Abortion rights advocates have celebrated courtroom victories blocking anti-abortion laws in three states, nearly three weeks after the US Supreme Court struck down a constitutional right to abortion care and handed the decision to individual states.
In Arizona, a federal judge on Monday blocked a state provision granting “personhood” rights to foetuses, embryos, and fertilised eggs.
A judge in Utah blocked the state’s so-called “trigger” law designed to take effect and outlaw abortion in the state without the constitutional backing from the decision in Roe v Wade, which the Supreme Court overturned on 24 June.
And in Minnesota, a judge struck down several state measures restricting access to abortion care, finding that state statutes requiring a mandatory 24-hour waiting period and that only physicians perform abortions, among other laws, violate the state’s constitution.
A decision in that case, which is likely to be appealed by opponents, expands abortion access in the state and in the Midwest, as providers brace for an influx of patients from neighbouring states as post-Roe anti-abortion laws take effect.
“With abortion bans in half the country set to take effect in the coming weeks and months, it is more important than ever to leverage protections in state constitutions like Minnesota’s,” Lawyering Project senior counsel Amanda Allen said in a statement. “There is no room for laws that require patients and providers to jump through hoops to access care or that rob people of their dignity. Today’s ruling brings us one step closer to a Minnesota where everyone can get an abortion without the government getting in the way.”
Following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, at least nine states – Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin – have outlawed abortion entirely in nearly all instances.
As many as 26 states could outlaw abortion without protections affirmed in the Roe v Wade decision, with state legislatures poised to draft more-restrictive laws without constitutional obligations under Roe.
Abortion rights advocates warned that the Arizona measure – which classified foetuses, embryos and fertilised eggs as “people” at the point of conception – would criminalise providers and put abortion patients at risk of prosecution under a host of laws, from child endangerment to assault.
Sheila Ogea, state coordinator for Arizona NOW, said in a statement that it “is outrageous and a perversion of the law for politicians to dictate that a zygote from the moment of conception is a person with full human rights under Arizona law, but a living, breathing, working, thinking, independent woman who is pregnant does not.”
“This cannot stand, and we are glad the court recognized that today by blocking this extreme law in the abortion context,” she said.
Minnesota’s Ramsey County Judge Thomas Gilligan ordered the state to stop enforcing anti-abortion mandates, pointing to a 1995 state Supreme Court ruling that determined the constitutional right to abortion in Minnesota.
The ruling blocks also blocks enforcement of a two-parent notification requirement for patients under 18 years old, as well as a law requiring abortions after the first trimester be performed in hospital.
“These abortion laws violate the right to privacy because they infringe upon the fundamental right under the Minnesota Constitution to access abortion care and do not withstand strict scrutiny,” Judge Gilligan wrote in the 140-page filing.
The decision on Monday follows more than three years of litigation from abortion rights advocates that challenged Minnesota’s restrictions.
US District Court Judge Andrew Stone of Utah said there would be “irreparable harm” without a preliminary injunction against the state’s trigger law.
“Women are going to be delaying treatment,” he said, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. “They’re going to obtain abortions through less accessible means. ... Some women will likely resort to unsafe and illegal methods, which involve risk to not only the woman, but obviously the ... potential life she’s carrying.”
His ruling freezes enforcement of the law until a legal challenge from Planned Parenthood can be formally heard.
The courtroom decisions on 11 July follow a wave of legal challenges and rulings in the wake of the Roe decision, as abortion rights advocates take the legal battle to preserve the right to abortion care to state-level courts, and state officials defend their myriad anti-abortion laws enacted without Roe’s 50-year-old protections no longer in place.
Last week, a Louisiana judge dissolved a temporary restraining order against the state’s anti-abortion laws as the legal challenge moves from New Orleans to Baton Rouge courts.
