(Reuters) – Mississippi’s Republican governor signed one among America’s strictest abortion bills on Thursday banning women from obtaining an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which sometimes often occur before women even realizes she is pregnant.
Dubbed the ‘heartbeat bill,’ right here is the second legislative attempt in less than a year geared towards restricting abortions in a condition with a single abortion clinic.
In a tweet earlier this week, Governor Phil Bryant thanked the state’s legislature for “protecting the unborn” by passing niche and sending it to him for his signature.
The Mississippi law joins a wave of similar Republican-backed measures recently introduced in Iowa, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia.
Conservative Republican proponents say these bills are designed to challenge Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 landmark ruling that ladies have a constitutional locally to an abortion.
U.S. states are jostling to have a showdown on abortion rights in 2019, along with eyes around the conservative-dominated Supreme Court.
Just last November, a U.S. federal judge struck down a Mississippi law banning most abortions after 15 weeks, ruling that going barefoot “unequivocally” violates women’s constitutional rights.
The new Mississippi bill prohibits the abortion of any fetus having a detectable heartbeat, just before the point each time a woman may just be aware she are pregnant.
It also states that any physician who violates the restriction is be more responsive to losing the license to utilize medicine.
The law makes exceptions for young girls whose health has reached extreme risk. It really is a victory for anti-abortion groups, but abortion rights advocates have promised to pursue court action to overturn it.
“This ban is amongst the most restrictive abortion bans signed into law, and we will take Mississippi to the court to make sure it never takes effect,” Hillary Schneller, staff attorney in the global abortion rights advocacy group Center for Reproductive Rights, said in the statement.
“This ban – similar to the 15 week ban the Governor signed just last year – is cruel and clearly unconstitutional.”
A fetus which is viable outside of the womb, usually at 24 weeks, has widely been considered the brink in the United States to ban an abortion.
Last week, a federal judge blocked Kentucky’s fetal heartbeat abortion law. An Iowa judge overturned that state’s heartbeat law in January after declaring it violated the state’s constitution.
