CHARLESTON, W. Va. – As of Tuesday morning, West Virginians could get elective abortions during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.
By 5 p.m., the state legislature had voted to ban nearly all abortions from the moment a fertilized egg implants in the uterus. The governor has not yet signed the bill, but has indicated he will.
The legislation sent abortion providers scrambling to adapt to the new reality.
The state’s only abortion clinic, in Charleston, W.Va., announced on its website Wednesday morning that it would no longer perform the procedure.
“West Virginians will now have to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles away from their homes and incur massive costs to access essential life-saving care,” said Katie Quiñonez, Executive Director of the West Virginia Women’s Health Center, in a statement.
The Women’s Health Center had an empty parking lot Wednesday. A sign printed on the door said the health center was “closed for staff rest” and would open the next day. Across the street, a crisis pregnancy center run by abortion advocates remained open to patients.
Around lunchtime, Elizabeth Gill, 56, who has often protested as a member of West Virginians for Life, entered the clinic lot. But there were no abortion-seeking women to talk to.
Gill, who was adopted, said she welcomed the new ban, although she opposes exceptions for victims of rape or incest. The ban allows abortion for adult victims of rape or incest up to eight weeks of pregnancy, and up to 14 weeks of pregnancy for child victims. She also said she expects the Women’s Health Center to close for good.
“The baby has a God-given right to live life and live out the purpose God has for them,” he said.
Austin Walters, who has lived next door to the clinic for about six years and endured countless noisy anti-abortion protests, said he opposes the new ban. The 30-year-old, who works at Home Depot, said he expects the ban to drive young people out of the state and possibly hurt the economy.
“Government, or lawmakers, should not control women’s bodies,” she said. “This is an issue where the government needs to stay out of the way.”
Betty Jo Stemple, another resident who lives near the abortion clinic, said she believes abortion should be a woman’s choice in the early stages of pregnancy and in cases of rape or incest . She said she had an abortion decades ago, after being raped in her 20s.
“When I missed that second period, I knew I had to make a choice,” said Stemple, now 61.
She didn’t want to have a child “with those bad genes,” she said. “I didn’t want that to grow inside of me.”
Like many Americans, Stemple said she supports restrictions on abortion later in pregnancy, but believes hardline anti-abortion activists are taking the restrictions too far.
“Life is complicated,” he said. “Situations happen. … It is not cut and dried”.
1 in 3 American women have already lost access to abortion. More restrictive laws are coming.
The strict ban in West Virginia passed despite signs in other states that many voters do not support restrictive limits on abortion without exceptions. Anti-abortion lawmakers in South Carolina failed to pass a ban on conception without rape and incest exceptions last week. Kansas voters rejected a ballot measure that would have opened the door to more restrictive abortion laws in August, and candidates who oppose the abortion ban have been beating their poll numbers during the primary school this summer.
Even West Virginia’s bill initially stalled in July over disagreements among lawmakers over criminal penalties for doctors and a heated debate over which exceptions to include. Finally, lawmakers established exceptions for rape and incest victims as long as they report the assault and seek an abortion before eight weeks of pregnancy for adults and 14 weeks for children.
Although a handful of Republican lawmakers opposed the exceptions and lack of criminal penalties for doctors in the final version of the ban, national anti-abortion activists called it a “strong pro- life”.
“West Virginians have pledged to protect unborn children and mothers from the horrors of abortion and now, in the Dobbs era, they’ve passed legislation to do just that,” Caitlin Connors, southern regional director for SBA Pro-Life America, said in a statement. Connors added that the final version of the bill ensures that “mothers can receive the care they need in the heartbreaking situation of an ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, or medical emergency, just like any other state with pro-life protections.”
Some abortion advocates worry that West Virginia’s law will serve as a template for other state lawmakers. “What we saw in West Virginia may foreshadow what we see in other state legislatures later this year and beyond with legislatures passing bans that include narrow exceptions that make access to care nearly impossible.” Elizabeth Nash, senior policy associate for state affairs for the Guttmacher Institute said in an email.
Nash said the exceptions to West Virginia’s ban are so narrow that many sexual assault victims will have a hard time meeting the requirements to get an abortion.
“Patients won’t be able to access care, including many who qualify for an exception, because the exceptions are written in a way that makes them nearly impossible to use,” he said. “It is hoped that other states will also consider similar exceptions as a way to convince the public that the exceptions provide some measure of access, but in practice the exceptions provide almost no access.”
The Republican-controlled legislature passed an almost total ban on abortion with exceptions only to save the life of the pregnant patient and for victims of rape or incest. Gov. Jim Justice has yet to sign the bill into law, but is expected to soon. Once signed, the ban will go into effect immediately, and the law’s criminal penalties will kick in 90 days later.
Democrats and reproductive rights advocates say the ban goes so far that it bans abortion in almost all circumstances and makes access difficult even for victims of sexual assault.
Even people eligible for an exception under the new ban face time limits and other hurdles. Adult victims of sexual assault must report the crime and request an abortion before the eighth week of pregnancy. Victims under the age of 18 can have an abortion before the 14th week of pregnancy if they seek medical attention for the assault or report it to the police.
Abortions can only be performed by doctors with admitting privileges in a hospital. These doctors can lose their medical license, but do not face criminal penalties for performing an illegal abortion. Anyone else who performs an abortion faces felony charges and up to five years in prison. Patients who opt for an illegal abortion face no criminal penalties.
“It’s hard to overstate what a terrible day this is for the state of West Virginia,” Eli Baumwell, director of advocacy for the ACLU of West Virginia, said in a statement. “The legislature chose to remove a basic human right to choose if, when and how a person becomes a parent.”
It is unclear whether there is a path to challenge the ban in court. The ACLU of West Virginia had previously challenged an abortion ban, before the US Supreme Court overturned it Roe v. Wade ruling, because it conflicted with other laws the state legislature had passed more recently. A state judge temporarily blocked that ban in July. But West Virginia voters narrowly approved an amendment to the state constitution in 2018 that declared “nothing in this Constitution guarantees or protects the right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion.”
“There are so few cases that have gone very far,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. “I don’t think we know” how a legal challenge will play out.
If West Virginia’s ban is challenged in federal court, Tobias said district judges in the Southern District of West Virginia and the 4th Circuit may be more receptive to the plaintiff’s arguments than federal judges who might consider challenges from states like Texas or Tennessee, where they are strict. , there are almost total bans on abortion.
A federal challenge has been filed to a restrictive abortion ban in Idaho, where a judge blocked parts of the state law that would have prevented doctors from terminating pregnancies that pose significant health risks, unless those risks threaten life. Other strict limitations on abortion remain in place in Idaho, where abortion is prohibited except in cases of rape, incest or when a woman’s life is at risk.
And the fate of the West Virginia law, if challenged in court, remains uncertain.