North Dakota judge to hear request to temporarily block part of abortion law that restricts doctors
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Physicians and the formerly sole abortion provider in North Dakota are asking a state district court judge to temporarily block a part of the state’s revised abortion laws so doctors can perform the procedure to save a patient’s life or health.
The request for a preliminary injunction, scheduled for a hearing Wednesday, asks the judge to bar the state from enforcing the law against physicians who use their “good-faith medical judgment” to perform an abortion because of pregnancy complications that could pose “a risk of infection, hemorrhage, high blood pressure, or which otherwise makes continuing a pregnancy unsafe.”
North Dakota outlaws all abortions, except in cases where women could face death or a “serious health risk.” People who perform abortions could be charged with a felony under the law, but patients would not.
Physicians have perceived the law’s language for “serious health risk” to be “so vague” that they “don’t know at what point a condition rises to the level of being what the statute calls a ‘serious health risk,’ ” Center for Reproductive Rights attorney Meetra Mehdizadeh previously told The Associated Press.
The state’s revised abortion laws also provide an exception for pregnancies caused by rape and incest, but only in the first six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. It also allows for treatment of ectopic and molar pregnancies, which are nonviable situations.
The Red River Women’s Clinic sued the state last year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned the court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling establishing a nationwide right to abortion. The clinic moved from Fargo to neighboring Moorhead, Minnesota.
Earlier this year and amid the lawsuit, North Dakota’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed a bill revising the state’s abortion laws, which Gov. Doug Burgum signed into effect in April.
In June, the clinic filed an amended complaint, joined by several doctors in obstetrics, gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine.