North Dakota judge strikes down state abortion ban, rules it invalid
A judge struck down North Dakota’s abortion ban in a ruling Thursday, finding the law was vague, unconstitutional and infringed on medical freedoms.
South Central Judicial District Court Judge Bruce Romanick’s order was part of a lawsuit filed last year by reproductive health doctors and abortion clinics challenging the law.
Romanek’s ruling declared the law “unconstitutionally invalid because of ambiguity” and found that “pregnant women in North Dakota have a fundamental right to elect to have an abortion before viability exists.”
The ban, enacted by the Legislature in 2023, would make abortion illegal in all cases except in cases of rape or incest, if the mother is less than six weeks pregnant or if the pregnancy poses a serious risk to physical health .
The plaintiffs, who include reproductive health doctors and the Red River Women’s Clinic in Moorhead, Minn., said in the complaint that the law not only violates individual rights but also puts health care providers at risk by not specifying when abortions can be performed. .
Lawyers for the state have previously argued that the law is not ambiguous and was crafted with broad input from North Dakota’s medical community, including some of the plaintiffs.
Tammi Kromenaker, director of the Red River Women’s Clinic, said Thursday’s decision gives her hope.
“I feel like the courts heard our voices when we opposed a law that not only violated our state constitution but was too vague for doctors to interpret, preventing them from providing the high-quality care our community is entitled to,” ” Kromenak said.
The clinic was once the only abortion clinic in North Dakota but moved from Fargo to Minnesota after a previous abortion ban took effect.
The ban, which has overwhelming support in both chambers of the Republican-dominated Legislature, carries penalties of up to five years in prison and fines of up to $10,000 for any health care professional who violates the law.
The North Dakota Supreme Court last year struck down a similar abortion law passed by lawmakers in 2007.
The law, often called a “trigger ban,” takes effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the federal abortion right established in Roe v. Wade in 2022.
The state is expected to appeal Thursday’s decision.
Sen. Janne Myrdal, R-Edinburgh, the sponsor of the 2023 bill that would have created the ban, blasted the judge’s ruling Thursday. She said lawmakers have worked to resolve the legal issues the North Dakota Supreme Court found in triggering the ban.
The North Dakota Legislature will reconvene in 2025, but Myrdahl said the focus should be on defending the law passed in 2023.
“The losers today are unborn children and their parents, not any activists. There are no winners in this,” she said.
Romanik announced earlier this year he will retire And will not seek re-election in November. The former Burleigh County prosecutor was first elected in 2000 and re-elected in 2012 and 2018.
“Judge Romanik is retiring after a long career in which he made poor decisions on the most important cases he has ever handled,” Myrdahl told the North Dakota Observer.
North Dakota Democrats, meanwhile, called the ruling a “victory for women’s reproductive rights.”
“North Dakotans deserve the freedom to make deeply personal health care decisions without interference from extremists in their government,” Rep. Karla Rose Hanson, D-Fargo, said in a statement. The law is particularly cruel to victims of sexual violence – making exceptions for rape and incest, but only within six weeks, before most women know they are pregnant.
This article first appeared in North Dakota Ombudsmanis the Nebraska Examiner’s sister site in the national newsroom network.
