Judge signs order officially repealing North Dakota’s abortion ban

North Dakota’s abortion ban was officially repealed Thursday following a judgment entered by South Central District Court Judge Bruce Romanick.

“The law as currently drafted takes away a woman’s fundamental rights to liberty and her fundamental right to pursue and abstain safety and happiness,” he wrote in the judgment. “The law also impermissibly infringes on the constitutional rights for victims of crimes.”

Romanick was asked to review the ban as part of a lawsuit brought by Red River Women’s Clinic — once North Dakota’s only abortion clinic before it moved to Moorhead, Minnesota— and a group of reproductive health care doctors.

North Dakota judge vacates state abortion ban, ruling it unconstitutional

Tammi Kromenaker, the clinic’s director, said the facility has “no plans to move back to North Dakota.”

The clinic used to operate in Fargo but moved across state lines when North Dakota’s previous abortion ban took effect following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to repeal Roe v. Wade.

“Having moved once was already a huge upheaval and drain on our resources. We are 5 minutes away from our former location in downtown Fargo, which means that access for our patients is essentially the same,” Kromenaker wrote in a Thursday statement to the North Dakota Monitor.

She noted that other North Dakota regulations, “including a 24-hour waiting period, restrictions on medication abortion, forced state materials designed to dissuade patients from abortion, strict parental involvement laws and more,” still make abortion care difficult to provide in the state.

“We would not take a step back and subject our patients to these stigmatizing and difficult restrictions,” she wrote. “We moved once and do not want to undertake that again.”

The court judgment came two weeks after Romanick found the abortion ban unconstitutionally vague and a violation of health care rights.

The law made all abortions illegal except when the pregnancy poses a serious health risk to the mother, and in cases of rape or incest during the first six weeks of a pregnancy.

Plaintiffs argued the law infringed on individual rights and endangered pregnant mothers by not making it clear when abortions may be administered under the health risk exemption.

Meetra Mehdizadeh, an attorney representing a group of doctors in a legal challenge against North Dakota’s abortion ban, speaks to South Central District Court Judge Bruce Romanick at a hearing on July 23, 2024. (Mary Steurer/North Dakota Montior)

In his Sept. 12 order, Romanick found that the criminal penalties included in the law could deter doctors from providing abortions for legitimate health reasons.

He also questioned how doctors could determine whether patients are eligible for the rape and incest exemption, given that they do not have legal expertise and that sex crimes are notoriously difficult to investigate.

Attorneys for the state have previously argued that the ban is not vague, and was written with input from North Dakota doctors, including some of the plaintiffs.

The law was adopted with overwhelming support by the state’s Republican-majority Legislature in 2023 following a ruling by the North Dakota Supreme Court finding its previous abortion ban unconstitutional.

Attorney General Drew Wrigley has previously said the state plans to appeal Romanick’s ruling.

Following Romanick’s Sept. 12 order, the North Dakota Attorney General’s Office filed a motion asking Romanick to keep the abortion ban on the books until the North Dakota Supreme Court makes a final decision on the case.

Romanick will hear arguments on the motion at 9 a.m. Oct. 10 in Bismarck, according to court records filed Thursday.

This story was updated to add comment from the Red River Women’s Clinic director.

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