Florida judge to hear arguments on state’s new abortion law

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Reproductive well being suppliers have requested a state court docket in Florida to dam a brand new legislation limiting abortion from taking impact on Friday, arguing that the state structure ensures a broad proper to privateness together with abortion.

Deliberate Parenthood is amongst these in search of a brief emergency injunction to cease the legislation authorised this yr by Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature and governor. A Florida synagogue additionally sued, saying the federal government intrusion violates the privateness rights and spiritual freedoms of Jewish girls.

A choose set a listening to for 9 a.m. Monday in Tallahassee, days after the U.S. Supreme Court docket dominated that abortion has no foundation within the U.S. Structure.

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Florida at the moment permits abortions as much as 24 weeks. The brand new legislation prohibits abortions past 15 weeks besides to save lots of the life or forestall bodily hurt to the pregnant girl, or in circumstances of a deadly fetal abnormality. It mirrors the Mississippi legislation that conservative justices used to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Violators may resist 5 years in jail. Physicians or different medical professionals may lose their licenses and face administrative fines of $10,000 for every violation.

“The ban is blatantly unconstitutional below the state structure,” the ACLU of Florida, which is representing the plaintiffs, mentioned in an announcement.

Florida voters in 1980 amended the state structure to ensure a broad proper of privateness, which incorporates the suitable to abortion, the abortion suppliers mentioned in court docket papers.

In 2012, Florida voters reaffirmed the suitable to privateness by rejecting a poll initiative that will have weakened its protections and would have prohibited state courts from decoding the Florida Structure to supply stronger safety for abortion than federal legislation, they mentioned.

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“Regardless of Florida’s historical past of defending the suitable to abortion, the Florida legislature just lately engaged in a brazen try to override the desire of the Florida individuals,” the abortion suppliers mentioned.

The state requested the choose to reject the request. In court docket papers, the state argued that abortion suppliers don’t have standing to make a declare of a private proper to privateness since they’re appearing as third events on behalf of their sufferers, and failed to indicate they may undergo “irreparable hurt” if the injunction isn’t granted.

“Medical doctors will not be irreparably harmed just because they can’t carry out a process prohibited by state legislation,” attorneys for the state of Florida mentioned.