TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AP) – A Florida judge said Thursday he will temporarily block a 15-week ban on abortion in his state, but his bank decision will not go into effect until the ban goes into law Friday. a problem that could lead to confusion for both patients and abortion providers.
Meanwhile, a Kentucky judge temporarily blocked the state’s near-total ban on abortions, allowing proceedings to resume after they abruptly stopped when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week.
The Florida and Kentucky cases reflect the battles being fought in courts across the country after the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was no longer protected by the federal constitution. The high court allowed states to decide whether abortion is legal within their borders, forcing lawyers on both sides of the debate to resort to their state constitutions.
Some of the legal disputes involve trigger laws, such as those in Kentucky and Florida, that were specifically designed to go into effect if Roe fell. Some involve bans that have been on the books, unenforced, for generations. Others involve abortion bans that were kept pending in the Roe ruling and are now moving forward.
In Florida, Judge John C. Cooper said Thursday he will temporarily block a 15-week abortion ban after reproductive health providers argued that the state constitution guarantees the right to the procedure. Cooper said the Florida ban was “unconstitutional because it violates the privacy provision of the Florida Constitution.”
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state would appeal.
Cooper’s decision, issued from the bench, will not be binding until he signs a written order, which looked like it wouldn’t happen until Tuesday. This means that the 15-week ban will take effect on Friday, as planned, and the time gap raises questions about whether some patients will be affected. Current Florida law allows abortion for up to 24 weeks.
Laura Goodhue, executive director of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, said the clinics were still seeing patients and would operate under the law, but the situation was difficult for doctors.
“There are a lot of unnecessary delays and patients are at the whim of the legal system right now,” he said.
The rise in judicial activity has also caused confusion in other states.
In Arizona, the attorney general said Wednesday that a total ban on abortion that has been in the books since before the statute can be enforced, although the governor disagrees and said which prioritizes a new law banning abortion after 15 weeks. Abortion providers in this state immediately stopped performing the procedure for fear of being prosecuted.
In Louisiana, where the abortion ban is temporarily blocked, doctors at a New Orleans clinic were conducting procedures Thursday, despite a letter from the attorney general warning that providers could lose their “medical freedom and license.” said Amy Irvin, a spokeswoman for the Women’s Health Care Center.
And in West Virginia, Gov. Jim Justice said Thursday he will convene a special legislative session to address abortion law. West Virginia bans abortion after 20 weeks, but the state also has a law dating back to the mid-1800s that requires anyone requesting an abortion to be charged with a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. . The local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is challenging it.
In Kentucky, Thursday’s ruling allowed abortions to resume after they ended abruptly last week.
Amber Duke, interim executive director of the Kentucky ACLU, urged women seeking an abortion to call the two Louisville clinics, noting that one of them, the EMW Women’s Surgical Center, plans to resume abortion services Friday. Duke said some women who scheduled appointments outside of Kentucky because of the ban could get the procedure in the state, at least for now.
He said as of Friday, EMW had rejected 199 patients with scheduled appointments, including 14 who were in the clinic when the Supreme Court issued its decision. He said denying them care was “devastating.”
The ACLU and Planned Parenthood issued a joint statement saying they were happy to block “cruel abortion bans,” adding that since last week’s ruling, “many Kentuckians have been forced to carry out pregnancies against their will or to flee their state of origin in search of essential products “. care. “
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Republican candidate for governor, said Thursday’s ruling had no basis in the state constitution and that he intends to challenge it “to ensure that unborn life is protected in the Commonwealth “.
In addition to blocking the near-total ban, Kentucky Judge Mitch Perry also blocked a law that sought to prevent abortion at six weeks of pregnancy. This measure was previously stopped by a federal court. Abortion clinics said in their lawsuit that women were being “forced to become pregnant against their will” in violation of the state constitution.
The Kentucky measure contains a limited exception that allows a physician to perform a necessary procedure to prevent the death or permanent injury of a pregnant woman. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, denounced the state’s trigger law as “extremist,” noting that he has no exceptions to rape and incest.
Florida law contains exceptions if the procedure is necessary to save the pregnant person’s life, prevent serious injury, or if the fetus has a fatal abnormality. It does not allow exceptions in cases of rape, incest or human trafficking.
Reproductive health care providers challenged the law based on a 1980 state constitutional amendment guaranteeing a broad right to privacy, which has been interpreted by the state Supreme Court as including abortion. The state said the right to privacy does not include the rights to abortion, arguing that the state has an interest in safeguarding health and protecting potential life.
In a statement, DeSantis said the Florida Supreme Court previously misinterpreted Florida’s right to privacy “because the Florida Constitution does not include – and has never included – the right to kill an innocent unborn child.”
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Forliti reported from Minneapolis. Schreiner reported from Louisville, Kentucky.
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