US: In a political battle that is being closely watched throughout the US, opponents of an abortion ban in South Dakota have forced a postponement in implementing the new law.
Voters will now determine the ban's fate in a November referendum. The law bans all abortions - including in the case of rape and incest - unless they are necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman.
It was passed in March and was due to come into effect on July 1st. Abortion rights campaigners collected more than 38,000 signatures for a petition demanding that the law should be put to a referendum - more than twice the number needed to force such a vote.
The South Dakota law, one of the toughest approved by a state legislature, was designed as a challenge to the 1973 Supreme Court ruling Roe v Wade, which said that states could not ban abortion.
The new law's backers hope that the recent appointment of two conservative judges - chief justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito - could tilt the balance of the supreme court against Roe v Wade.
South Dakota is one of the most conservative states in the US but the outcome of November's referendum to repeal the abortion ban is far from certain.
The law, under which doctors performing an abortion could face five years in jail, says that human life begins at the moment of conception. It does not provide an exception for a woman's health, and if a pregnant woman's life is in danger doctors must try to save the foetus as well as the woman.
The law states: "The guarantee of due process of law under the constitution of South Dakota applies equally to born and unborn human beings."
Jan Nicolay, who led the petition drive for the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, said the law was so extreme that even opponents of abortion could vote against it.
"We will encourage all South Dakotans to join us in repealing this extreme law that has embroiled our state in controversy and threatens our government with million dollar lawsuits," she said.
Leslee Unruh, an anti-abortion activist who campaigned in favour of the new law, said supporters of the abortion ban were determined to defend the law.
"It's because there are so many women who have been harmed by abortion, myself being one of them, who have come together," she said.
Fourteen other US states are considering abortion bans that would come into effect if Roe v Wade is overturned and Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Blanco, signed such an abortion ban into law last weekend.
The supreme court said on Monday it will review a court of appeals ruling that found a federal ban on "partial-birth" abortion, a procedure involving late-term abortions, unconstitutional.
Congress passed the ban in 2003, but abortion rights group Planned Parenthood challenged it in California, Nebraska and New York, where it was struck down by federal courts.