North Dakota judge blocks anti-abortion ‘trigger’ law hours before it takes effect

A state court ruling in North Dakota has once again blocked the state’s anti-abortion law, hours before it was set to take effect, allowing abortion to remain legal in the state while a legal challenge plays out.

The near-total ban on abortion was set to take effect on 26 August. Abortion will remain legal as a lawsuit goes to trail.

Judge Bruce Romanick previously granted a temporary restraining order last month to freeze the law following a legal challenge on behalf of Fargo’s Red River Women’s Clinic – the last remaining abortion clinic in the state.

The clinic already has moved across state lines in Minnesota, where abortion access is protected.

“With today’s decision, the court rightfully recognized the harmful impacts this ban would have on North Dakotans,” according to Meetra Mehdizadeh, a staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is fighting the state’s anti-abortion law in court.

“This trigger law completely disregards the health care needs of pregnant people and punishes doctors for providing critical, life-saving services to their patients,” she said in a statement. “State lawmakers have been so hellbent on cutting off abortion access that they are trampling the North Dakota Constitution. We will continue to do everything we can to safeguard the rights of North Dakotans.”

Without legal access in North Dakota, patients would be forced to travel to neighbouring Minnesota or hundreds of miles out of state; abortion care is illegal in South Dakota following a “trigger” law in that state.

Earlier this month, Red River Women’s Clinic opened its location in Moorhead, Minnesota after it was forced to close its Fargo, North Dakota location under the state’s looming abortion ban.

“Abortion providers shouldn’t have to work this hard. Patients shouldn’t be faced with this,” clinic owner and director Tammi Kromenaker told The Independent. “And we’re just so grateful and humbled by the community outreach and support that we’ve had from both local and national and international.”

Ms Kromenaker has been associated with the clinic for 24 years.

After the US Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion care in its ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization on 24 June, 12 states have outlawed abortion entirely, eliminating access to abortion care for more than 20 million women and girls.

On 25 August, similar “trigger” bans designed to take effect without protections from Roe v Wade were in effect in Idaho, Texas and Tennessee, joining nine other states where abortion is effectively outlawed.

Laws in Louisiana and Mississippi also forced the closure of those states’ remaining clinics, leaving the two neighbouring Deep South states without abortion clinics for the first time in nearly 50 years.

More than 40 clinics in more than a dozen states closed in the months after the Supreme Court ruling.