A Judge Strikes Down North Dakota’s Abortion Ban and Rules that Access is Protected
By: AP News | Jack Dura, John Hana
September 12, 2024
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A state judge struck down North Dakota’s abortion ban Thursday, declaring that broad guarantees of personal liberty in the constitution of his conservative, Republican-dominated state create a fundamental right to abortion before a fetus is viable.
The state’s GOP attorney general promised to appeal the decision, which would take effect within a few weeks. North Dakota no longer has any abortion clinics, but legalizing abortion again would affect doctors in hospitals who believe an abortion is necessary when a pregnant patient faces a medical emergency.
Besides ruling that the state constitution protects abortion access, District Judge Bruce Romanick also said that the law is unconstitutional because it is too vague to be enforced fairly. He agreed with critics who said the law wasn’t clear how its limited exceptions applied — allowing doctors to be prosecuted if other colleagues later disagreed with their medical decisions.
“We have been made to choose between saving a patient’s life and possibly facing jail time,” Dr. Ana Tobiasz, a fetal-maternal medicine specialist in the state capital of Bismarck, said during a Zoom news conference. “We are finally free to put our patients’ health first and offer patients the standard of care without fear of facing criminal prosecution.”
Courts in 10 other states, including California, Illinois and Kansas, have ruled their state constitutions protect access to abortion, according the Center for Reproductive Rights, which challenges bans and restrictions, including in the North Dakota lawsuit before Romanick. But most of those rulings came before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022 overruling Roe v. Wade and allowing states to ban abortion — and one in Oklahoma afterward covered only when a patient’s life is in danger.
A week before the Dobbs decision — with its result widely anticipated — the Iowa Supreme Court reversed a previous ruling holding that the state constitution protected abortion. Since Dobbs, top courts in Florida, Idaho and Indiana also have issued similar decisions.
“Most state supreme courts have refused to craft state constitutional rights to pre-viability abortions,” Carolyn McDonnell, litigation counsel for the anti-abortion Americans United for Life. “Instead, they’ve recognized that abortion is an issue for the political branches.”
North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley said in a statement that the judge’s decision contained “flaws in his analysis.”
“Judge Romanick’s opinion inappropriately casts aside the law crafted by the legislative branch of our government and ignores the applicable and controlling case law previously announced by the North Dakota Supreme Court,” he said.
North Dakota’s only abortion provider had been the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, but it moved a few miles to Moorhead, Minnesota, after the Dobbs decision, when a state “trigger” law banning abortion took effect. The clinic sued, as did several doctors in obstetrics, gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine, including Tobiasz.
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