WVa abortion ban irrational, unconstitutional
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — An abortion provider filed a lawsuit on Wednesday to overturn West Virginia’s near-total ban, saying it is unconstitutional, irrational and causing irreparable harm to the state’s only abortion clinic and its patients.
The lawsuit seeks a halt to the four-month-old abortion ban while the case is heard in federal court. Republican Gov. Jim Justice signed law on Sept. 16 that passed earlier this week, making West Virginia the second state to enact legislation banning the trial since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June its constitutional one remove protection.
The law requires abortions to be performed by a doctor in a hospital — a provision that at least two Republican lawmakers said was designed to stop abortions at West Virginia’s Women’s Health Center. It has been offering the procedure since 1976 and was the state’s only abortion clinic.
Under the law, providers who perform illegal abortions can face up to 10 years in prison.
According to the lawsuit, the law “severely restricts the circumstances in which an abortion can be performed and imposes new, irrational requirements on the provision of abortion care.”
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Women’s Health Center by the American Civil Liberties Union and its West Virginia chapter, Mountain State Justice, and the law firm of Cooley. It said the Act’s care limitations were “unrelated to modern medicine, without rational justification, and logically connected with no legitimate governmental interest, and therefore unconstitutional” under due process and the same Fourteenth Amendment protections.
The Charleston Clinic suspended abortions shortly after the legislature passed the bill and provided resources for women in West Virginia to book out-of-state appointments and funds to cover travel and procedures, the executive director of the Clinic, Katie Quiñonez.
According to the lawsuit, “The statute’s care limitations continue to cause irreparable damage not only to the plaintiffs’ mission, purpose, and ability to practice their profession and their constitutional rights, but also to the health and well-being of their patients and West Virginians seeking access to them.” essential supplies.”
The lawsuit names West Virginia Board of Medicine President Ashish P. Sheth and Board Secretary Matthew Christiansen as defendants. A message left after close of business Wednesday night seeking comment on the lawsuit was not immediately responded to.
Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said his office stands ready to defend the law, which “reflects the will of the majority of the state’s citizens as conveyed by their elected representatives in the state legislature.”
The state ban on abortion provides exceptions for medical emergencies and for victims of rape and incest up to the eighth week of pregnancy for adults and up to 14 weeks for under-18s. Victims must report their assault to law enforcement 48 hours before the procedure. Minors can report to the police or a doctor, who must then report this to the police.
When he signed the law into law, Justice described it as “a bill that protects life.”
Quiñonez said the law “pushes essential abortion treatment out of reach.”
“With each passing day this ban remains in place, we are forced to turn away patients because politicians have stripped them of the power to make the best medical decisions for themselves during pregnancy,” she said in a statement. “Whether at the statehouse or the courthouse, we will never stop fighting to ensure our patients have access to the primary care they need.”
More than a dozen states now have abortion bans, although most were approved before the Supreme Court ruling and took effect when the court overturned the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.
