BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota’s highest court ruled Friday to keep the state’s overturned abortion ban from being enforced during an appeal of a decision by a judge that struck down the law in September.
Attorneys for the state had asked the North Dakota Supreme Court to grant a stay pending appeal. They said a stay “is warranted because this case presents serious, difficult, and unresolved constitutional questions that are of profound importance to the people of this State,” among other reasons.
State District Judge Bruce Romanick had earlier denied a requested stay, saying: “It would be non-sensical for this Court to keep a law it has found to be unconstitutional in effect pending appeal.” The Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents the abortion clinic and several physicians who challenged the law, opposed a stay.
The court heard oral arguments on the state's request for a stay in November.
The case has had a winding road since the Red River Women’s Clinic initially challenged the state’s previous abortion ban in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022.
In 2023, North Dakota’s Republican-controlled Legislature revised the state’s abortion laws. That law criminalized the performance of an abortion as a felony, with the only exceptions to save the life of a mother or to prevent a “serious health risk” to her. The ban also allowed for abortions in cases of rape or incest but only up to six weeks gestation, which is often before many women know they are pregnant. The plaintiffs said the law was unconstitutionally vague and its health exception too narrow.
North Dakota has had no abortion providers since the clinic moved from Fargo to neighboring Moorhead, Minnesota in 2022. The only scenarios in which North Dakotans can currently obtain an abortion in the state would be for life- or health-preserving reasons at a hospital.
Justice Douglas Bahr recused himself from the state's request for a stay. In an email to The Associated Press in which he cited the state judicial ethics code, Bahr said he represented the state as solicitor general in a previous Supreme Court case involving the clinic.
Jack Dura, The Associated Press
