By 5 p.m., the state legislature had voted to ban nearly all abortions from the moment a fertilized egg implants in the uterus. The governor has not yet signed the bill, but has indicated he will. The legislation prompted abortion providers to try to adapt to the new reality. The state’s only abortion clinic, in Charleston, Washington, announced on its website Wednesday morning that it will no longer perform the procedure. “West Virginians will now have to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles from their homes and incur enormous costs to access essential, life-saving care,” said Katie Quiñonez, executive director of the Women’s Health Center West Virginia. The Women’s Health Center had an empty parking lot on Wednesday. A printed sign on the door said the health center was “closed for staff rest” and would open the next day. Across the street, a crisis pregnancy center run by anti-abortion advocates remained open for patients. At lunchtime, Elizabeth Gill, 56, who has often protested as a member of West Virginians for Life, entered the clinic grounds. But there were no women seeking abortions for her to talk to. Gill, who is adopted, said she welcomes the new ban, although she opposes exemptions for victims of rape or incest. The ban allows abortions for adult victims of rape or incest up to eight weeks of pregnancy and up to 14 weeks of pregnancy for child victims. He also said he hopes to close the Women’s Health Center for good. “The baby has a God-given right to live life and live out God’s purpose for it,” she said. Austin Walters, who has lived next door to the clinic for about six years and has endured countless noisy anti-abortion protests, said he opposes the new ban. The 30-year-old, who works at Home Depot, said he expects the ban to drive young people out of the state and potentially hurt the economy. “Government or lawmakers should not control women’s bodies,” she said. “This is an issue the government should stay out of.” Betty Jo Stemple, another resident who lives near the abortion clinic, said she strongly believes abortion should be a woman’s choice in the early stages of pregnancy and in cases of rape or incest. She said she had an abortion decades ago after being raped in her 20s. “When I lost the second period, I knew I had to make a choice,” said Stemple, now 61. She didn’t want to have a child “with those bad genes,” she said. “I didn’t want that to grow in me.” Like many Americans, Staples said she supports restrictions on abortions later in pregnancy, but believes hard-line anti-abortion activists are taking the restrictions too far. “Life is complicated,” he said. “Situations happen. … It’s not cut and dried.” 1 in 3 American women have already lost access to an abortion. More restrictive laws are coming. The strict ban in West Virginia passed despite indications in other states that many voters do not support restrictive limits on abortion without exceptions. Anti-abortion lawmakers in South Carolina failed to pass an arrest ban without exceptions for rape and incest last week. Kansas voters rejected a measure that would have opened the door to more restrictive abortion laws in August, and candidates who oppose abortion bans topped their poll numbers during primaries this summer. Even West Virginia’s bill initially stalled in July because of disagreements among lawmakers over criminal penalties for doctors and a heated debate over which exemptions should be included. Ultimately, lawmakers agreed to exemptions for rape and incest victims as long as they report the assault and seek an abortion before eight weeks of pregnancy for adults and 14 weeks for children. Although a few Republican lawmakers took issue with the exemptions and lack of criminal penalties for doctors in the final version of the ban, national anti-abortion activists called it a “powerful pro-life bill.” “The people of West Virginia are committed to protecting unborn children and mothers from the horrors of abortion and now, in Dobbs era, they have passed legislation to do just that,” Caitlin Connors, southern regional director for SBA Pro-Life America, said in a statement. Connors added that the final version of the bill ensures that “mothers can get the care they need in a tragic situation of ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage or medical emergency – just like any other state with pro-life protections.” Some abortion advocates worry that West Virginia’s law will serve as a model for other state lawmakers. “What we saw in West Virginia may foreshadow what we see in other state legislatures later this year and beyond, with legislatures adopting bans that include narrow exemptions that make access to care nearly impossible,” said Elizabeth Nash, senior policy fellow for state affairs for the Guttmacher Institute said in an email. Nash said the exceptions to West Virginia’s ban are so limited that many sexual assault victims would have a hard time meeting the conditions to qualify for an abortion. “Patients will not be able to access care, including many who qualify for an exemption, because the exemptions are written in a way that makes it almost impossible to use them,” he said. “It is expected that other states will also consider similar exemptions as a way to convince the public that the exemptions provide some measure of access, but in practice the exemptions provide almost no access at all.” The Republican-controlled legislature passed a near-total ban on abortion with exceptions only to save the life of the pregnant patient and for victims of rape or incest. Governor Jim Justice has yet to sign the bill into law, but is expected to soon. Once signed, the ban will go into effect immediately and the law’s criminal penalties will kick in 90 days later. Democrats and reproductive rights advocates say the ban goes so far that it prohibits abortion in almost every circumstance and makes access difficult even for victims of sexual assault. Even people eligible for an exemption under the new ban face time limits and other hurdles. Adult victims of sexual assault must report the crime and seek an abortion before the eighth week of pregnancy. Victims under the age of 18 can have an abortion before the 14th week of pregnancy if they seek medical attention for the assault or report it to the police. Abortions can only be performed by doctors with hospital admitting privileges. These doctors may lose their medical licenses, but they do not face criminal penalties for performing an illegal abortion. Anyone else who performs an abortion faces felony charges and up to five years in prison. Patients who choose to have an illegal abortion face no criminal penalties. “It’s hard to overstate how terrible this day is for the state of West Virginia,” ACLU of West Virginia Director Eli Baumwell said in a statement. “The Legislature has chosen to remove a basic human right to choose whether, when and how a person becomes a parent.” It is unclear whether there is a path to challenging the ban in court. The ACLU of West Virginia had already challenged the abortion ban before the US Supreme Court overturned it Roe v. Wade decision because it conflicts with other laws passed by the state legislature more recently. A state judge temporarily blocked that ban in July. However, West Virginia voters narrowly passed an amendment to the state constitution in 2018 that stated “nothing in this Constitution guarantees or protects the right to an abortion or requires the financing of an abortion.” “There are so few cases that have gone very far,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. “I don’t think we know” how a legal challenge will play out. If West Virginia’s ban is challenged in federal court, Tobias said district judges in the Southern District of West Virginia and the 4th Circuit may be more receptive to the plaintiff’s arguments than federal judges who could hear challenges from states such as Texas or Tennessee, where strict, almost total abortion bans apply. A federal challenge to a restrictive abortion ban was filed in Idaho, where a judge blocked parts of the state law that would have prevented doctors from terminating pregnancies that pose significant health risks if those risks were not life-threatening. Other strict abortion restrictions remain in place in Idaho, where abortion is prohibited except in cases of rape, incest, or when a woman’s life is in danger. And the fate of the West Virginia law, if challenged in court, remains uncertain.
