And the judge, a man…was pissed….
A federal judge has struck down a Mississippi law that sought to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. In a fiery opinion issued Tuesday, Judge Carlton W. Reeves said the statute, described as one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, “unequivocally” violated women’s constitutional rights.
Reeves wrote of his “frustration” that state lawmakers had chosen to pass the law despite the fact that similar legislation has been thrown out by federal courts in other states and that such litigation is very costly for taxpayers.
He contended the “real reason” for the ban’s passage appeared to be the state’s politically driven desire to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 law that assures a woman’s constitutional right to access safe and legal abortions.
“The state chose to pass a law it knew was unconstitutional to endorse a decades-long campaign, fueled by national interest groups, to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade,” Reeves wrote. “This court follows the commands of the Supreme Court and the dictates of the United States Constitution, rather than the disingenuous calculations of the Mississippi Legislature.”
The law, which banned abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy except in cases of medical emergency or “severe fetal abnormality,” was passed in March. Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, filed a lawsuit challenging the ban on the same day, and Reeves put a temporary restraining order on the law the following morning.
Under Supreme Court precedent, states cannot restrict abortions before a fetus is considered viable. According to established medical consensus, viability typically begins at 23 to 24 weeks, Reeves noted in his opinion this week….