A West Virginia judge blocked the state from enforcing its 150-year-old abortion ban Monday, allowing abortions to recommence for the immediate future.
Kanawha County Circuit Court Judge Tera Salango granted a preliminary injunction to the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia, the state’s only abortion clinic, against the state’s 150 year-old abortion ban, according to Reuters. Patrick Morrisey, the Republican attorney general, said that his office will appeal the decision to the state supreme court, saying that this was “a dark day for West Virginia,” The Guardian reported.
The state law in West Virginia from the 1800s bans the performing or obtaining of abortion, making it a felony punishable with up to ten years in prison except in the case that the mother’s life is in danger, according to The Guardian. The argument made by the lawyers for the Women’s Health Center against the law is that it has not been enforced in over 50 years and that the new abortion laws acknowledge that women have a right to an abortion.
“The code is replete with examples of undeniable conflicts in the law that appear fundamental and irreconcilable, making the law incompatible by any reading,” Salango said, according to the outlet. “Perhaps when it was drafted, that legislation was sufficient. However, in today’s world, it is simply too vague to be applied.”
A West Virginia judge has blocked officials from enforcing a 19th-century ban on abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established the right of women nationally to terminate pregnancies.
https://t.co/PMOLu1wtGE— Newsmax (@newsmax) July 19, 2022
Morrisey argued that West Virginia can still enforce the law and that in the past the only reason that they were not able to prosecute people for abortion was because it was illegal to do so under Roe V. Wade. His office stated that the new laws were only meant to “fill the void regarding unregulated post-Roe abortion,” The Guardian reported.
With regards to the arguments put forth by the Women’s Health Center, Morrisey’s office wrote that they “are likely to fail and overlook basic history: the West Virginia Legislature’s attempt to protect innocent, unborn life to the greatest extent possible against the backdrop of Roe V. Wade,” the outlet reported.
“It is counter-historical to say that the legislature intended less protection for unborn life if Roe was overruled than if Roe never existed,” Morrisey’s office stated. (RELATED: Ohio Lawmakers Introduce ‘Personhood Act’ To Ban Abortion From The Moment Of Conception)
The Women’s Health Center carried out 1,304 abortions in 2021, according to The Guardian.