Hundreds take to the streets to protest in Recent York City.
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The Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade isn’t only splitting the country into states where abortion is legal and illegal. It is usually illustrating sharp divisions between anti-abortion states on whether to permit exceptions and implement the law.
Nearly half of the states had “trigger laws” or constitutional amendments in place to quickly ban abortion within the wake of a Roe v. Wade ruling. Yet lawmakers and governors on Sunday illustrated how in another way which will play out.
Some states allow exceptions, equivalent to legal abortions to guard the lifetime of the mother. Others are pursuing aggressive measures, including prosecuting doctors, looking into using abortion medications and travel to other states for the procedure and inspiring private residents to sue individuals who help women obtain abortions.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, said the state is not going to file criminal charges against women who get the procedure. She said the state also doesn’t plan to pass laws much like Texas and Oklahoma, which urge private residents to file civil lawsuits against those accused of aiding and abetting abortions.
“I don’t think women should ever be prosecuted,” she said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “I don’t think that moms in this example ever be prosecuted. Now, doctors who knowingly violate the law, they needs to be prosecuted, definitely.”
She said the state has not decided handle what’s going to occur within the event a South Dakota resident travels to a different state to get an abortion, saying “there will be a debate about that.”
It is going to be as much as each state and state legislators to make a decision what laws appear like closer to home, she added.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, said the state allows for one exception: saving the lifetime of the mother. He has directed his Department of Health to implement the law, but give attention to providing resources to women who’ve unwanted pregnancies.
The Arkansas law doesn’t include an exception for incest, which might force a 13-year-old raped by a relative to hold a pregnancy to term. Hutchinson said he disagrees with that.
“I’d have preferred a unique consequence than that,” he said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “That is not the controversy today in Arkansas. It is perhaps in the long run.”
Hutchinson said the state is not going to investigate miscarriages or ban IUDs, a type of contraception that some anti-abortion activists consider abortion because it could possibly stop a fertilized egg from implanting within the uterus.
“That is about abortion, that is what has been triggered, and it isn’t about contraception. That is obvious and ladies needs to be assured of that,” he told “Meet the Press.”
In Texas, a state law takes a more sweeping approach. It enforces an abortion ban through lawsuits filed by private residents against doctors or anyone who helps a girl get an abortion, equivalent to an individual driving the pregnant woman to a medical center.
Oklahoma has the same ban, which is enforced by civil lawsuits relatively than criminal prosecution.
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from Recent York, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said on Sunday that each one of those state bans have the identical consequence: stealing women’s freedoms and jeopardizing their lives.
Ocasio-Cortez pointed to Arkansas’ public health record, noting that it has certainly one of the best maternal mortality rates within the country and a high rate of kid poverty.
“Forcing women to hold pregnancies against their will kill them,” she said on “Meet the Press.” “It is going to kill them, especially within the state of Arkansas where there could be very little to no support for all times after birth by way of health care, by way of child care and by way of combatting poverty.”
— CNBC’s Jessica Bursztynsky contributed to this report.
