Doctors may continue to perform abortions in Kosher for the next two weeks, a state judge ruled on Monday.
Third District Judge Andrew Stone granted a request from the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah to issue a temporary restraining order blocking the application of the Utah Act of Act. The order takes effect immediately and will last 14 days, Stone said in a virtual court hearing Monday afternoon.
“There is irreparable damage,” Stone said, which can be done without an order.
After announcing his decision, the judge said: “I think that the immediate consequences that will prevail outweigh all the political interests of the state to stop abortions immediately. Doctors here are threatened with serious crimes. Affected women are deprived of safe, local medical treatment to terminate the pregnancy. “
On Friday, the US Supreme Court overturned Rowe v. Wade, returning power to regulate abortion in the United States. That same evening, the Utah Abortion Act – passed by the Utah Legislature in 2020 as SB174 – went into effect.
The law prohibits abortions in the beehive state, except in these limited circumstances:
• If it is “necessary to prevent death” or if there is a “serious risk of significant and irreversible damage to a basic bodily function” of the pregnant woman.
• “Two doctors who practice maternal fetal medicine agree … that the fetus has a defect that is equally diagnosed and uniformly fatal,” or “has a severe brain abnormality that is equally diagnosed.” By law, this does not include Down syndrome, spina bifida, cerebral palsy, or any condition “that does not cause the individual to live in a mentally vegetative state.”
• The pregnancy was caused by rape or incest. Before performing an abortion, the doctor will need to check that the rape or incest has been reported to law enforcement or the relevant authorities.
The Utah Planned Parenthood Association filed a lawsuit in District Court on Saturday to try to block the triggering law, arguing it violates the rights given to the state of Utah in the state constitution. The organization requested an urgent hearing on Monday to respond to their request for a temporary restraining order, which the judge granted.
Carrie Galloway, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, said in a statement that the organization was “grateful” for the order to resume abortions.
“The Supreme Court’s decision has been devastating and appalling for our patients and providers, but at least for now, Utah residents will be able to get the care they need,” she said. “Today is a victory, but this is only the first step in what will undoubtedly be a long and difficult battle. Planned Parenthood will always stand by our patients and providers – no matter what. “
Following the Planned Parenthood decision, Utah resumed abortions Monday afternoon at its Metro Health Center, Salt Lake Health Center and Logan Health Center, Galloway said during a virtual news conference. (The organization stopped providing abortions when the trigger law went into effect Friday night.)
“And we will call back the women we had to refuse on Saturday so that they can return and have their procedure done, unless they have made other arrangements,” she said.
When Galloway went to announce the judge’s decision to people at Planned Parenthood’s Metro Health Center on Monday, she said, “There was a lot of relief in the room.”
“It would be an understatement to say we were on pins,” she said.
Planned Parenthood is available to help people with their abortions over the next two weeks, Galloway said, as well as help them get contraception.
“Anyone who has the ability to get pregnant should pay attention to their health care right now,” she said.
What happened at the hearing
After nearly half a century of people relying on access to safe, legal abortion, that right has been “changed,” Julie Murray, a lawyer with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said at Monday’s hearing.
Murray said Utah residents were “not only deprived of access to abortion” by the enacting law, “but also of their access to rights under the Utah constitution, to bodily integrity, to equal protection, to decide when and whether to create family, and their own rights to … conscience and not to be called for parenthood or pregnancy. “
Attorney Tyler Green, who represented the state, said he did not have time to present all of the state’s arguments because of how quickly the case developed. But Green pointed out that none of the sections of the Utah constitution that Planned Parenthood mentions in the lawsuit explicitly mentions the word “abortion.”
For example, Colorado passed a law earlier this year guaranteeing the right to abortion in the state code, Green said, until “nothing like it” appears in Utah law.
Murray opposed this in the constitution, “there are many things that are protected by the concept of equal rights, in due process for persons who are not explicitly mentioned by name in the constitution. And so I think, of course, that doesn’t rule out abortion coverage”
Green also argues that “the Supreme Court is clear that states have a strong interest in protecting the lives of their unborn citizens and the integrity and ethics of their medical professions. … and disposition or TRO [temporary restraining order] of the type sought here would inflict the same damage on the State as I think the plaintiffs are concerned to suffer without.
Murray pointed to three exceptions in Utah’s trigger law, “many of which have nothing to do with whether the fetus is likely to survive birth,” she said, “but instead are based on state moral policy, moral decisions about which women are worthy to have abortions and to control their own bodies and destinies and which women the state wants to express disapproval of their decision to terminate their pregnancies.
There are physical, emotional and financial difficulties that come with pregnancy, Murray says, and the longer one has to wait for an abortion, the more expensive it is and the harder it is to get.
Following the Supreme Court ruling on Friday, “several states across the country have banned abortions at once,” Murray said, “and effectively forced thousands of pregnant women across the country to cross state borders in search of a declining number of meetings.”
“And forcing Utah residents to add to this interstate travel,” she said, “if they could even raise money for it, it would put them in a position where if they ever manage to have an abortion, they will probably do it. at a much later time than they would if they could receive abortion care in their own communities. “
Murray said Planned Parenthood also plans to request a preliminary ban this week. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for July 11.
Sen. Dan McKay, R-Riverton, who sponsored the trigger law, said on Twitter Monday: “I am confident that the Utah abortion ban will be upheld and we can work to sustain life.”
I am confident that the Utah abortion ban will be upheld and we can work to sustain life.
– Daniel McKay (@danmccay) June 27, 2022
The lawsuit was filed for Planned Parenthood of Utah by attorneys from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Zimmerman Booher Law Firm in Salt Lake City, and the American Civil Liberties Union in Utah.
The defendants in the case are Utah State, Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, Gov. Spencer Cox, and Mark B. Steinagel, director of the Utah Professional and Professional Licensing Division.
A judge in Louisiana also temporarily blocked the implementation of the abortion ban in that country on Monday, according to the Associated Press.
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