Justices won’t let North Dakota enforce tough abortion law

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court turned away an appeal from state officials in Arkansas who sought to revive a similar fetal heartbeat law.

North Dakota’s law was among the strictest of a series of statutes passed at the state level imposing limits on abortion. That changes at 4 p.m., when the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Carlos Trujillo, R-Miami, will hear debate on the bill (HB 865).

The Supreme Court will not allow North Dakota to enforce a law banning abortions when a fetal heartbeat is detected as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Their suit had the backing of the Center for Reproductive Rights, whose president and CEO, Nancy Northup, said Monday, “Whether in North Dakota, Arkansas, or Texas, politicians simply can not rob women of their constitutional rights”.

This article was supplemented with material from The Associated Press.

In a separate case, the high court is due to hear arguments on March 2 in a challenge by abortion providers to parts of a restrictive, Republican-backed Texas law they contend are aimed at shutting clinics that perform the procedure.

“It was a long shot”, Stenehjem said.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court’s website said certiorari, a review of a lower court’s decision, was denied.

North Dakota’s Republican-dominated legislature approved the law in 2013, though it was quickly put on hold after the state’s lone abortion clinic, in Fargo, filed a lawsuit that July.

Viability, according to medical experts, occurs around 23 to 24 weeks into a pregnancy.

When U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Hovland rejected North Dakota’s justification for the law, he cited the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, saying “no state may deprive a woman of the choice to terminate her pregnancy at a point prior to viability”.

In spite of the arguments made by supporters of the North Dakota abortion ban, the Eighth Circuit Court ruled that “good reasons exist” for the U.S. Supreme Court to “revisit” abortions cases.

The Supreme Court gets about 7,500 requests each year but takes on fewer than 100 cases.

The appeals panel judges said the laws were inconsistent with the standard set by the Supreme Court that generally ties abortion restrictions to the viability of the fetus.