Utah judge blocks state’s sweeping new abortion ban
By Brendan Pierson
(Reuters) -A state courtroom choose in Utah on Monday blocked a sweeping new abortion ban from taking impact following the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s ruling final month eliminating the almost 50-year-old constitutional proper to abortion.
Decide Andrew Stone of the Third Judicial District Court docket for Salt Lake Metropolis dominated at a listening to that the ban, which prohibited abortion at any level throughout being pregnant with some exceptions, should stay on maintain whereas Deliberate Parenthood pursues a authorized problem.
“While you’re speaking a couple of seismic change in girls’s well being remedy, it is prudent to look earlier than you leap,” Stone mentioned.
A spokesperson for the workplace of Utah Lawyer Normal Sean Reyes declined to remark.
Deliberate Parenthood had sued the state on June 25, the day after the abortion ban initially took impact, arguing that the legislation violated rights to bodily integrity and privateness acknowledged by Utah’s structure. Stone on June 27 quickly blocked the legislation till he may hear arguments on it.
Julie Murray, a lawyer for Deliberate Parenthood, mentioned at Monday’s argument that and not using a courtroom order preserving abortion rights in Utah in the course of the lawsuit, hundreds of Utahns can be disadvantaged of crucial abortion providers.
“The state has produced no proof to rebut the wide-ranging harms that the ban will trigger,” she mentioned.
Tyler Inexperienced, a lawyer for the state, mentioned the unique that means of the state structure didn’t embrace any proper to abortion.
“The legislature could make choices because it sees match … so long as it is not infringing on a constitutional proper,” he mentioned.
Utah was one in every of 13 states that imposed a right away ban on abortions beneath a so-called “set off legislation.” Such legal guidelines have been designed to take impact when the Supreme Court docket overruled its 1973 precedent in Roe v. Wade recognizing a constitutional proper to abortion, which it did on June 24. Underneath the legislation, well being care suppliers face arrest and legal fines for offering abortions.
About half of U.S. states are finally anticipated to limit or ban abortion after the Supreme Court docket’s determination. Many have confronted authorized challenges, however most of these have been unsuccessful, with courts permitting new legal guidelines to take impact in states together with Mississippi, Texas and Florida.
Utah’s ban included exceptions if the mom was susceptible to demise or everlasting harm and for extreme fetal abnormalities. It additionally included an exception in instances of rape or incest, however provided that they’re reported to the police.
(Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York, Enhancing by Rosalba O’Brien, Jonathan Oatis and Josie Kao)
