If Roe falls, some DAS won’t enforce anti-abortion laws

NASHVILLE, TENN. » As the Supreme Court appears on track to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, progressive prosecutors around the U.S. are declaring they won’t enforce some of the most restrictive and punitive antiabortion laws that Gop-led states have waited years to implement.

The move is sure to rankle Republican lawmakers and governors, with about half the states poised to ban abortion if Roe v. Wade — the 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion — is weakened or overturned. Many of those Republican-led states have abortion clinics nestled in the large metro areas represented by Democratic district attorneys.

Anti-abortion laws in the U.S. largely shy away from explicitly punishing pregnant women and instead tend to target physicians, who could face loss of their medical license and lengthy prison sentences for performing the procedure illegally. But some abortion restrictions would penalize those who assist in an abortion and others could require women who secured the procedure to testify against those who helped her.

Yet enforcement of these laws will fall largely onto the shoulders of district attorneys, who wield wide discretion over whom to charge with crimes. Currently, it’s not unusual for prosecutors elected in Democratic counties to voice their resistance to bringing charges under various Gop-backed mandates— ranging from voting restrictions, limits on certain protest activity, laws aimed at LGBTQ people, and restrictions on mask requirements throughout the COVID-19 outbreak.

In 2020, more than 70 prosecutors from blue districts around the country publicized that they wouldn’t bring charges under increasingly stringent laws that states have passed against abortion because they “should not and will not criminalize healthcare decisions.”

And so far, a growing number of prosecutors elected in Democratic counties are promising they won’t pursue the criminal charges that have been tucked inside the harshest of abortion restrictions.

Michigan has become a particular battleground over who will enforce the state’s abortion laws. Seven Democratic prosecutors there have vowed they won’t enforce the state’s long-dormant ban on the procedure, while two Republican prosecutors have joined abortion opponents in seeking to overturn the recent suspension of the 1931 statute.

The law, which makes it a crime to assist in an abortion, has had no practical effect for decades since abortion was legalized nationwide.