West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice signed a bill into law on Friday prohibiting nearly all abortions with limited exemptions.
The bill, which cleared the legislature Thursday, allows exceptions for cases of rape or incest up to eight weeks of pregnancy for adults and 14 weeks for minors, a nonmedically viable fetus, an ectopic pregnancy, or a medical emergency.
“I said from the beginning that if WV legislators brought me a bill that protected life and included reasonable and logical exceptions I would sign it, and that’s what I did today,” Justice wrote on Twitter.
In cases of rape or incest, a person would need to report the incident to law enforcement at least 48 hours prior to receiving an abortion. Under the law, all abortion procedures must be performed in a hospital. If someone who is not a licensed medical professional performs the procedure, they could be charged with a felony and subject to up to 10 years in prison.
The law will go into effect immediately, though criminal penalties the bill carries will not be in place for another 90 days.
West Virginia is the latest to pass an abortion law, joining a growing number of states that have implemented restrictive abortion legislation since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Top lawmakers and politicians in West Virginia have appeared disjointed on abortion in recent months. Justice, who was first elected governor as a Democrat before switching to the Republican Party in 2017, has maintained that he supports the new law because it provides logical exemptions. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) long positioned himself as an anti-abortion Democrat but said after the Supreme Court decision that he would vote to codify Roe in law. In May, he voted against Democratic abortion legislation that went further than Roe in guaranteeing access to abortion.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), who as a member of the House of Representatives was one of only a few Republicans to favor abortion rights, has embraced states restricting the procedure.
