Judge Overturns North Dakota Law Protecting Unborn, Claims Abortion Is a ‘Fundamental Right’

A North Dakota judge overturned the state’s abortion restriction on Thursday, ruling that it violates the State Constitution and women’s alleged “fundamental right” to abortion.

Burleigh County District Judge Bruce Romanick ruled that the state’s abortion law, which went into effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in its 2022 Dobbs decision, violates due process protections under North Dakota’s State Constitution.

Romanick wrote:

The North Dakota Constitution guarantees each individual, including women, the fundamental right to make medical judgments affecting his or her bodily integrity, health and autonomy, in consultation with a chosen health care provider free from government interference.

“Unborn human life, pre-viability, is not a sufficient justification to interfere with a woman’s fundamental right,” Romanick continued. “Criminalizing pre-viability abortions is not necessary to promote the State’s interests in women’s health and protecting unborn human life.”

The state’s law restricted abortions at all stages of pregnancy except for rape and incest at less than six weeks or if the woman’s life or physical health were seriously at risk. Healthcare workers who violated the law faced up to five years behind bars and a maximum fine of $10,000.

Romanick added:

[P]regnant women in North Dakota have a fundamental right to choose abortion before viability exists under the enumerated and unenumerated interests protected by the North Dakota Constitution for all North Dakota individuals, including women — specifically, but not necessarily limited to, the interests in life, liberty, safety, and happiness enumerated in…the North Dakota Constitution.

An abortion clinic that used to operate in the state, called The Red River Women’s Clinic, filed the lawsuit before the state’s abortion restriction took effect. North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley, the lead defendant in the case, has promised to appeal the ruling, USA Today reported.

“Judge Romanick’s opinion inappropriately casts aside the law crafted by the legislative branch of our government and ignores the applicable and controlling case law previously announced by the North Dakota Supreme Court,” Wrigley said.

While the order makes abortion legal in the state again, there are no remaining abortion clinics in North Dakota, according to the report. However, The Red River Clinic moved to Minnesota and is a five-minute drive from its previous location in North Dakota.

“We are very pleased with the decision today,” clinic Director Tammi Koremenaker said. “It gives us hope. We feel like the court heard us.”

The sponsor of the abortion restriction, State Sen. Janne Myrdal, told the North Dakota Monitor that the ruling puts many unborn babies at risk.

“The losers today are the unborn children and their moms and dads, not any activists. There’s no winner in this,” she said. “Judge Romanick will go into his retirement after a long career having made the wrong decision on the most important case he’s ever had.”

The case is Access Independent Health Services, Inc. v. Wrigley, No. 08-2022-cv-1608 in the North Dakota District Court of the South Central Judicial District.