A Louisiana judge allowed state laws banning nearly all abortions to go into effect Friday, overturning a previous court decision that had temporarily blocked her.
Abortions were banned immediately from conception, except for threatening the life of a pregnant woman, but without exception for rape or incest. Under a Louisiana law, abortion providers face possible prison terms of 10 or 15 yearsdepending on when the pregnancy was terminated.
Louisiana is among a number of conservative states that have passed abortion restrictions or bans pending the Supreme Court’s repeal of the constitutional right to abortion, which it did last month. The decision led to those state bans, which took effect quickly. However, abortion rights groups filed a lawsuit in state courts and, in some cases, were given temporary restraining orders to block the bans so that abortions could continue.
In Louisiana, Judge Ethel Julien of the Orleans Parish Civil District Court ruled Friday that the court did not have the authority to extend a temporary restraining order issued on June 27 because the case should have been filed in the state capital, Baton Rouge.
Lawyers representing Louisiana’s abortion providers said the decision was a temporary setback. The case is expected to be handed over to a Baton Rouge court, where abortion rights advocates plan to seek another suspension of the abortion ban while the lawsuit is underway.
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Abortion providers in Louisiana had argued in the first case that the state’s trigger laws violated the state constitution, were “void due to vagueness,” and didn’t provide enough details about prohibited actions — such as what exceptions there were for medical workers trying to conceive a pregnant woman. life to be saved.
“The case goes on, the work goes on,” said Joanna Wright, one of the lead attorneys representing an abortion rights group and an abortion clinic in Louisiana. “This was a decision on a technical aspect that had nothing to do with the substance of our case.”
Jeff LandryLouisiana Attorney General, celebrated the end of the temporary restraining order and vowed to continue the Baton Rouge lawsuit.
“We certainly intend to continue to defend and enforce the laws of the state,” Mr Landry said.
The clinic, Hope Medical Group for Women, which: had continued to conduct abortions after the first court order blocked Louisiana’s enforcement laws, said it will suspend the process in light of Friday’s decision.
Clinic staff canceled abortion appointments and referred patients to other providers, but the clinic planned to remain open to see patients for ultrasounds and “option counseling,” said Kathleen Pittman, an administrator at Hope Medical Group.
The rapidly changing status of Louisiana’s trigger laws characterizes the chaotic national landscape that has unfolded in the two weeks since the Supreme Court overthrew Roe v. Wade.
Attorneys for abortion rights groups filed lawsuits challenging the trigger ban in a dozen states just after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that had guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion since 1973.
Judges dismissed those challenges in Ohio and Mississippi, but other cases, including in Oklahoma, continue. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is filing the lawsuit in Louisiana, abortion is now prohibited in nine states.
In Mississippi, the last abortion clinic in the state — the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which filed the lawsuit the Supreme Court used to topple Roe — closed Thursday when a legal challenge failed and the state’s trigger law went into effect.
“We’ve asked the Supreme Court to return abortion policies to the people,” said Lynn Fitch, the state’s Republican Attorney General. “Today, in Mississippi, for the first time in many years, the will of the people, as expressed by their elected legislators, is no longer held up in court and will come into effect.”
An Arizona court heard pleas Friday in an ongoing challenge to a state law that defines life as beginning at conception. The law was held up by the challenge shortly after it was passed in 2021, but clinics in the state stopped providing abortions after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, fearing the state law would go into effect immediately and would prohibit abortion.
Most legal challenges across the country are aimed at establishing that the state constitution protects the right to abortion. In Louisiana, however, voters recently amended the constitution to say it did not guarantee that right, increasing the legal challenge.