(North Dakota Monitor) – The North Dakota Attorney General’s Office has asked a judge to keep the state’s abortion ban in place until the North Dakota Supreme Court has a chance to weigh in on the law.
South Central Judicial District Court Judge Bruce Romanick last week ruled that the law is “unconstitutionally void for vagueness” and found that “pregnant women in North Dakota have a fundamental right to choose abortion before viability exists.”
Now, the state wants Romanick to allow the ban to remain in effect until the Supreme Court decides on the state’s appeal of the ruling. In a Thursday brief, the state claimed the judge’s ruling was made in error and that a stay should be granted to prevent harm to pregnancies.
“The Court’s (summary judgment) order ignored the law of the case and plaintiffs’ own allegations when it concluded there exists, under North Dakota law, an unfettered and unlimited right to an abortion prior to viability,” the state wrote in court filings.
The ban, enacted by the Legislature in 2023, makes abortion illegal in all cases except rape or incest if the mother has been pregnant for less than six weeks, or when the pregnancy poses a serious physical health threat.
A group of reproductive health care doctors and an abortion clinic filed suit against the ban in 2023, arguing that it infringed on medical freedom and was too vague to enforce.
The plaintiffs, which include reproductive health care doctors and the Moorhead, Minnesota-based Red River Women’s Clinic, said in legal filings that the law puts pregnant patients and doctors in danger because it does not provide clear guidance on when abortions may be performed for health reasons.
The state has countered that the law is not unconstitutionally vague and that the ban was written with guidance from health care professionals.
The state also wrote that the ruling goes against the state’s interest in protecting pregnancies, arguing that “innumerable unborn children are now at risk of needlessly perishing.”
North Dakota does not have an abortion service provider. Red River Women’s Clinic previously operated in Fargo, but moved to Minnesota after North Dakota’s previous abortion ban went into effect.
The law will remain on the books until Romanick enters a formal judgment in the case. Romanick directed the plaintiffs to file a proposed judgment within 14 days of his ruling.
The abortion ban was signed into law in April 2023 just weeks after the North Dakota Supreme Court vacated a similar law restricting abortion access. That law, adopted by the Legislature in 2007, went into effect after Roe v. Wade was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022.
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