FILE PHOTO: The flag of the U.S. state North Dakota is seen in this illustration taken, August 21, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
(Reuters) -A North Dakota state court judge on Thursday overturned the state's near-total abortion ban, clearing the way for abortion to become legal in the Midwestern state for the first time in more than a year.
Judge Bruce Romanick in Bismarck found that the state constitution protects women's right to an abortion before the fetus is viable, siding with abortion providers challenging the ban. The order is expected to take effect within 14 days.
"This is a win for reproductive freedom, and means it is now much safer to be pregnant in North Dakota," Meetra Mehdizadeh, a lawyer at the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley in a statement said the state "will appeal this ruling because Judge Romanick's opinion inappropriately casts aside the law crafted by the legislative branch of our government" and goes against precedent from the state's Supreme Court.
North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, a Republican, signed the law in April 2023, making it a felony for doctors to perform abortions.
The law includes an exception for saving the life of the mother or in cases where her health is at serious risk, but the providers in the lawsuit said that exception was not clear enough for doctors to know when an abortion was allowed.
The ban also makes an exception for rape and incest victims, but only during the first six weeks of pregnancy, which is before many women know they are pregnant.
The providers originally sued North Dakota in 2022 over an earlier, stricter abortion ban, which was to take effect in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision that June allowing states to ban abortion.
Romanick blocked the 2022 ban in an order that was upheld by the state's Supreme Court, and the state legislature responded by passing the new ban.
Romanick wrote on Thursday that the state constitution protects each North Dakotan's "fundamental right to make medical judgments affecting his or her bodily integrity, health and autonomy."
"Unborn human life, pre-viability, is not a sufficient justification to interfere with a woman's fundamental rights," he wrote.
North Dakota's only abortion clinic moved from Fargo to nearby Moorhead, Minnesota, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 ruling.
North Dakota is one of more than 20 Republican-led states that have banned or restricted abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 ruling. Some of those laws have since been blocked in court or overturned by ballot measures.
At least nine states are expected to vote on ballot measures to guarantee abortion rights in the Nov. 5 election. Policy regarding abortion and women's reproductive rights in general is a key issue in this year's presidential election.
(Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Franklin Paul, Jonathan Oatis and Alexia Garamfalvi)
