Judge Donald Johnson’s order temporarily halts the enforcement while lawyers for a north Louisiana clinic and other abortion rights advocates pursue a lawsuit challenging the law. Johnson set a hearing for next Monday. State Attorney General Jeff Landry criticized the decision in a series of tweets. “For the judiciary to create a legal circus is disappointing,” Landry wrote in a post. “The rule of law must be upheld and I will not rest until it is. Unfortunately, we will have to wait a little longer for that to happen,” he added. Kathaleen Pittman, director of the north Louisiana clinic that was the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, expressed relief in a phone interview. Pittman said the Hope Medical Group for Women clinic in Shreveport is ready to resume counseling and abortions. Louisiana’s other two clinics are in the capital city of Baton Rouge and New Orleans. “We look forward to arguing for a preliminary injunction before Judge Johnson next Monday and, in the meantime, take solace in the fact that critical health care for women has been restored to the state of Louisiana,” Joanna Wright, an attorney for the clinic. , he said in an email. The lawsuit originated in New Orleans, where a judge issued a temporary injunction blocking the execution on June 27, just three days after the US Supreme Court overturned its 1973 ruling establishing abortion rights nationwide. But a second New Orleans judge sent the case to Baton Rouge on Friday, saying state law required it to be heard in the capital. Judge Ethel Julien then said that because the case was no longer to be heard in her court, she did not have the authority to extend the temporary ban on law enforcement. Before Johnson’s decision, which was dated Monday, July 11, Landry’s lawyers had argued in a filing in Baton Rouge that the temporary ban could not be renewed once it expired. Louisiana’s law includes “trigger language” that made it effective when the Supreme Court overturned abortion rights. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit do not deny that the state can now ban abortions as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision, but say the current state law is unconstitutionally vague. They argue that Louisiana now has multiple, conflicting triggering mechanisms in the law. They also argue that state law is unclear about whether it prohibits abortion before a fertilized egg is implanted in the uterus. And while the law provides an exception for “medically futile” pregnancies in cases of fetuses with fatal abnormalities, the plaintiffs note that it does not define the term and that state health officials have not yet provided a list of qualifying conditions. The lawsuit claims state law is unclear about when the ban goes into effect and medical exemptions to it.
Associated Press writer Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana contributed to this report.
