WASHINGTON — Arkansas state Senator Jason Rapert considered it a big win when he sponsored one of the first “heartbeat bills” to be passed into law in 2013, which would have banned abortions after 12 weeks if it had not been blocked by Roe v. Wade.

But there was one aspect of the law, written at a time when Democrats and moderate Republicans had more power in the state than they do today, that left him dissatisfied: the exceptions it contained for survivors of rape and incest.

Six years later, in 2019, he corrected that shortfall, passing a “trigger” law that would outlaw nearly every abortion in the state if Roe fell, without those loopholes.

“The only exception to the abortion ban is to save the life of a mother in a medical emergency, which is a very direct statement,” Rapert said. “We believe life begins at conception.”

That ban, which went into effect after the Supreme Court’s June decision overturning abortion rights, made Arkansas one of a growing number of states where nearly every abortion is illegal, even for pregnancies that result from devastating violations such as rape or incest. The proliferation of these bans runs counter to overwhelming public support for such exceptions, which poses a political risk for the Republicans who are defending them, especially as extreme cases draw attention to the consequences of these laws. The story of a 10-year-old girl who was raped and had to travel from Ohio to Indiana to access a legal abortion made international headlines this month.

“They’ve taken down the mask,” Laurie Bertram Roberts, executive director of the Alabama-based Yellowhammer Fund, which helps women obtain abortions, said of Republicans. “The veil has fallen.”

While the exceptions are likely to be rarely invoked, their loss is politically symbolic, experts say.

“It’s another sign ... that in a lot of states politicians who are passing abortion bans don’t care what voters think,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor who has studied the politics of the antiabortion movement. “If the Dobbs decision was supposed to be some great return to democracy, that’s not what we’re seeing.”

What’s more, having laws that don’t make exceptions for rape and incest puts the United States out of step with much of the rest of the world, and with international human rights treaties to which the United States is a party.

“The human rights community has repeatedly stated that denying abortion for victims of rape is cruel treatment,” said Susan Deller Ross, a law professor at Georgetown and director of the international women’s human rights clinic there.

For example, the United States has ratified the international Convention against Torture. The committee that monitors its implementation has warned at least two countries — El Salvador and Nicaragua — against laws that ban abortion without exception.

“For the woman in question, this situation entails constant exposure to the violation committed against her and causes serious traumatic stress and a risk of long-lasting psychological problems such as anxiety and depression,” the committee wrote to Nicaragua in 2009, urging the country to consider providing such exceptions to its abortion ban.

In 2016, the United Nation Human Rights Committee ruled that the near-total ban on abortion that Ireland had at the time subjected women to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” (It was repealed by referendum in 2018).

“I’m just sick, it’s horrible,” said Ross of the new laws and the United States’ backsliding.

Governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Kristi Noem of South Dakota are among the Republican governors who have struggled to answer questions about why their states have joined that short list of countries in supporting policies that would essentially force women to carry babies to term after enduring rape.

“Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets,” Abbott said last fall.

“I just have never believed that having a tragedy or tragic situation happened to someone is a reason to have another tragedy occur,” Noem said.

Beyond Arkansas, South Dakota, and Texas, there are at least five other states that have passed trigger bans that outlaw abortions at any stage of a pregnancy, even those resulting from rape and incest, although they generally include exceptions for the life of the mother. Those states include Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Louisiana.

Other states did not pass trigger bans but now have other laws that outlaw abortion even in cases of rape. In Alabama, a 2019 law banning abortion without exceptions for rape and incest went into effect once Roe fell, and Wisconsin’s similar law from the 19th century is also now back in effect.

Laws banning abortions in the 19th and early 20th centuries often made no exception for rape victims, reflecting the customs of a time when women were denied basic rights, including voting. Bans with exceptions for rape and incest became more common in the late 1960s, and were increasingly central to the debate over abortion after Roe, when the Hyde Amendment banned the federal government from funding abortions — except in cases of rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother.

By the early 2000s, support for those exceptions appeared to be a mainstream Republican position. Once, President George W. Bush’s spokesman described him as “prolife with three exceptions: Rape, incest, and when the life of the mother is in danger.”

But since then, the GOP’s rightward shift and consolidation of power in many state houses have rendered those exceptions less politically necessary, and lawmakers in recent years have teed up more sweeping bans to go into effect should Roe fall.

“As time has kind of marched on, and abortion opponents have been successful in adopting restrictions, and they had more momentum, they felt there was no need to essentially add in exceptions because they already had the votes,” said Elizabeth Nash, the principal policy associate for state issues at the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights think tank. “There wasn’t anyone they were trying to convince.”

Democrats in states such as Missouri were powerless to stop them. “The Republicans have a super majority in the House and the Senate so they are able to ... pass whatever it is they want to pass on the issue of denying access to abortion,” said state Senator Jill Schupp, a Democrat.

Many abortion providers and supporters of abortion rights warn that exceptions for rape and incest are something of a red herring, since it is so difficult for women to qualify to use them. Some states that have them in their abortion bans, such as Idaho, require women to file a police report against their assailant to access an abortion, which many victims of rape or incest are unwilling to do.

And advocates warn that in states where most abortions are banned, it is unlikely abortion providers will be open to offer services to the few women who are able to qualify for any exceptions.

“Exemptions are a way for the GOP to say you know, ‘Now, now, don’t worry or there, there, don’t worry your little pretty heads,’” said Bertram Roberts, of Yellowhammer, although she said it was telling that they are dropping them, given the optics. “They used to have to do at least the facade of ‘Hey, we’ll still be here when you need your good abortion.’ Now, they’re just being naked about it and saying, ‘Honestly, we don’t care.’ ”

The recent proliferation of these laws represents a victory for deeply conservative, Christian lawmakers such as Rapert, who have spent years pushing the idea that fetuses have the same constitutional rights from the moment of conception as they do once they are born — a concept known as “fetal personhood”.

“No matter how a child’s conceived, [they’re] a soul worthy of our protection,” said Sarah Zagorski, communications director of Louisiana Right To Life.

Rapert is hoping that abortion will become unconstitutional nationwide — something experts say would happen if the Supreme Court grants fetuses rights under the 14th Amendment.

“[Fetal] personhood means that states are not going to be content to leave each other alone,” Ziegler said, and added she anticipates no-exception abortion bans will become even more common. “So that means that there will be a push to kind of re-nationalize struggles over abortion, whether through a federal statute or US Supreme Court decision banning abortion everywhere, including in places like Massachusetts.”

Jess Bidgood can be reached at Jess.Bidgood@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @jessbidgood.

Work at Boston Globe Media