North Dakota’s Republican governor Jack Dalrymple has signed legislation outlawing abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on the disputed premise that at that point a foetus can feel pain.<\/p>\n
The law is the latest among a raft of measures passed in North Dakota this session that are meant to challenge the US supreme court’s 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that legalised abortion up until viability, usually at 22 to 24 weeks.<\/p>\n
Abortion-rights campaigners have called the laws unconstitutional and have promised a long legal fight that they say the state cannot win.<\/p>\n
Dalrymple last month signed a law that bans abortion as early as six weeks, or when a foetal heartbeat is detected, making North Dakota the most restrictive state in the US to get the procedure.<\/p>\n
Dalrymple also signed into law last month other measures that make the state the first to ban abortions based on genetic defects such as Down’s syndrome and require a doctor who performs abortions to be a physician with hospital-admitting privileges. The measures also ban abortion based on genetic selection.<\/p>\n
Abortion-rights activists say the measures, which come into effect on 1 August, are aimed at closing the state’s sole abortion clinic, the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo.<\/p>\n
At least 10 states have passed bills banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy on the premise that a foetus can feel pain at that stage, but research is split on the theory.<\/p>\n
North Dakota politicians also moved last month to seek a referendum defining life as starting at conception, in effect banning abortion in the state. The measure is likely to come before voters in November 2014.<\/p>\n
The Centre for Reproductive Rights has said it is committed to challenging the foetal heartbeat bill on behalf of the Fargo clinic.<\/p>\n
The New York-based group is representing the clinic for free in a trial that started on Tuesday over a 2011 law banning the widely accepted use of a medication that induces abortion. A judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of that law.<\/p>\n
The Centre for Reproductive Rights also was part of a lawsuit filed on Tuesday that seeks to overturn the more restrictive of Arkansas’s two new abortion laws, saying the near-ban of abortions from the 12th week of pregnancy onward is unconstitutional.<\/p>\n