, 2019. On February 12, 2019, Kristina Roegner filed SB 23 in the Ohio Senate; the bill was referred to the Health, Human Services and Medicaid Committee on February 13, 2019. On February 21, 2019, the President of the Ohio Senate, Larry Obhof pledged to pass SB 23 out of the upper chamber stating, "We are going to pass that bill by the middle of March. I have no doubt at all." On March 13, 2019, SB 23 was passed out of the Ohio Senate by a vote of 19 to 13. The next month, the Ohio House amended the bill, and passed it, 56–40; the changes were ratified in the Senate, 18–13. The bill was signed into law by Governor Mike DeWine on April 11, 2019. On July 3, 2019, a federal judge blocked the implementation of the bill temporarily, just days before the law was to take effect.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: A fetal heartbeat bill (SB 1274) was signed into law by then-Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin in April 2012 that requires an abortion provider to offer a woman the opportunity to hear the conceptus's heartbeat before ending the pregnancy, and applies when the conceptus is at least eight weeks old. The bill took effect in November 2012.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: A fetal heartbeat bill (HB 2315) was introduced in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on May 2, 2018, primarily sponsored by Rep Rick Saccone. The bill was referred to the Judiciary Committee where it died.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: State Representative John McCravy prefiled HB 3020 in the South Carolina House of Representatives in December 2018. The bill, which is entitled "Fetal Heartbeat Protection from Abortion Act", was introduced on January 8, 2018, and referred to the House Judiciary Committee. Previous attempts to pass fetal heartbeat bills in the South Carolina General Assembly had failed. The State Senate voted 30–13 on January 27, 2021, to pass the new ban. The law had exceptions for cases of rape, incest, and when the life of the mother is at risk. The state's Republican-controlled House had passed similar legislation in previous years. McMaster signed the bill into law on February 18, 2021, but it was blocked by U.S. District Court Judge Mary Geiger Lewis a mere day later following a lawsuit by Planned Parenthood and Greenville Women's Clinic.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Two fetal heartbeat bills were filed in the Tennessee General Assembly in 2019. On January 23, 2019, by Rep. James "Micah" Van Huss filed HB 77 in the Tennessee House of Representatives. On February 7, 2019, Sen. Mark Pody filed SB 1236 in the Tennessee Senate. On February 20, 2019, HB 77 was passed out of a Public Health subcommittee and sent to the full committee. On February 26, 2019, the House Public Health Committee voted 15–4 to send HB 77 to the House floor for a full vote. On February 7, 2019, HB 77 was passed out of the Tennessee House by a vote of 66–21.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: A fetal heartbeat bill was previously introduced in Texas by Phil King on July 18, 2013, in the wake of Rick Perry signing Texas Senate Bill 5 into law. The bill was not passed. The bill (HB 1500) is joint authored by Representatives Phil King, Dan Flynn, Tan Parker, and Rick Miller. As of February 26, 2019, HB 1500 had 57 sponsors or cosponsors of the 150 members of the Texas House of Representatives. Former State Senator Wendy Davis said HB 1500 is "the most dangerous I've ever seen."


title: Heartbeat bill

text: On March 11, 2021, state senator Bryan Hughes of Mineola, Texas, introduced a fetal heartbeat bill entitled the Texas Heartbeat Bill (SB8) into the Texas Senate and state representative Shelby Slawson of Stephenville, Texas, introduced a companion bill (HB1515) into the state house.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: It includes an exception for medical emergencies but includes cases where a woman or girl has become pregnant by incest or rape. Governor Greg Abbott asserts that the Act will not force a woman who has been raped to carry a pregnancy to term because the state will "work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets."


title: Heartbeat bill

text: The SB8 version of the bill passed both chambers and was signed into law by Texas Governor Abbott on May 19, 2021. It will take effect on September 1, 2021. Rather than have the government enforce the law, private citizens will be allowed to sue the provider or anyone that helps the woman to get an abortion. Although similar, H.B NO 1515 is not to be confused with bill H.R 705, also known as the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2021, which was introduced to Congress on February 2, 2021, and sponsored by Republican Mike Kelly. As both bill's note the criminalization of physician's performing abortions once a heartbeat is detected around the 6 week mark of a woman's pregnancy. The "Texas Tribune" wrote that "supporters of the bill hope this novel provision will trip up legal challenges to the legislation, as without state officials enforcing the ban, there will be nobody for pro-women's rights groups to sue".


title: Heartbeat bill

text: A key aspect in the enforcement of the HB 1515 bill is connected to the cost of being sued. As listed in the introductory act, if an organization or individual were found guilty of assisting in an abortion, each individual would be fined a minimum of $10,000. In contrast to the H.R 705, the HB 1515 only mentions punishment through the $10,000 fines, whereas if found guilty under H.R 705, physicians are not only subject to receiving a fine, but are also subject to prison time as well.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: According to some individuals associated with the support of HB 1515, the severity of the cost of being sued is intentional. John Seago, an active legislative director for Texas Right to Life, an anti-abortion organization, exemplifies this connection. Seago notes that the cost of getting sued can act as an incentive for abortion providers to avoid administering abortions. According to the "Texas Tribune", Seago said, "Have a public statement. Put it on their website that they're not scheduling appointments after six weeks", in doing so individuals associated with performing abortion halt their practice, and are no longer at risk for conducting the fine.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: In June 2021, 18-year-old Paxton Smith, senior class valedictorian, delivered a high school graduation speech addressing the Texas heartbeat bill rather than the one which had been pre-approved by her school saying, "I cannot give up this platform to promote complacency and peace, when there is a war on my body and a war on my rights." The speech went viral and was viewed by millions on YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: The bill was temporarily blocked by District Court Judge Robert L. Pitman on October 6, 2021, but reinstated by an appeals court panel on October 8.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: Two fetal heartbeat bills have been introduced in the West Virginia House of Delegates in 2019. On February 7, 2019, Ralph Rodighiero (D-Logan) filed HB 2903 entitled "The Fetal Hearbeat Act". On February 8, 2019, Evan Worrell (R-Cabell) filed HB 2915.


title: Heartbeat bill

text: A fetal heartbeat bill, HB 97, was introduced in the Wyoming House of Representatives in January 2013 by Representative Kendell Kroeker. In February 2013, the bill was struck down by a house committee in a 4–5 vote.


title: Consumer movement

text: The consumer movement is an effort to promote consumer protection through an organized social movement, which is in many places led by consumer organizations. It advocates for the rights of consumers, especially when those rights are actively breached by the actions of corporations, governments, and other organizations which provide products and services to consumers.


title: Consumer movement

text: Consumer movements also commonly advocate for increased health and safety standards, honest information about products in advertising, and consumer representation in political bodies.


title: Consumer movement

text: The terms "consumer movement" and "consumerism" are not equivalent. The traditional use of the term "consumerism" is still practiced by contemporary consumer organizations refers to advancing consumer protection and can include legislators passing consumer protection laws, regulators policing these laws, educators who teach consumer policy, product testers who measure the extent to which products meet standards, cooperative organizations which supply products and services mindfully of consumer interest, as well as the consumer movement itself. The term "consumer movement" refers to only nonprofit advocacy groups and grassroots activism to promote consumer interest by reforming the practices of corporations or policies of the government, so the "consumer movement" is a subset of the discipline of "consumerism".


title: Consumer movement

text: In the 1960s in the United States lobbyists of the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Retail Federation began using the term "consumerism" to refer to the consumer movement in a pejorative and antagonistic way. This was an attempt to denigrate the general movement and the work of Esther Peterson in her role as Special Assistant to the President for Consumer Affairs. Since that time, other people have confounded the term "consumerism" with the concepts of commercialism and materialism. Still, other people use "consumerism" to refer to a philosophy that the ever-expanding consumption of products is advantageous to the economy, and they contrast consumerism with the modern term "anti-consumerism" in opposition to the practice of over-consumption.


title: Consumer movement

text: Among the people whose ideas formed the basis of what became the consumer movement are the following:


title: Consumer movement

text: The event which historians recognize as launching the consumer movement was Frederick J. Schlink and Stuart Chase's publication of "Your Money's Worth". The innovation which the publishing of this book brought about was the concept of product testing, which is the basis of the modern consumer movement.


title: Consumer movement

text: Beginning in the 1960s–70s, scholars began to recognize "waves" of consumer activism, and much of the academic research on the consumer movement sorted it into "three waves of consumer activism". The first wave occurred at the start of the 20th century, the second wave in the 1920s and 1930s, and the third wave from the 1960s to the 1970s.


title: Consumer movement

text: There were a number of factors that contributed to the rise of the second consumer movement in the 1930s. The consumer activism of the early 1900s served as a foundation for the consumer movement that would follow in the 1930s and 1940s. The Great Depression also played a key role in igniting consumer concerns. As household finances grew tighter and consumers began to more carefully examine their commodities, Americans began to realize their poor quality and fraudulent advertising. American consumers relied on contemporary publications such as "Your Money's Worth" and "100,000,000 Guinea Pigs" to expose fraud and misinformation from manufacturers and call for impartial product testing. These spawned consumer publications such as Consumers' Research and Consumers' Union which dedicated themselves to research and product testing to inform the consuming public. As these studies and exposes came to light, widespread support of a consumer's movement began to emerge. This included calls for higher food and commodity standards, consumer representation, and consumer education to teach responsible economic habits, as well as increased membership in consumer organizations, strikes, and consumer boycotts. Even those who opposed the second consumer movement, such as manufacturers and business professionals, began to recognize, in Lawrence B. Glickman's words, the "growing consumer consciousness" of the era. The broad interest in consumer issues led to several pieces of legislation being passed to create greater protections of quality and against fraudulent advertising, such the Tugwell Bill of 1933 which spawned more than a dozen other bills, like the Wheeler-Lea Act and the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938. Women's groups in particular were influential in lobbying during the drafting of these reform bills.


title: Consumer movement

text: Historians generally recognize that there are two areas under the umbrella of the second consumer movement: the "professional consumer organizations" and the "social movement organizations." Consumers' Research was the first of the former, founded in 1928 by Frederick J. Schlink and Stuart Chase primarily to perform product testing and determine the accuracy of contemporary advertisements. The other type consumer organizations primarily focused on the social aspects of the movement, bringing together coalitions of educated consumers to take action. Unlike majority male scientists in organizations such as Consumers' Research that tested product quality in laboratory settings, women activists were the lifeblood of the social organizations, loudly organizing protests and information campaigns. A major example of one of these consumer organizations is the League of Women Shoppers, founded in 1935 by a group of women influenced by the meat boycott in New York City. Middle and upper class urban women of high social standings formed the majority of the organization. The women of the organization spread consumer information and encouraged the average citizen to become educated on labor as well as consumer issues. They also deployed their own pickets lines and "buyers' strikes" as well as supported African American boycotts, such as the "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" campaigns that discouraged African American consumers from shopping at businesses that refused to hire black employees. Another of these social organizations was the General Federation of Women's Clubs, which boasted a membership of over 2 million spread among 15,000 clubs nationwide. While their operations were not limited to the consumer movement, they completed studies on consumer issues and created outlines for consumers to follow while purchasing and exercising consumer power.


title: Consumer movement

text: In addition to the national organizations of the consumer movement, grassroots organization was common during the second wave of consumer activism beginning in the 1930s. Women in particular played a key role in grassroots organizing around consumer issues. The Great Depression created physical and economic conditions that encouraged women, especially working-class housewives, to organize. One prominent example of grassroots consumer organizing in this period were the meat boycotts that took place across the United States in 1935. Over 10,000 housewives in Los Angeles began a boycott against inflated meat prices in March 1935, and similar boycotts sprang up across the country in cities such as Detroit and New York. The women organized committees, picketed, and pressured manufacturers to reduce prices and stop taking advantage of consumers, particularly during the difficult economic period. In New York, some of the women involved in the boycott even went on to found the League of Women Shoppers in the same year. In many cases, the pressure from these organizing women led to reductions in the prices of meat from modest to up to half-price, their activism allowing them to have a direct impact in the consumer market.


title: Consumer movement

text: During the Recession of 1937–1938, public confidence in business was low and the new criticism from consumer groups weakened trust in advertising, media, and branded goods. The idea that the public were the "guinea pigs" on whom corporations tested products was an idea which spread after the publication of "100,000,000 Guinea Pigs", and industry sought to counter it and the general concept of consumer regulation over industry to restore market confidence. In 1938, Hearst Corporation ran an advertisement suggesting that people who purchase goods which were nationally distributed and advertised were not "guinea pigs", and from 1934 to 1939, Collier-Crowell executive Anna Steese Richardson toured to readers of "Woman's Home Companion" as an opponent of consumer groups and an advocate of corporate-managed equivalents of consumer organizations. To compete with grassroots efforts, various other corporate interests likewise set up their own consumer information centers, including "New York Herald Tribune"s product-testing institute, "McCall's" institute explicitly designed to counter Consumers Union and Consumers' Research, Sears consumer outreach lectures, N. W. Ayer & Son's Institute on Consumer Relations, and Macy's Bureau of Standards Fulton Oursler of Macfadden Publications published stories in "True Story" and "Liberty" which praised advertising and denounced the consumer movement, and which George Sokolsky used as the basis for writing an "anti-guinea pig" book, "The American Way of Life".


title: Consumer movement

text: In response to the trend of corporate movement into the field of consumer regulation of the marketplace, Robert Staughton Lynd spoke for consumer advocacy, stating that "the whole consumer movement can be aborted if the present plans of manufacturing and retailing trade associations to set up ... consumer pressure groups [are] allowed to go forward unchecked." Eventually, industry and companies began to portray citizens and organizations who criticized corporations as un-American and Communist. Conservative business interests attempted to correlate traditional American values such as freedom with advertising while making Communist threats against consumer organizations and the consumer movement as a whole. Though these attacks were widespread, they were not generally successful in convincing the general public that consumer activism was a Communist plot, at least at the end of the 1930s. In the next two decades, however, the American public began to take "red-baiting" much more seriously.


title: Consumer movement

text: African economies are heavily influenced by multinational corporations and lending institutions which have encouraged export-oriented industrialization. To become more attractive to investment in these circumstances, many governments become willing to tolerate unfavorable conditions such as anti-competitive practices, receiving lower quality imports than would be acceptable in other markets, enduring misleading product claims, and enduring increased exposure to hazardous waste. The majority of African countries implement the World Bank's structural adjustment programs to increase their attractiveness for international trade. The primary concerns for African consumers are balancing competitive business practices to give them access to products while discouraging unethical business conduct. The problems of African consumers are connected to other social problems of the region including extreme poverty, over-consumption of natural resources, the African refugee crisis, unstable employment, and the legacies of centuries of African slave trade.


title: Consumer movement

text: Most of the members of the Southern African Development Community are members of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa. In Western Africa, countries organize through the Economic Community of West African States. These and other organizations were founded to promote the development of markets and improve quality of life, but there is some history of fragmentation of organizations, duplication of efforts, and destructive competition between such organizations. The failure to settle disagreements and integrate the missions of various institutions contributes, along with other infrastructure problems, to inhibition of intraregional trade.


title: Consumer movement

text: The consumer movement in Africa came into being over time as a result of three factors: the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the deregulation of markets by governments which are implementing structural adjustments, and the influence of external activist organizations like Consumers International supporting community efforts to promote consumer protection. The lessening influence of the Soviet Union made economies open to change, structural adjustments took governmental control out of markets, and activist groups put community control into markets. Consumer organizations in Africa often call for global integration of foreign economies into Africa and increased external consumption of Africa goods to improve local markets. They are frequently combined with human rights interests to increase democratization, economic development, and women's rights. The marketplace in Africa does not naturally promote economic democracy to the extent markets elsewhere would because frequently African markets provide few choices, and many activist groups tie the right to access goods with the right to enjoy benefits of democracy and economic development.


title: Consumer movement

text: The Kenya Consumers' Organization, the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe, the Housewives League in South Africa, and the Institute for Consumer Protection in Mauritius are among the most prominent and oldest of consumer organizations, and these and most others formed before the late 1970s were founded by women. The organizations were vehicles to give women more equal access to basic goods and services and to connect women socially. In other places, consumer groups often partner with women's organizations. In 1998, two Consumers International conferences were held in Africa – an English conference was in Nairobi in June and attended by 100 participants from 11 African nations, and a French conference was in Dakar in November with participants from 16 West and Central African countries. The English language conference resulted in the publication of a declaration called "Consumers in Africa".


title: Consumer movement

text: The contemporary consumer movement is among the fastest-growing social movements in Africa today. One indicator of this is membership of African consumer groups into Consumers International; in 1991, forty African countries had no representation in this network. Environmental Development Action in the Third World collaborated with Consumer International until 1994 and by 1995, only 15 countries were not participating and many countries had made stronger commitments to participation in the organized network. In 1994 50 delegates from Africa participated in the annual Consumers International World Congress and as a result, participated in the development of the Codex Alimentarius, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and World Trade Organization issues. Participation in Consumers International has otherwise raised the profile of various consumer groups, such as Mali's Association des Consommateurs du Mali (ASCOMA) and Senegal's Association de Defense des Usagers de l'Eau l'Electricite, les Telecommunications et les Services (ADEETelS) have both had representation in government policymaking.


title: Consumer movement

text: Scholars most commonly view the modern consumer movement in India from two perspectives – that of consumer activism and that of business self-regulation. There is tradition in India which says that consideration for consumer rights began in the Vedic Period, and in these narratives, laws encourage merchants to practice honesty and integrity in business. Most discussion about India's consumer activism starts with a description of the Indian independence movement. At this time Gandhi and other leaders protested taxation of basic consumer products, such as during the Salt March, and encouraged people to make their own goods at home, as with the Khādī movement to promote spinning thread and weaving one's own textiles. These actions were to raise awareness that consumer purchase decisions fund the source of India's political control.


title: Consumer movement

text: Gandhi promoted the idea that businesses have a trustee role in being responsible to the customers, workers, shareholders, and their community. In particular, Gandhi said that "A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent upon us. We are dependent upon him. He is not an interruption in our work – he is the purpose of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to serve him". United States consumer advocate Ralph Nader called Gandhi "the greatest consumer advocate the world has seen" for advancing the concept that commercial enterprise should serve the consumer and that the consumer should expect to be served by the business. Vinoba Bhave and Jayaprakash Narayan, two great proponents of Gandhi's philosophy, and V. V. Giri and Lal Bahadur Shastri, contemporary Indian president and prime minister, similarly expected the business community to regulate itself as an expression of responsibility to contribute to society. These ideas were developed by some business leaders. In July 1966 in Bombay some people founded the Fair Trade Practice Association, which was later renamed the Council for Fair Business Practice. This is now seen as a sincere effort toward promoting business self-regulation, despite consumer activists' criticism that self-regulation would not provide sufficient protection to consumers.


title: Consumer movement

text: From the perspective of consumer activism, the Planning Commission backed the foundation of the Indian Association of Consumers in 1956 in Delhi to be a national base for consumer interests. For various reasons, it was not effective in achieving its goals. Other organizations were established in 1960 in various places in India but none were effective in achieving community organization. Leading on past failures, in Bombay in 1966 nine female homemakers founded the Consumer Guidance Society of India (CGSI) which remains one of India's most important consumer organizations. The most powerful consumer organization in India is the Consumer Education and Research Center (CERC), founded in 1978 in Ahmedabad as part of the "social action litigation movement". At that time in society, courts started recognizing social workers and public interest groups as consultants on behalf of individuals or classes of people whose rights had been violated but who could not easily speak for themselves. Since its founding CERC has become among the most successful consumer organizations of the developing world in terms of its achievements of litigating on behalf of consumers. The Consumer Protection Act of 1986 (COPRA) was mostly a result of intensive lobbying by CERC and CGSI.


title: Consumer movement

text: In 1991, the Economic liberalisation in India radically changed the Indian marketplace by opening India to foreign trade and foreign investment.


title: Consumer movement

text: It was thought that passage of the Consumer Protection Act in India in 1986 would encourage consumers to stand up for their rights and lead to an overwhelming number of disputes in consumer courts. Although a consumer movement has yet to get going in India, the existence of the act has stimulated the creation of many consumer organizations across the country. The number of such organizations has more than doubled in the last few years so that there are now 600–800 organizations in the voluntary sector. The movement has not blossomed because not all of the organizations are active enough to make an impact, there has hardly been any unified action which would demonstrate their strength, and there has been no active consumer participation in the movements. Consumers claim that the lack of consumer education makes them passive and apathetic, and blame consumer organizations. The majority of consumers in the country are even unaware of the existence of consumer courts to which they take their grievances. Consumer rights organizations, however, counter that they lack sufficient funds and blame the government for their inaction. The author acknowledges criticism that the Indian consumer movement is elitist and considers the need to focus upon rural consumers, the significant contributions that organizations have made in laying the foundations for change, the need for consumer education, the need for specialists, the particular need for consumer protection with regard to health-related products, and support by voluntary health groups.


title: Blister pack

text: A blister pack is any of several types of pre-formed plastic packaging used for small consumer goods, foods, and for pharmaceuticals.


title: Blister pack

text: The primary component of a blister pack is a cavity or pocket made from a formable web, usually a thermoformed plastic. This usually has a backing of paperboard or a lidding seal of aluminum foil or plastic. A blister that folds onto itself is often called a clamshell.


title: Blister pack

text: Blister packs are useful for protecting products against external factors, such as humidity and contamination for extended periods of time. Opaque blisters also protect light-sensitive products against UV rays.


title: Blister pack

text: Blister packs are used to package products such as toys, hardware, medication, etc. Many blister packaging machines use heat and pressure via a die to form the cavity or pocket from a roll or sheet of plastic. In recent years, improvements in cold forming—specifically allowing steeper depth/angles during forming, which minimizes the amount of material used for each cavity—have helped this technology increase. The main advantages of the plastic-based blister pack are its more compact size compared to cold formed aluminum and its transparency to see the product.


title: Blister pack

text: Blister packs are commonly used as unit-dose packaging for pharmaceutical tablets, capsules or lozenges. Blister packs can provide barrier protection for shelf life requirements, and a degree of tamper resistance. In the US, blister packs are mainly used for packing physician samples of drug products or for over-the-counter (OTC) products in the pharmacy. In other parts of the world, blister packs are the main packaging type since pharmacy dispensing and re-packaging are not common. A series of blister cavities is sometimes called a blister card or blister strip as well as blister pack. The difference between a strip pack and blister pack is that a strip pack does not have thermo-formed or cold formed cavities; the strip pack is formed around the tablet at a time when it is dropped to the sealing area between sealing moulds. In some parts of the world the pharmaceutical blister pack is known as a push-through pack (PTP), an accurate description of two key properties (i) the lidding foil is brittle, making it possible to press the product out while breaking the lidding foil and (ii) a semi-rigid formed cavity being sufficiently collapsible to be able to dispense the tablet or capsule by means of pressing it out with the thumb. Breaking the lidding foil with a fingernail for the appropriate tablet will make the pressing out easier.


title: Blister pack

text: The main advantages of unit-dose blister packs over other methods of packing pharmaceutical products are the assurance of product/packaging integrity (including shelf-life) of each individual dose and the ability to create a compliance pack or calendar pack by printing the days of the week above each dose.


title: Blister pack

text: Blister packs are created by means of a form-fill-seal process at the pharmaceutical company or designated contract packer. A form-fill-seal process means that the blister pack is created from rolls of flat sheet or film, filled with the pharmaceutical product and closed (sealed) on the same equipment. Such equipment is called a blisterline. There are two types of blister machine' design: rotary and flat-plate, depending on the mechanism for sealing the lidding foil.


title: Blister pack

text: Other types of blister packs consist of carded packaging where goods such as toys, hardware, and electrical items are contained between a specially made paperboard card and clear pre-formed plastic such as PVC. The consumer can visually examine the product through the transparent plastic. The plastic shell is vacuum-formed around a mold so it can contain the item snugly. The card is colored and designed depending on the item inside, and the PVC is affixed to the card using heat and pressure to activate an adhesive (heat seal coating) on the blister card. The adhesive is strong enough so that the pack may hang on a peg, but weak enough so that the package can be easily opened (in theory). Sometimes, with large items, the card (cold seal card) has a perforated window for access.


title: Blister pack

text: A hinged blister is known as a clamshell, used for a variety of products. It can be used as a security package to deter package pilferage for small high-value items, such as consumer electronics. It consists of one sheet folded over onto itself and sometimes fused at the edges. They can be securely heat sealed, making them difficult to open by hand to deter tampering. A pair of scissors or a sharp knife is often required to open them (although these are often sold in similar packages). Trauma shears are also effective at opening packaging of this type. Care must be used to safely open some of these packages, as opening it without care can result in injury; 6,000 Americans are sent to the emergency room each year by injuries suffered in opening such packages.


title: Blister pack

text: Medical blister trays differ from pharmaceutical blister packs in that these are not push-through packs. The thermoformed base web is made of a thicker plastic sheet, generally between 500 and 1000 µg and can not be collapsed, thus forming a solid tray. The lidding film provides a peel-open feature and is generally porous to allow sterilization (such as the Dupont medical Tyvek material). Such medical blister packs are used for sterile medical devices, used in hospitals.


title: Blister pack

text: In the case of thermoforming, a plastic film or sheet is unwound from the reel and guided though a pre-heating station on the blister line. The temperature of the pre-heating plates (upper and lower plates) is such that the plastic will soften and become pliable. The warm plastic will then arrive in a forming station where a large pressure (4 to 8 bar) will form the blister cavity into a negative mold. The mold is cooled such that the plastic becomes rigid again and maintains its shape when removed from the mold. In case of difficult shapes, the warm film will be physically pushed down partially into the cavity by a "plug-assist" feature. Plug-assist results in a blister cavity with more uniform wall distribution and is typically used when the cavity size and shape is larger than a small tablets and cables.


title: Blister pack

text: In the case of cold forming, an aluminum-based laminate film is simply pressed into a mold by means of a stamp. The aluminum will be elongated and maintain the formed shape. In the industry these blisters are called cold form foil (CFF) blisters. The principal advantage of cold form foil blisters is that the use of aluminum offers a near complete barrier for water and oxygen, allowing an extended product expiry date. The principal disadvantages of cold form foil blisters are: the slower speed of production compared to thermoforming; the lack of transparency of the package (a therapy compliance disadvantage); and the larger size of the blister card (aluminum can not be formed with near 90-degree angles).


title: Blister pack

text: In thermo cold forming process, the first packing is done by thermoforming technique after which the product is repacked with a cold forming package.


title: Blister pack

text: The most basic material for the forming web is polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The principal advantages of PVC are the low cost and the ease of thermoforming. The main disadvantages are the poor barrier against moisture ingress and oxygen ingress. In the case of blister packaging the PVC sheet does not contain any plasticizer and is sometimes referred to as Rigid PVC or RPVC. In the absence of plasticizers, PVC blisters offer structural rigidity and physical protection for the pharmaceutical dosage form. On the other hand, the blister cavity must remain accessible by the push-through effect and the formed web may not be too hard to collapse when pressed upon; for this reason the PVC sheet thickness is typically chosen between 200µ to 300µ depending on the cavity size and shape. Most PVC sheets for pharmaceutical blisters are 250µ or 0.250 mm in thickness. Typical values for the Water Vapor Transmission Rate (WVTR or MVTR) of a 250µ PVC film are around 3.0 g/m/day measured at 38 °C/90% RH and the Oxygen Transmission Rate (OTR) is around 20 mL/m/day. In order to overcome the lack of barrier properties of PVC film, it can be coated with PVDC or laminated to PCTFE or COC to increase the protective properties. Multi-layer blister films based on PVC are often used for pharmaceutical blister packaging, whereby the PVC serves as the thermoformable backbone of the structure. Also, the PVC layer can be colored with pigments and/or UV filters. The European Pharmacopoeia (Ph Eur) references the requirements for PVC blister packs for pharmaceutical primary packaging in the monograph EP 3.1.11 "MATERIALS BASED ON NON-PLASTICISED POLY(VINYL CHLORIDE) FOR CONTAINERS FOR DRY DOSAGE FORMS FOR ORAL ADMINISTRATION". In order to be suitable for pharmaceutical blister packs, the PVC formulation also needs to comply with the US Pharmacopoeia <661>; EU food legislation; US 21.CFR and Japanese food contact requirements.


title: Blister pack

text: Polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC) can be coated onto a PVC film to obtain very high moisture and oxygen barrier properties depending on the coating weight. PVDC coated blister films are the most common and prevailing barrier films used for pharmaceutical blister packs. PVDC coatings are also the most economical method for adding water barrier and oxygen barrier properties to a PVC film. PVDC blister films are available in 2 or 3 layer specifications referred to as duplex or triplex. Since the PVDC is applied by a coating process, the coating weight is expressed in grams per square meter (gsm). Duplex structures are typically PVC/PVDC films, ranging from 250µPVC/40gsmPVDC to 250µPVC/120gsmPVDC with WVTR from 0,65 to 0,25 g/m2/d and OTR from 1 to 0,1 cc/m2/d. For very deep draw thermoformed cavities, the triplex specifications are used : PVC/PE/PVDC, where the PE layer assists when forming deeper cavities. The PE (polyethylene) forms a soft intermediate layer between the rigid PVC and PVDC layers. Triplex specifications exists in similar coating weights as duplex specifications: 250µPVC/25µPE/40gsmPVDC up to 250µPVC/25µPE/120gsmPVDC.


title: Blister pack

text: In order to obtain high barrier properties, PVDC is always applied using an emulsion coating process using a PVDC resin dispersed in water. The film producer applies the coating in several steps, drying-off the water between each coating station.


title: Blister pack

text: PVDC grades are available in 2 types of polymer: (I) the historic grades offering medium to high barrier properties and (II) a super barrier coating grade offering the highest barrier. The SBC grade has over two times the barrier to moisture and oxygen per gram coating weight compared to the historic grades. The most common structures using the super barrier PVDC are triplex configurations 250µ PVC/25µ PE/120gsm PVDC up to 250µ PVC/25µ PE/180gsm PVDC, with WVTR of 0,11 down to 0,06 g/m2/day and available from various suppliers.