Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) on Sunday said abortion providers should face criminal penalties for performing procedures but said women would not be prosecuted in his state for getting an abortion.
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd, the GOP governor said only doctors who perform an abortion to save the life of a mother would not be prosecuted.\
“They have to make those medical judgments and it’s not the state’s judgment to reconfigure those or rethink those,” Hutchinson said. “The decision has to be made whether it’s an [illegal] abortion, and then you go after the provider, and there’s a criminal penalty [but not for] the woman.”
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, Arkansas’s trigger law banning abortions with the only exception to save the life of the mother went into effect.
The law makes it illegal to perform an abortion, with violators facing up to 10 years in prison. There are no exceptions for rape or incest.
Hutchinson on Sunday said the law is meant to “save the unborn baby.”
“You use the power of the state to say, ‘Unless the health of the mother is at risk, let’s carry that child to term,'” the governor said. “When you’re saving life, that’s an appropriate role of the state.”
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