GREENSBORO, N.C. — The judge deciding whether North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban can immediately go into effect said she’ll likely make a decision by Friday, one day before the new law is set to take effect.
Regardless, U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles said she would not strike down the entire law as doing so would be “over-broad relief.”
Eagles questioned lawyers for Planned Parenthood and GOP legislative leaders for more than two hours on Wednesday, focusing on a series of last-minute changes to the law that Republican lawmakers fast-tracked through the General Assembly and sent to Gov. Roy Cooper’s desk on Tuesday.
Eagles indicated during Wednesday’s hearing that she was waiting in part to see if Cooper, a Democrat, would sign the changes into law. Cooper has 10 days to take action on a bill after receiving it from the legislature. If he blocks the revisions, Republicans have said they’ll move to override his veto. However, Ellis Boyle, the lawyer representing GOP legislative leaders, indicated that such an override could take two to four weeks since the legislative session is nearing an end.
The flurry of action comes days before the law is scheduled to go into effect on Saturday.
“I’ve signed a lot of injunctions in my life, almost 30 and a half years,” Eagles said. “But this is kind of complicated, and it’s got a lot of numbers in it.”
Lawyers navigate new amendments on abortion bill
The plaintiffs, made up largely of lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, argued that several provisions in the 12-week abortion law were “vague” and “irrational.” The defendants, primarily led by Boyle, argued that the last-minute changes to the law sufficiently resolved the law’s issues.
“These are certainly problems with a very simple solution: one signature,” Boyle said.
Both the plaintiffs and defendants agreed that the N.C. legislature’s new changes would remedy several issues with the bill. Those deal with:
—A 72-hour waiting mandate for getting an abortion after receiving medical counseling.
—A 10- or 12-week discrepancy on when a physician can perform a medical abortion.
—A three-day reporting requirement for doctors after performing an abortion.
Despite the new amendments, a few provisions were still disputed between the two sides, such as a provision that could be interpreted to restrict people from advising about legal abortions outside of the state.
Brigitte Amiri, a lawyer with the ACLU, pushed for Eagles to consider blocking the law. Amiri said even with the legislative changes, there is “still chaos and havoc providers face trying to comply.”
“SB 20 was hastily passed, it passed it in about 72 hours or less and there are just clear, unconstitutional provisions,” Peter Im, an attorney representing Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, told reporters after the hearing. “The law is vague; it’s internally inconsistent.”
Boyle, on the other hand, said blocking the law would be an “extraordinary measure,” and one that “should not be given lightly.” He also pointed out that the plaintiffs had waited to submit their lawsuit until weeks after the bill was passed, which contributed to the dicey timing of blocking the law before July 1.
Lawyers with Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein’s office attended the hearing on his behalf, led by Deputy Attorney General Sarah Boyce. Despite representing defendants, Boyce voiced support throughout the hearing for the judge temporarily blocking some parts of the law.
Eagles told the parties to the case that it’s a “different world than it was a year ago,” with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade giving state legislatures more power on the issue of abortion.
After parsing the changes to the bill at length, Eagles put her head in her hands and sighed.
“It’s a miracle we haven’t had more confusion today,” Eagles joked.
Stein not defending parts of abortion law
Eagles allowed GOP legislative leaders Phil Berger and Tim Moore to join the case to defend the abortion law, after Stein, who was named as the main defendant in the suit, announced his office would not defend parts of the law he believed were unconstitutional.
Berger and Moore filed a motion asking to intervene on June 22, hours after Stein’s announcement that he wouldn’t defend the law, which itself came hours after Eagles scheduled Wednesday’s hearing, the first in the case.
In a court filing Tuesday, Stein explained why he thought the provisions of the law challenged by Planned Parenthood should be blocked.
He said the 46-page law was “riddled with incoherence and uncertainty,” and contained provisions that imposed “contradictory obligations” on doctors, or cross-referenced laws that have been repealed.
“The upshot is that doctors in North Carolina simply do not know what they can and cannot do without risking criminal liability,” Stein argued.
In making the argument that the law isn’t clear enough to be enforced, Stein pointed to last-minute changes the General Assembly proposed to the law this week, ahead of Wednesday’s hearing.
Those changes include a key clarification from GOP lawmakers on the question of medication abortion.
Republicans said last week the bill’s intent was to prohibit medication abortions after 12 weeks, and that was why they introduced an amended bill that would, among other revisions, strike language in the abortion law that said physicians had to verify the gestational age was no more than 10 weeks.
The seemingly contradictory rules were among the provisions of the law Planned Parenthood cited in its lawsuit as evidence for why the law needed to be blocked.
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