When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, several states had trigger laws or old laws that immediately went into effect. Ohio is one of the former: A trigger law banning abortions at six weeks took effect within hours of the court’s ruling. Three days later, a pregnant 10-year-old girl walked into a clinic. She was six weeks and three days pregnant and could not legally obtain an abortion in the state of Ohio. She was referred to a clinic in Indiana.
West Virginia is one of the latter: With the fall of Roe, a law from the mid-1800s again takes effect, or so says the attorney general. That law completely bans abortion except to save the life of the mother or the child, and its vague language would allow the mother to be prosecuted — something most modern laws do not permit. This is in addition to several modern laws the Legislature has passed limiting access to abortion.
Gov. Justice will have to call a special session of the Legislature to reconcile the 1800s law and the more modern rules on the books. At the time of this writing, such a session had not been scheduled.
West Virginia politicians will put limitations on access to abortion. We hope, however, that legislators will see the damaging impacts of draconian laws passed in neighboring states and will choose to craft commonsense, compassionate abortion restrictions.
Existing laws require doctors to receive parents’ or guardians’ permission to perform an abortion for a minor unless a court grants a wavier; ban abortion after 20 weeks post-fertilization or 22 weeks gestational age with exceptions only for saving the mother’s life or for aborting a nonmedically viable fetus and instructs medical professionals to do everything in their power to save the life of the fetus; prohibit “dismemberment” abortions (which is not a medical term, but is the hyperbolic name for dilution and extraction abortions), except for in a medical emergency; require medical professionals to do everything possible to save the life of the fetus if it is “born alive” during an abortion; ban abortion because of fetal disability, with exceptions only for a medical emergency or a nonmedically viable fetus; and require anyone seeking an abortion to undergo “counseling,” wait 24 hours before they can have the procedure and be offered an ultrasound picture.
When the Legislature begins to reconcile all these laws, we hope it will keep the 20-week post-fertilization/22-week gestational limit instead of imposing a much shorter deadline. Most women don’t realize they’re pregnant until after six weeks. And most abortions performed in the second trimester (13 to 26 weeks gestational age) are either because of serious health risks — such as fetal abnormalities, fetal death or endangering the mother’s health — or sought by teenagers who didn’t realize they were pregnant or were too afraid to ask for help.
We also hope the Legislature clarifies “medical emergency” and “to save the life of the mother.” In practice, this has meant that doctors can’t perform an abortion until the mother is actively dying — as happened to one young mother whose child died in the womb, but doctors in her home state could not remove the dead fetus until she started going into septic shock, so she had to rush to get the procedure in another state. The law should allow doctors to perform an abortion if there is reasonable proof that the mother’s health and life will be at risk, instead of forcing doctors to wait until the mother is actively dying before providing life-saving assistance.
We also hope the Legislature will consider adding exceptions for rape and incest. If not, we expect suicides and “deaths of despair” among young women of childbearing age to skyrocket. Especially those of lower socio-economic status who can’t afford to travel for an abortion and now face a future of physical, psychological and economic pain.
Since the Supreme Court put the decision about abortion in lawmakers’ hands, we hope West Virginia’s legislators will look at their wives, daughters, sisters, nieces and all the other young women in their lives and choose to enact practical, compassionate laws.
