Wyoming governor signs bill banning abortion pills

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon on Friday signed a bill banning abortion pills in the Republican-led state, citing the Life is a Human Right Act.

It is the first US state to ban the use of abortion pills.

Wyoming’s abortion pill law will take effect July 1 and will make it illegal to “prescribe, dispense, dispense, sell, or use any drug for the purpose of procuring or performing an abortion.”

The law states that doctors or anyone else found guilty of prescribing the drugs and breaking the latest law will be charged with a misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail, and will be sentenced. to a fine of $9,000 (£7,387).

Pregnant patients will be exempt from fees and penalties, in accordance with the law.

“I acted without bias and after long prayers to allow these bills to become law,” the governor said in a letter to the Wyoming secretary of state.

The governor also allowed a separate measure restricting abortion access to become law without his signature amid growing abortion scrutiny by Republican states and anti-abortion groups.

The law, which will come into force on Sunday, would ban abortion in most circumstances, making the medical termination of an unwanted pregnancy a crime.

This latest law, Governor Gordon said, dubbed the Life is a Human Right Act, would result in a lawsuit that “will delay any resolution of the constitutionality of Wyoming’s abortion ban.”

Abortion pills account for more than recent medical terminations of pregnancy in the United States, according to preliminary data from a Guttmacher Institute report released in February last year amid the camp’s crackdown on abortion Republican and the States.

The pills accounted for more than 54% of all medical abortions performed in the United States, which requires a two-pill method up to 10 weeks gestation, according to the report, confirming that the process is the most accessible method and the more reliable for terminating pregnancies among the US population.

Governor Gordon’s decision to make abortion pills inaccessible follows a federal judge’s questioning of a Christian group’s efforts to overturn decades-old U.S. approval of a premier abortion drug. plan, mifepristone.

ACLU of Wyoming Advocacy Director Antonio Serrano criticized Governor Gordon’s decision to sign the law.

“A person’s health, not politics, should guide important medical decisions, including the decision to have an abortion,” Serrano said in a statement.

Abortion restrictions escalated dramatically after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in June last year, striking down the law protecting the right to abortion for nearly five decades.

At least 12 states now impose bans on abortion at any time during pregnancy, and another, Georgia, bans it once heart activity can be detected, or at about six weeks gestation.

Courts have suspended enforcement of abortion bans or deep restrictions in Arizona, Indiana, Montana, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming. Idaho courts have forced the state to allow abortions in medical emergencies.