ND high court asked to lift injunction against abortion ban
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — An attorney for North Dakota asked the state Supreme Court on Tuesday to strike down an injunction blocking the state’s abortion ban, saying a lower court judge was wrong to grant it.
Matthew Sagsveen, an attorney for the state, told justices that Burleigh County District Judge Bruce Romanick “misconstrued the law” by granting the injunction.
Romanick’s ruling in October means abortion is still legal in North Dakota, though the state’s only clinic — the Red River Women’s Clinic of Fargo — shut down as it challenged the ban and has moved across the border to neighboring Minnesota.
Romanick had said that the Red River Women’s Clinic had a “substantial probability” of succeeding in its lawsuit, but also said there’s no “clear and obvious answer” on whether the state constitution protects a right to abortion.
Sagsveen told the five justices that it doesn’t.
“Abortion isn’t a fundamental right protected by the constitution,” he argued.
A 2007 state law — one of numerous abortion-restriction measures crafted by state legislatures to take effect if the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — makes it a felony to perform an abortion unless necessary to prevent the woman’s death or in cases of rape or incest. Violations are punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
The Red River clinic filed its lawsuit to block the measure shortly after the high court in June overturned Roe v. Wade, the ruling that protected the right to abortion for nearly five decades.
Meetra Mehdizadeh, staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, a New York-based abortion rights advocacy group that is representing the clinic, said North Dakota’s law is “one of the most extreme and dangerous laws in the...
