Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson defended his state’s controversial law that makes all abortions illegal in all cases except to save the life of the patient in a medical emergency on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday morning.
Asked by host Chuck Todd whether he is comfortable if a “13 year old in Arkansas is raped by a relative, that 13 year old cannot get an abortion,” the governor said he would “prefer a different outcome than that.”
“That’s not the debate today in Arkansas. It might be in the future,” he said, adding that the law currently bans abortions with only one exception.
Shortly after the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, officials in more than a dozen states moved to enact so-called “trigger” laws outlawing abortion care.
On 24 June, hours after the Supreme Court revoked the precedent from 1973’s Roe v Wade affirming constitutional protections for abortion access, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge implemented the state’s 2019 law that makes all abortions illegal except to save the life of the patient. It does not include exemptions for pregnancies from rape or incest.
