A North Dakota law that would require abortion clinic doctors to have admitting privileges to a hospital within 30 miles the clinic was blocked by a state judge yesterday. The law, scheduled to go into effect today, would haveshut down the state’s only abortion clinic, the Red River Women’s Clinic located in Fargo.
Judge Wickham Corwin also blocked a law that would ban abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected which can happen as early as six weeks.
Two other restrictive abortion laws, however, will go into effect today. One law bans abortion after 20 weeks gestation on the argument that a fetus can feel pain at that stage, and the second institutes a ban on all abortions solely for gender selection or genetic abnormalities.
Senior counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, Janet Crepps, stated, “It’s possible for the clinic to see women who have a genetic abnormality, but the idea that women are coming for an abortion solely for the purpose of sex selection is just ridiculous…The number of women getting abortions in North Dakota is small, so the number of women that would fall in that category is even smaller.”
Media Resources: The Dickinson Press 8/1/2013; Bloomberg 7/31/2013; New York Times 7/31/2013; Feminist Newswire 3/26/2013
