LINCOLN — State attorneys were reviewing their legal options Wednesday after a federal judge stopped a new Nebraska abortion law from taking effect.
U.S. District Judge Laurie Smith Camp said in her ruling that the law would place “substantial, likely insurmountable” obstacles in the way of women seeking abortions in the state.
The order temporarily blocks new requirements for doctors to do extensive screening of women seeking abortions.
The screenings were required under a law, passed as Legislative Bill 594, set to take effect Thursday.
Camp could make the ruling permanent after hearing further arguments and evidence from both sides. She set a July 26 deadline for the state to file a legal response if Attorney General Jon Bruning decides to continue the fight.
Planned Parenthood of the Heartland challenged the law, claiming that it was unconstitutional because its requirements were impossible to meet. The Des Moines-based agency had asked for an order to stop the law from taking effect.
Camp, in a strongly worded order, granted that request with a few exceptions.
Jill June, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood, said the organization was pleased with the ruling and plans to “see this through to the end” to ensure that women have access to the health care they need.
A spokeswoman for Bruning’s office, Shannon Kingery, said the state will respect Camp’s decision but is reviewing its options.
Camp let stand the legislative findings, which say the existing standard of care for screening and counseling women seeking abortions is not always adequate.
She also let stand a section requiring the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services to publish a list of agencies that could help women with mental health concerns after they were screened for an abortion.
But Camp found that Planned Parenthood was “likely to succeed” in attacking the key portions of the law.
She said the law puts abortion providers in immediate jeopardy of “crippling civil litigation,” which could force them to stop practicing and cost women access to abortion.
The law, Camp wrote, provides women who come to regret their abortions with “a target to blame — a physician stripped of the usual statutory and common law defenses and made civilly liable for the most extensive damages, by way of an ‘informed consent’ mandate that is either impossible to satisfy, or so vague that the physician (and a jury) are left to speculate about its meaning.”
The law also provides such women and their lawyers with a “very substantial financial incentive” to sue, Camp said.
In addition, the judge said, while the legislative findings express concern for women’s health, that concern was undermined by the plain language of the bill and the absence of similar protections regarding other medical procedures.
State Sen. Cap Dierks of Ewing, who sponsored the legislation, said he was disappointed but not surprised at the ruling because opponents of the measure kept calling it “vague.”
“What I call vague and what they call vague are two different things,” Dierks said. “This bill was very upfront to me. There’s nothing secret about it.”
Sen. Danielle Conrad of Lincoln, a leading opponent of the bill, said many of the same arguments covered in the judge’s findings had been raised in committee and during legislative debate but had been ignored by the majority of senators. She said it was disappointing that the state now will spend time and money defending a “troubled bill.”
Greg Schleppenbach, a representative of the Nebraska Catholic Conference, the bill’s chief backer, said the group will continue fighting to ensure that women get the “very reasonable and important information” the law would have mandated.
Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, staff attorney for the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, who served as co-counsel in the case, said the law represented a “political and dangerous interference in a woman’s most personal, private medical decisions and her trusted relationship with her doctor.”
The lawsuit named as defendants Gov. Dave Heineman, Bruning, Health and Human Services Department CEO Kerry Winterer and state officials in charge of licensing clinics and nurses.
Camp was appointed in 2001 by President George W. Bush. She came to the bench with a combination of strong academic, legal and conservative credentials.
Before being picked as Nebraska’s first female federal judge, she was a top aide to then-Attorney General Don Stenberg, a Republican conservative.
Planned Parenthood of the Heartland operates a clinic in Lincoln that provides surgical and medical abortions. The organization recently announced plans to start offering abortions at a new consolidated Omaha clinic.
World-Herald staff writer Paul Hammel contributed to this report.
Contact the writer:
402-473-9583, martha.stoddard@owh.com
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