Mississippi passed a bill Thursday to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Mississippi is the latest conservative state to pass a bill limiting abortions, Reuters reports. 

While abortion was legalized nationally in 1973, many conservative states still aim to limit the procedure through the passage of state laws. 

A handful of other states have enacted laws in recent years that put restrictions on the procedure, including putting limits on late-term abortions, citing debated medical research that a fetus feels pain at 20 weeks of gestation, which is halfway though a pregnancy's term. 

The bill passed in Mississippi refers to the research. 

"Today is an important day for protecting the unborn and the health and safety of women in Mississippi," Republican Gov. Phil Bryant said in a statement after signing the bill, which will become a law on July 1.

According to the bill, doctors who defy the new law could lose their medical license. 

Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Alabama have also passed similar legislation. 

According to the new Mississippi legislation, abortions are only legal after 20 weeks if a woman's life is in danger or if the fetus suffers "from fetal abnormalities so great that life outside the womb is not viable," Bryant said. 

Nancy Northup, the president of the nonprofit Center for Reproductive Rights, lambasted the bill, saying it does not include exemptions for pregnancies that result from rape or incest. 

"It's time for these politicians to stop passing laws that attack constitutionally protected women's health care," Northup said in a statement.

According to data collected in 2011 by the Guttmacher Institute for sexual and reproductive health, 23 percent of U.S. abortion clinics offer terminations after 20 weeks, but only 1.2 percent occur after 20 weeks.