West Virginia has become the first state this year to prohibit abortions midway through pregnancy, even as a federal version of the ban remains stalled in Washington.
On Friday, state senators overrode Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s previous veto of the provision — which restricts most abortions past 20 weeks of pregnancy — making West Virginia the fifteenth state with such laws on the books.
The measure is the latest “fetal pain” law to be passed by a state. Based on the idea that a fetus can feel pain halfway through a pregnancy, these laws have been among the most successful strategies employed by anti-abortion activists in recent years.
For some time abortion opponents had been eyeing West Virginia as ripe for passing such a law, but ran up against some roadblocks last year when Tomblin vetoed it and the Democrat-led legislature didn’t call a special session to override the veto.
But when Republicans seized control of both chambers in November, activists saw the door open again. Tomblin vetoed the measure — saying he has constitutional concerns with it — but first the House and then the Senate, on Friday, overwhelmingly overrode his veto.
“I think it’s an indication of the importance of this issue to people in the state,” said Wanda Franz, president of West Virginians for Life.
“It’s an exciting time for us,” said West Virginia Delegate Amy Summers, one of the bill’s cosponsors. “I have a passion for these babies who fight to live. We must also fight to let them live and not suffer in death when they are capable of feeling pain.”
Such bans are also being considered in South Carolina and Oregon. But while abortion opponents have found success at the state level, they were disappointed in January when the U.S. House scheduled a vote on a 20-week ban but tabled it at the last minute due to disputes over when to provide special exceptions.
Republican leaders have promised to hold a vote eventually, once the details are agreed upon, but it’s unclear when that might happen. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., the bill’s chief sponsor, said there was a “major meeting” on Wednesday toward that end, but it’s still unclear when a vote might occur.
“We are working on it very hard,” Franks told the Washington Examiner. “There is a strong consensus that we all need to get this done both inside and outside Congress.”
The measures have irked abortion rights activists, who highlight the potential for requiring a woman to carry to full term a fetus with a severe anomaly, even if she’s told by a doctor the fetus won’t survive past birth.
West Virginia’s ban includes an exemption for severe fetal anomaly, but most of the other state bans don’t. All of them include exemptions for the life of the mother and a few also include exemptions in the case of rape or incest.
“Governor Tomblin was right to veto this callous, cruel, and unconstitutional attack on health care for women facing complicated and sometimes dangerous situations in their lives and pregnancies,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Abortion rights advocates had found an unlikely ally in Tomblin, who has historically said he opposes abortion. As past president of the state Senate, he had helped to pass laws banning partial birth abortion and requiring that women be given certain information before an abortion is performed.
When Tomblin vetoed the bill on Tuesday, he issued a statement saying he believes “there is no greater gift of love than the gift of life,” but said that as governor he needed to consider a law’s constitutionality. Midterm abortion bans have been blocked by courts in three states, but the Supreme Court hasn’t yet considered the issue.
“This bill pushes the envelope too far for him,” Franz said. “But I don’t know exactly what his thinking is. I just know what he said and I have to assume he is pro-life.”
