With North Dakota Abortion Ban in Effect, 17 States Now Protect Babies From Abortions

The North Dakota Supreme Court has upheld Senate Bill 2150, a near total victory for pro-life forces. Fridays 3-2 decision rejected Judge Bruce Romanick who had ruled that the law was unconstitutional in September 2024.

The law takes effect immediately.

Ingrid Duran, NRL’s Director of State Legislation, celebrated the decision, and said the bill “protects unborn children throughout gestation from abortion, except to prevent the death of the mother as well as other exceptions.”

Attorney General Drew Wrigley also praised the court’s decision in Access Independent Health Services, Inc., et al v. Drew H. Wrigley et al as an affirmation of the people’s will.

“The Supreme Court has upheld this important pro-life legislation, enacted by the people’s Legislature,” Wrigley said. “The Attorney General’s office has the solemn responsibility of defending the laws of North Dakota, and today those laws have been upheld.”

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State Sen. Janne Myrdal introduced the 2023 legislation. She said she is “thrilled and grateful that two justices that are highly respected saw the truth of the matter, that this is fully constitutional for the mother and for the unborn child and thereafter for that sake.”

Three of the five justices who heard the case—Daniel Crothers, Lisa Fair McEvers and Daniel Narum—found the law unconstitutional. However, North Dakota requires a supermajority of the court (four votes) to strike down a law on constitutional grounds.

Chief Justice Jon Jensen and Justice Jerod Tufte agreed the law was constitutional.

Mary Steurer wrote that Tufte and Jensen concluded

that in order to demonstrate the law is vague, the plaintiffs should have provided evidence of it being enforced unequally. Instead, the plaintiffs were basing their case on “hypothetical future conduct” instead of reality, they wrote.

“The serious health risk exception does not present a clear answer to every imaginable situation,” Tufte and Jensen wrote. “No statute can. This statute provides minimum guidelines to avoid arbitrary and discriminatory.”

Background

On April 23, 2023, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum signed Senate Bill 2150, a bill which sped through the House 76-14 and the Senate 42-5.

That prompted State Sen. Myrdal to tell reporters, “North Dakota has always been pro-life and believed in valuing the moms and children both,” adding “We’re pretty happy and grateful that the governor stands with that value.”

However, The Red River Women’s Clinic [RRWC], the state’s lone abortion clinic which had moved from Fargo to neighboring Moorhead, Minnesota, in 2022, sued attorney General Wrigley in July 2023 to prevent the protective law from taking effect.

In October 2023 Judge Romanick rejected a request from Attorney General Wrigley to allow the 2007 law take effect while the lawsuit went forward. In September 2024 he struck down the law and the state appealed.

On November 21, 2024, North Dakota Solicitor General Phil Axt outlined for the state’s highest court where Judge Romanick’s “legal analysis went wrong.”

Axt “argued the district court has ‘lost sight’ of the state’s interest in preserving life and said there is nowhere in the North Dakota Constitution that guarantees the right to an abortion.”

Axt told the court “It’s been clear since our territorial days that in order to justify killing another human being, there must be a threat of death or serious bodily injury.”

The Supreme Court agreed that the law should not take effect while the legislation worked its way up and down the legal chain. Chief Justice Jensen and Justice Tufte dissented from the stay.

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. He frequently writes Today’s News and Views — an online opinion column on pro-life issues.