New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed legislation Thursday that will radically limit free speech outside the state's abortion businesses while extending protections to abortionists and those who seek abortion or so-called "gender-affirming care."

Key Takeaways:

• New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed SS260 on Thursday, which prohibits "interference" with abortion and 'transgender' services.

• The legislation makes it a criminal offense to harass or block individuals from accessing abortions, while strengthening the protected status of abortionists and abortion businesses.

• The bill also allows a person to sue anyone who “causes a reasonable person to suffer damage to the person’s business or personal reputation, financial harm, or pain and suffering, mental anguish, or emotional harm” due to committing or receiving an abortion.

• Pro-lifers warn the bill will limit the free speech and prayer of pro-life sidewalk counselor outside abortion businesses.

The Details:

In a signing ceremony Thursday described by one news outlet as a "giant street party," Sherrill signed S2260. The bill has a number of measures meant to intimidate those attempting to reach women outside abortion businesses; one of these measures makes it a fourth-degree criminal offense to "injure, threaten, intimidate, or physically block patients or providers, or to damage property in an effort to interfere with reproductive healthcare services."

'Reproductive healthcare' will now be defined to include 'transgender' services as well as abortion.

The legislation also strengthens the state's pro-abortion shield laws, protecting abortionists, or anyone connected with abortion, from out-of-state investigations or extradition. If an abortionist breaks another state's abortion laws, they will be safe from any legal action in New Jersey.

Further, it allows a person to sue anyone who “causes a reasonable person to suffer damage to the person’s business or personal reputation, financial harm, or pain and suffering, mental anguish, or emotional harm” because the person facilitates, performs, or receives "reproductive health services."

Pro-life groups stress that this opens to the door for an abortion-minded woman to sue any sidewalk counselors for "mental anguish" if she encounters them outside an abortion facility.

The measure went into effect immediately upon signing.

What We're Hearing:

The new law has been roundly condemned by pro-life groups, as they particularly warn that the legislation will hinder sidewalk counselors and those who peacefully pray outside abortion facilities.

New Jersey Right to Life said in a statement:

Peaceful sidewalk counseling, prayer, holding signs, or simply offering help and alternatives outside a facility can easily be labeled 'intimidation' by someone who claims to feel threatened, leaving pro-life advocates open to criminal charges that are difficult to disprove and chilling constitutionally protected expression.

The group's executive director, Marie Tasy, added:

“Governor Sherrill just signed a blank check for the abortion industry and a death warrant for countless unborn children with beating hearts. S2260 does not protect women. It protects the people who end the lives of living human children already growing in the womb.

New Jersey should be a sanctuary for mothers and babies, not a legal fortress for those who profit from abortion.”