Fargo clinic files lawsuit challenging North Dakota abortion ban

BISMARCK — North Dakota’s solely abortion clinic has filed a lawsuit towards the state over a ban on the process because of take impact later this month.

The Pink River Girls’s Clinic in Fargo introduced Thursday, July 7, it had filed a authorized problem to North Dakota’s ban on abortion, which Republican Lawyer Common Drew Wrigley has mentioned

will turn into lively July 28.

In 2007, the North Dakota Legislature handed a “set off” invoice sponsored by former Democratic Rep. James Kerzman that may ban abortion within the state inside 30 days if the U.S. Supreme Court docket overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade determination.

Wrigley set off the 30-day countdown final month by certifying that the excessive court docket allowed states to ban abortion in its

Dobbs v. Jackson Girls’s Well being Group determination.

Filed by Bismarck lawyer Tom Dickson and attorneys from the Middle for Reproductive Rights,

the clinic’s lawsuit

alleges the abortion ban would infringe on North Dakotans’ rights to life, liberty, security and happiness assured by the state structure.

The 19-page lawsuit additionally disputes the efficient date of the set off regulation, arguing that whereas the Supreme Court docket issued an opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, it has not issued a proper judgment to a decrease court docket — a step that takes 25 days or extra. The grievance says Wrigley jumped the gun by requiring the clinic to shut earlier than the judgment comes out.

The lawsuit asks a district court docket choose to chill the ban’s efficient date and to dam the ban from taking impact in any respect.

Wrigley didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

Earlier this week, a

Mississippi court docket declined to dam

the state’s near-total abortion ban from taking impact.

Pink River Girls’s Clinic Director Tammi Kromenaker mentioned North Dakotans “deserve the fitting to entry important well being care” like abortion.

“Now we have confronted relentless assaults from North Dakota lawmakers who’ve lengthy needed us gone. However we are going to battle this draconian ban like the opposite outrageous bans and restrictions that got here earlier than it,” Kromenaker mentioned in a press release.

With the ban looming, she mentioned the clinic plans to

transfer over the Minnesota border to Moorhead

the place the process is more likely to stay authorized. The clinic has obtained greater than

$900,000 in donations

by way of a web based fundraiser for the reason that Supreme Court docket’s determination.

The state’s abortion prohibition would make it a Class C felony for anybody to carry out an abortion, until a pregnant feminine performs an abortion on herself. A Class C felony is punishable by as much as 5 years in jail and a $10,000 tremendous.

Performing an abortion would nonetheless be allowed if the mom’s life is at risk and in instances of rape or incest.

The Fargo clinic

carried out 1,171 abortions in 2020,

together with

833 on North Dakota residents.

A dozen different states have comparable set off legal guidelines, together with South Dakota, Texas, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming.

The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion rights analysis group,

estimated a complete of 26 states

are “sure or seemingly” to ban abortion after the Supreme Court docket overturned Roe v. Wade.