Supreme Court’s abortion ruling sets off new court fights
Services have stopped in 11 states as of Saturday
NEW ORLEANS — The fall of Roe v. Wade shifted the battleground over abortion to courthouses around the country Monday, as one side sought quickly to put statewide bans into effect and the other tried to stop or at least delay such measures.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Friday to end constitutional protection for abortion opened the gates for a wave of litigation from all sides. Temporary delays were successful in Louisiana and Utah, after state judges issued orders Monday that blocked abortion bans in those states from going into effect, while a federal judge in South Carolina said a law restricting abortions after six weeks of pregnancy would take effect immediately there.
Much of Monday’s court activity focused on “trigger laws,” adopted in 13 states that were designed to take effect swiftly upon last week’s Supreme Court ruling. Additional lawsuits could also target old antiabortion laws that were left on the books and went unenforced under Roe. Newer abortion restrictions that were put on hold pending the Supreme Court ruling are also coming back into play.
“We’ll be back in court tomorrow and the next day and the next day,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which argued the case that resulted in the high court ruling, said Friday.
Rulings came swiftly in Utah and Louisiana. A Utah judge on Monday temporarily blocked that state’s neartotal abortion ban, after Planned Parenthood challenged a trigger law there that contains narrow exceptions. In Louisiana, a judge in New Orleans, a liberal city in a conservative state, temporarily blocked enforcement of the state’s trigger-law ban on abortion, after abortion rights activists argued that it is unclear.
The ruling is in effect pending a July 8 hearing.
At least one of the state’s three abortion clinics said it would resume performing procedures on Tuesday.
“We’re going to do what we can,” said Kathaleen Pittman, administrator of Hope Medical Group for Women, in Shreveport. “It could all come to a screeching halt.”
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican and staunch abortion opponent, vowed to fight the judge’s ruling and enforce the law.
“We would remind everyone that the laws that are now in place were enacted by the people through State Constitutional Amendments and the LA Legislature,” Landry tweeted Monday.
Also Monday, abortion rights advocates asked a Florida judge to block a new law there that bans the procedure after 15 weeks with some exceptions and is set to take effect this week.
A ruling on that is expected Thursday.
Abortion rights activists also went to court Monday to try to fend off restrictions in Texas, Idaho, Kentucky and Mississippi.
As of Saturday, abortion services had stopped in at least 11 states — either because of state laws or confusion over them.