A pro-life Bill which bans abortions from taking place after 20 weeks of pregnancy has been passed in the US state of Kentucky.
Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin signed the measure after it had been overwhelmingly approved in the state House and Senate.
It is the latest in a flurry of pro-life legislation that has been passed in US states over the past two years.
Ultrasound
The Republican Governor also signed a separate Bill that requires pregnant women to be given an ultrasound and receive a description of their unborn baby before going through with an abortion.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a radical pro-LGBT lobby group, has filed suit to challenge this pro-life measure.
Governor Bevin said: “We anticipated as much. That’s what they do. It’s what liberals always do when they don’t like something, they sue.”
‘Innocent’
He added: “I personally believe that it’s inappropriate to kill human beings that are innocent.
“And it’s hard for me to imagine a scenario when someone could tell me that killing innocent human beings is a good thing.”
Kentucky now joins 25 other US states to have passed laws regarding ultrasounds performed at abortion clinics.
Significant drop
In November, a report found a significant drop in the US abortion rate in the past decade.
Research carried out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the abortion rate for 2013 was 12.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 years.
From 2004, this represents a 21 per cent decrease in the rate of reported abortions. The number of abortions in this period fell from 817,906 to 652,582.
Both these reported statistics are at their lowest levels since 2004.
Closures
The total number of abortion clinics has also fallen rapidly in recent years.
In May, US media company Bloomberg reported that since 2011, more than 160 abortion clinics have been shut down across the country while just 21 have opened.