FILE – People celebrate following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in Washington, Friday, June 24, 2022. A handful of Republican-led states will soon implement near-total bans on abortion, marking yet another slate of laws severely limiting the procedure to be allowed to go into effect since the June 24 decision. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Four more Republican-led states will ban almost all abortions this week as yet another slate of laws severely limiting the procedure takes effect following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
To date, 13 states have passed so-called trigger laws that were designed to outlaw most abortions if the high court threw out the constitutional right to end a pregnancy. The majority of those states began enforcing their bans soon after the June 24 decision, but Idaho, Tennessee and Texas had to wait 30 days beyond when the justices formally entered the judgment, which happened several weeks after the ruling was announced.
That deadline is up Thursday. North Dakota’s trigger law is scheduled to take effect Friday.
The change will not be dramatic. All of these states except North Dakota already had anti-abortion laws in place that largely blocked patients from accessing the procedure. And the majority of the clinics that provided abortions in those areas have either stopped offering those services or moved to other states where abortion remains legal.
Texas, the country’s second-largest state, has banned most abortions once fetal cardiac activity has been detected, which can be as early as six weeks into pregnancy, before many women know they’re pregnant. The ban has been in place for almost a year, since courts refused to stop the law last September.
While clinics were severely limited in the services they could provide during that time, they officially stopped offering abortions on the day of the Supreme Court ruling. Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton argued that state laws that banned abortion before Roe v. Wade could be enforced ahead of the implementation of the trigger law.
Much like Texas’ current abortion ban, the trigger law does not include exceptions for rape or incest. Instead it has a loophole if a woman’s life or health is in danger.
The political response to the change was swift: Democrat Beto O’Rourke chose Thursday to unveil the first TV ads in his campaign against Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed off on the statute.
One of the ads includes a voice-over saying some women will die because of the law.
“From this day forward,” the ad begins, “women all across Texas are no longer free to make decisions about our own body.”
Meanwhile, Texas has challenged a legal interpretation put forth by the federal government that was aimed at requiring Texas hospitals to provide abortion services if the life of the mother is at risk. On Wednesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the government from enforcing that interpretation.
Texas argued that the federal guidance would have required hospitals to provide abortions before the mother’s life is clearly at risk, which would have violated the state’s trigger law.
A similar situation played out in Idaho, but there a federal judge ruled Wednesday that the state’s abortion ban violated federal law.
U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill said the state could not enforce its abortion ban in cases where pregnant patients were experiencing a medical emergency that seriously threatened their lives or health. Idaho’s abortion ban makes all abortions felonies, but allows physicians to defend themselves in court by arguing that the procedure was necessary to save the life of the mother or done in cases of rape or incest.
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