A federal judge has bowed to pressure from pro-abortion forces, blocking the implementation of a new North Dakota law that would ban the murderous procedure after the sixth week of pregnancy.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland granted a temporary injunction August 1 of the law that was to take effect August 1, writing in his ruling that there was “no question” the law, duly passed by North Dakota’s legislature in April, “is in direct contradiction to a litany of United States Supreme Court cases addressing restraints on abortion. [It] is clearly an invalid and unconstitutional law based on the United States Supreme Court precedent in Roe v. Wade from 1973 … and the progeny of cases that have followed.”
In his ruling that was harshly critical of North Dakota’s efforts to protect defenseless pre-born children, Hovland wrote that the state “has extended an invitation to an expensive court battle over a law restricting abortions that is a blatant violation of the constitutional guarantees afforded to all women. The United States Supreme Court has unequivocally said that no state may deprive a woman of the choice to terminate her pregnancy at a point prior to viability.”
The New York-based abortion activist group Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) filed suit against the law on behalf of Fargo’s Red River Women’s Center, the state’s only abortion clinic. “The nation’s most extreme abortion ban has been blocked,” declared the abortion group’s spokesman, Bebe Anderson, “and the message to hostile politicians could not be clearer: the rights of women guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution and protected by 40 years of Supreme Court precedent cannot be legislated away.”
In ruling for the Red River abortion clinic, Judge Hovland found that, in his estimation, the clinic’s abortionists had “established that they and their patients will be subjected to the threat of irreparable injury in the absence of a preliminary injunction.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List had a few choice words for the judge’s decision to ride roughshod over the will of the North Dakota electorate. “A single district judge is thwarting the pro-life legislation brought about by a surge of grassroots momentum … and passed by the majority of the North Dakota state Legislature,” said Dannenfelser, noting that Hovland had ignored scientific findings that offer clear evidence on the beginnings of human life in the womb. “Judge Hovland is blocking the will of the people of North Dakota to protect unborn children and women,” Dannenfelser said.
North Dakota State Representative Bette Grande, who sponsored what was known as North Dakota’s “heartbeat bill,” told Politico.com that her intention with the legislation was to make it clear that a fetal heartbeat signaled the beginning of life for a pre-born baby. “We don’t stop beating hearts in our society,” she said. “We do everything to save the beating heart. The life is that beating heart. It doesn’t matter if we have one clinic in North Dakota or 50 clinics in North Dakota.”
Grande noted that while the six-week law is on hold, a second law, also set to go into effect August 1, will ban abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy.
