Republican Governor Jim Justice has signed into regulation a ban on abortions in any respect levels of being pregnant, making West Virginia the second state to enact a regulation prohibiting the process because the US Supreme Courtroom’s June ruling overturning its constitutional safety.
The invoice will go into impact instantly, apart from the felony penalties, which can go into impact in 90 days, he mentioned.
Mr Justice described the laws on Twitter as “a invoice that protects life.”
“I mentioned from the start that if WV legislators introduced me a invoice that protected life and included cheap and logical exceptions I might signal it, and that’s what I did in the present day,” he mentioned.
The ban has exemptions for medical emergencies and for rape and incest victims till eight weeks of being pregnant for adults and 14 weeks for youngsters.
Victims should report their assault to regulation enforcement 48 hours earlier than the process. Minors can report back to the police or a health care provider, who then should inform police.
The invoice requires abortions to be carried out by a doctor at a hospital — a provision that not less than two Republican lawmakers have mentioned was meant to close down abortions on the Girls’s Well being Centre, which has offered the process since 1976 and was the state’s sole abortion clinic.
Suppliers who carry out unlawful abortions can resist 10 years in jail.
Shortly after lawmakers handed the invoice on Tuesday, Girls’s Well being Centre of West Virginia govt director Katie Quinonez mentioned the clinic’s lawyer suggested them to droop abortions instantly.
Workers spent Tuesday evening and Wednesday cancelling dozens of appointments and offering them with sources to e-book appointments out of state and funding to assist cowl journey and the process.
Indiana’s abortion ban — handed in August — began being enforced on Thursday.
Indiana and West Virginia now be a part of greater than a dozen states with abortion bans, although most had been permitted earlier than that Supreme Courtroom ruling and took impact as soon as the courtroom threw out the constitutional proper to finish a being pregnant.
On Tuesday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina launched a invoice that will ban abortion nationwide after the fifteenth week of being pregnant, with uncommon exceptions, intensifying the continued debate inside and outdoors the GOP, although the proposal has nearly no likelihood of turning into regulation within the Democratic-held Congress.