Lawyers advocate delaying North Dakota’s abortion ban law | National

Burleigh County Circuit Judge Bruce Romanick said he will rule on the motion by the end of next week. He did not say how they would handle the lawsuit.

Romanick delayed the ban last month when he ruled that Attorney General Drew Wrigley had set a July 28 closing date prematurely. The judge issued a temporary restraining order, which he actually gave to the Fargo clinic transition time to a new location in nearby Moorhead, Minnesota, where abortion remains legal even as they seek to block the ban.

The clinic has been operating at the new location for two weeks.

The clinic’s lawsuit claims that the state constitution’s guarantees of the rights to life, liberty, security and happiness effectively guarantee the right to an abortion. Lauren Bernstein, an attorney for the clinic, said the ban would not only violate the constitution but also take away 50 years of access to abortion in the state.

“The stakes really couldn’t be higher,” Bernstein said during the 45-minute hearing.

Matthew Sagswin, the state’s attorney, told a mostly empty courtroom in Bismarck that there is no basic abortion right “expressed or implied” in the state constitution.

In 2007, the North Dakota Legislature passed a law to kick in if the U.S. Supreme Court ever overturns its 1973 ruling establishing nationwide abortion rights. The High Court did so in June.

The ban would trigger laws that would make abortion illegal in the state, except in cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother, which must be proven in court. Otherwise, the doctor who performs the abortion faces a criminal offense.

Whether North Dakota’s constitution protects abortion rights has already been litigated by state courts. A Cass County judge ruled that a 2011 law aimed at regulating medical abortions was unconstitutional, saying it essentially eliminated the procedure and unlawfully limited abortion rights.

The case went to the state Supreme Court, where in 2014 two justices ruled that the North Dakota Constitution did not protect abortion rights, two said it did, and one said it was not within their jurisdiction. It takes four judges to declare a law unconstitutional, so the lower court’s ruling was overturned.

Before the Romanik decision, Steve Morrison, a professor at the University of North Dakota and an expert on abortion law, said he was skeptical that the Supreme Court “or any district court judge in North Dakota is going to … start reading into the state constitution a right to abortion “.

A GoFundMe page set up to pay for the Red River Clinic’s move has raised $1 million in the weeks since Roe’s reversal.

Kolpack reported from Fargo, North Dakota.