U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson has temporarily blocked Alabama’s Human Life Protection Act, which was set to go into effect on November 15.
The Human Life Protection Act would be the strictest abortion legislation in the nation, and would ban nearly all abortions unless they are medically necessary to save the mother’s life.
“The court is persuaded that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in showing that the Act violates an individual’s constitutional right to obtain a pre-viability abortion, and thus that it violates her constitutional rights,” Thompson said in his order for a preliminary injunction.
The judge’s decision was in response to a lawsuit brought on by Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union.
“As expected, the court has blocked the law and it will not go into effect,” Randall Marshall, executive director of the ACLU of Alabama, told AL.com. “Abortion remains legal in Alabama. The state’s repeated attempts to push abortion out of reach by enacting unconstitutional laws restricting abortions has already cost taxpayers nearly $2.5 million. This ill-advised law will cost taxpayers more money.”
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall issued a statement saying that the injunction was “not unexpected.”
“The district court’s decision to grant the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction of Alabama’s 2019 abortion law as to pre-viability abortions was not unexpected,” Marshall said. “As we have stated before, the State’s objective is to advance our case to the U.S. Supreme Court where we intend to submit evidence that supports our argument that Roe and Casey were wrongly decided and that the Constitution does not prohibit states from protecting unborn children from abortion.”
