On Saturday, a federal judge temporarily halted two provisions of North Carolina’s new abortion law. However, almost none of the limits passed by the legislature this year are being formally challenged and hence remain in place.
U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles issued an order staying enforcement of a provision requiring hospitals rather than abortion clinics to perform surgical abortions after 12 weeks, such as in cases of rape and incest. Otherwise, the restriction would have kicked in on Sunday.
In the same interim injunction, Eagles ruled that a requirement requiring doctors to document the existence of a pregnancy within the uterus before providing a medication abortion would not be enforced beyond her temporary judgement in June.
The order will remain in place until a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and a physician who performs abortions challenges the portions, barring a successful appeal by Republican legislative leaders upholding the laws. The lawsuit also wants clarification on whether or not drugs may be used to induce labour in a nonviable foetus during the second trimester.
The lawsuit isn’t aiming to strike down the abortion law’s foundation, which was passed in May after Republicans in the legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto. Before July 1, North Carolina law prohibited most abortions beyond 20 weeks. This limit was reduced to 12 weeks.
Added new exclusions for abortions through 20 weeks for situations of rape and incest, and through 24 weeks for “life-limiting” foetal anomalies, as a response to the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court judgement that overturned Roe v. Wade. There was also no change to the provision for medical emergencies.
For pharmaceutical abortions, which the bill’s proponents believe are legal up to 12 weeks of gestation, the new law mandates that doctors “document in the woman’s medical chart the… intrauterine location of the pregnancy.”
According to Eagles’s analysis, the plaintiffs have a good chance of winning their argument that abortion doctors have broken the law if they are unable to find an embryo through ultrasound due to the early stage of the pregnancy.
Eagles, who was appointed to the bench by then-President Barack Obama, said, “Providers cannot know if medical abortion is authorised at any point in time through the twelfth week, as the statute explicitly says, or if the procedure is implicitly banned early in pregnancy.”
And Eagles noted that the plaintiffs presented “uncontradicted” proof that the methods utilised for managing miscarriages after 12 weeks of pregnancy are the same as those used for surgical abortions. However, she noted that hospitals are not obligated to provide such services to women who have miscarried.
When defending the statute in court, Republican legislative leaders “have offered no explanation or evidence — that is, no rational basis for this differing treatment,” Eagles wrote.
The verdict on Saturday was applauded by abortion rights activists who are still against the new 12-week limitations.
Dr. Beverly Grey, an OB-GYN and a named plaintiff in the lawsuit, said, “We applaud the court’s decision to block some of the onerous barriers to essential reproductive health care that have no basis in medicine.”
Eagles’ injunction, according to a representative for Senate leader Phil Berger, one of the legislative defendants, was still being evaluated as of Saturday.
According to court filings filed in September by lawyers for Republican legislative leaders, the section demanding evidence of an intrauterine pregnancy was intended to guarantee the pregnancy was not ectopic, which can be harmful. The state “rationally sought to help ensure the safety of women who may require hospitalisation due to complications from surgical abortions,” according to a legal brief from the legislators.
Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general and a Democrat who supports abortion rights and is running for governor in 2024, is now a named defendant in a lawsuit. However, his office’s legal counsel requested that the Eagles prohibit the two provisions since they mainly agreed with Planned Parenthood’s views. The decision by the Eagles gave Stein hope, he remarked on Saturday.