SW News: Missouri has become the first US state to announce that its trigger law banning abortion has come into effect. Soon after the announcement of the epoch-making ruling of the US Supreme Court which overturned Roe v Wade on Friday, June 24, state Attorney General Eric Schmitt signed a document in the morning activating the trigger law.

"With this attorney general opinion, my Office has effectively ended abortion in Missouri, becoming the first state in the country to do so following the Court’s ruling," said Schmitt in a statement. The 2019 law states that “no abortion shall be performed or induced upon a woman, except in cases of medical emergency.”

More than half of the American states will ban the termination of pregnancy with the repeal of Roe v Wade. The other 12 states in the US having similar trigger laws are Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. These laws will ban abortion in the first and second trimesters. Although all trigger laws prohibit abortion, they nonetheless have different implementation procedures and schedules, varying according to each state.

Several others will also ban abortions in the long run. Some of these 26 states have multiple restrictions in place, including nine that still adhere to pre-Roe laws and eleven that have early gestational age restrictions. State officials will choose which restrictions apply in states with various bans post-Roe v Wade’s reversal.

In the case of Oklahoma, even though Roe was still officially in effect, it was the first state to ban abortion in late May, with just a few exceptions. As a result, all abortion clinics in the state were obliged to stop providing services. The states of Idaho, Tennessee, and Texas will outlaw pregnancy termination 30 days post the reversal of Roe v Wade. The other states that are likely to ban abortion are Indiana, Nebraska, Montana and Florida.