A North Dakota judge has overturned the state's abortion ban, ruling that the state's constitution protects a woman's right to the procedure until the fetus is viable.
Judge Bruce Romanick said in his ruling that the ban was too vague and therefore "unconstitutionally void." He also asserted that the statutes "at issue in this case infringe on a woman's fundamental right to procreative autonomy and are not narrowly tailored to promote women's health or to protect unborn human life."
The Republican-led state's attorney general has promised to appeal the judge's ruling.
The North Dakota abortion ban had made abortion available for rape and incest cases, if the mother had been pregnant for less than six weeks or if the pregnancy presented a health risk to the mother.
State Representative Karla Rose Hanson said in a statement that the abortion law "was especially cruel for victims of sexual violence — providing a rape and incest exception but only within six weeks, before most women know they're pregnant."
Romanick's ruling is not expected to have much immediate impact on the ability of North Dakota women to access abortions within the state, as there are currently no medical facilities in the state providing the procedures.
The state's lone abortion facility, the Red River Women's Clinic, moved out of state in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which allowed individual states to ban abortions. It relocated to nearby Moorhead, Minnesota.
Tammi Kromenaker, the clinic's director, told The Associated Press that there are no immediate plans for the clinic to move back to North Dakota but added that the judge's ruling "gives us hope."
State Senator Janne Myrdal told the North Dakota Monitor that "the losers today are the unborn children and their moms and dads, not any activists. There's no winner in this." Myrdal sponsored the bill that created the ban.
Meanwhile, North Dakota's Democratic-NPL Party told the Monitor that Romanick's ruling was a "victory for women's reproductive rights."
(VOA/GP)