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    28Jun, 2023
    Abortion rights groups drop suit challenging Kentucky’s ban but continue legal fight

    LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Abortion-rights groups filed a court motion Tuesday to dismiss their lawsuit challenging Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban but signaled that the legal fight is far from over.

    The groups’ strategy will focus on the next legal challenge expected to come from pregnant women who were denied abortion services in Kentucky.

    “We will be back in court when we have a patient plaintiff,” Tamarra Wieder, Kentucky state director for Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, said in a statement.

    The current suit was filed by attorneys for the only two abortion clinics left in Kentucky when the state’s ban on the procedure took effect following the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

    The plaintiffs in the Kentucky suit failed to get abortion access restored in a February ruling by Kentucky’s Supreme Court that focused on narrow legal issues. The justices didn’t resolve larger constitutional questions about whether access to abortion should be legal in the Bluegrass State.

    Abortion providers challenged the ban on the premise that it violated patients’ constitutional rights, but the state’s high court ruled that the providers lacked the “third-party standing” to do so. The justices sent the case back to a circuit court in Louisville.

    Last year, Kentucky voters rejected a ballot measure that would have denied any constitutional protections for abortion, handing a victory to abortion-rights supporters.

    The outcome highlighted what appeared to be a gap between voter sentiment and the expectations of Kentucky’s GOP-dominated Legislature.

    The legal challenge brought by the Louisville abortion providers revolves around Kentucky’s near-total trigger law ban and a separate six-week ban — both passed by the state’s Legislature. The trigger law was passed in 2019 and took effect when Roe v. Wade was overturned. It bans abortions except when they’re carried out to save the life

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    14Oct, 2022
    Abortions in Arizona and Ohio are legal after separate court rulings

    Abortions in both Arizona and Ohio are legal once again after two separate rulings in court on Friday.

    At the Arizona Court of Appeals, a three-judge panel sided with Planned Parenthood on Friday, which argued that Pima County Court Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson shouldn’t have lifted an injunction that prevented a pre-statehood law that bans abortions in all circumstances, except if the mother’s life is in danger.

    In Ohio, Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Christian Jenkins issued a preliminary injunction that blocks the state’s heartbeat bill, which bans abortions when a “fetal heartbeat” is detected, which could be as early as six weeks.

    After Roe v. Wade was overturned, the law was put into effect, but was then paused. 

    SELF-PROCLAIMED ‘PRO-CHOICE PASTOR’ DEMOCRAT SEN. WARNOCK WON’T SAY IF HE SUPPORTS ANY LIMITS ON ABORTION

    Abortion-rights supporters chant their objections at the Kentucky Capitol on Wednesday, April 13, 2022, in Frankfort, Ky.

    Abortion-rights supporters chant their objections at the Kentucky Capitol on Wednesday, April 13, 2022, in Frankfort, Ky.
    (AP Photo/Bruce Schreiner, File)

    Lawyers in the Arizona Attorney General’s office didn’t argue that the 15-week abortion law passed in March should nullify the pre-statehood abortion law. But they requested Johnson offer them relief from an injunction blocking them from enforcing the abortion ban. 

    Johnson granted the attorney general‘s request last month, but the court on Friday put the injunction back in place while Planned Parenthood attempts to appeal Johnson’s ruling. 

    President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement that the organization welcomes the order allowing abortions to resume.

    “Today’s decision provides a desperately needed sense of security for both our patients and providers,” McGill Johnson said. “We can now breathe a sigh of relief and serve patients. While the fight isn’t over, for now, Arizonans will once again be able to make their own decisions about their bodies,

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    26Sep, 2022
    Arizona ban on nearly all abortions in effect, judge rules

    An Arizona law that bans abortions in nearly all circumstances can again be enforced after a Pima County judge lifted an injunction that had left the pre-statehood law dormant for nearly five decades.

    That decision Friday was immediately praised by abortion foes and lamented by abortion rights advocates — and it stands to be a potentially galvanizing force just ahead of November’s midterm elections.

    Republican state Attorney General Mark Brnovich asked the court to rule on the injunction after the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned Roe v. Wade, a 1973 decision that legalized abortion across the country. 

    The court’s decision earlier this year, in the Mississippi case called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, put the question of abortion policy back in the hands of states.

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    Arizona had conflicting laws on the books, leading to the court challenge and confusion among abortion providers about what was legal.

    The Friday ruling by Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson provides clarity in allowing enforcement of the old law, which bans abortions in all cases except when necessary to save the pregnant person’s life. 

    But abortion rights advocates are likely to appeal, meaning the state of abortion law in Arizona is still far from settled. Providers expressed shock, outrage and enduring confusion over the ruling, which came a day before another abortion law was set to go into effect.

    Abortion in Indiana:Judge temporarily blocks state’s near-total abortion ban, one week after it took effect

    “Today’s ruling by the Pima County Superior Court has the practical and deplorable result of sending Arizonans back nearly 150 years,” Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Arizona,

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    14Jul, 2022
    Biden issues order on abortion rights along with call to action by voters – Cronkite News

    Protesters react to the Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned the right to an abortion. President Joe Biden called that ruling “wrong-headed” Friday as he signed an executive order designed to blunt the ruling’s effect. (File photo by Neetish Basnet/Cronkite News)

    WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden issued an executive order Friday aimed at protecting abortion access, even as he called on voters to turn out this fall and “reclaim the rights … taken from them” by the Supreme Court.

    A sometimes-emotional Biden attacked the court’s “wrong-headed” decision two weeks ago to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that recognized a right to an abortion. He said the court’s reasoning in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health was “just wrong,” and “frozen in time in the 1860s, when women didn’t even have the right to vote.”

    “That wasn’t about the Constitution or the law,” Biden said. “It was about a deep, long-seething antipathy towards Roe and the broader right to privacy.”

    That ruling has already led to abortion being outlawed in a dozen states with lawmakers in many more – including Arizona – taking steps to make abortion illegal. Biden said the fastest way to restore Roe would be to elect lawmakers who will codify the right to an abortion, a bill he would “sign immediately upon its passage.”

    “This fall, Roe is on the ballot. Personal freedoms are on the ballot. The right to privacy, liberty, equality, they’re all on the ballot,” said Biden, adding that the ruling in Dobbs “practically dares the women of America to go to the ballot box and restore the very rights they’ve just taken away.”

    Related story

    Arizona lawmakers this year approved a law that would ban abortions after 15 weeks – the previous threshold was about 26 weeks – but even that is now

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