Judge Thompson preliminarily enjoins two Alabama laws
By Dave Andrusko
U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson
To say that the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson is openly hostile to pro-life legislation almost goes without saying. He is forever and a day (and at extraordinarily length) excoriating pro-life legislation (admitting privileges, redirecting PPFA funding, and the like).
Today in another 100+page opinion, Judge Thompson wielded his judicial pen to preliminarily enjoin enforcement of two laws.
One bans the hideous dismemberment abortion technique in which a living, growing human being is torn apart and pulverized. Using steel tools, dismemberment abortions rip heads and legs off of tiny torsos as the defenseless child bleeds to death. Alabama is one of six states to ban dismemberment abortions along with Kansas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Mississippi, and (most recently) Louisiana.
The second law prohibits the issuing or renewals of a health center license to facilities where abortions are performed within 2,000 feet of K-8 public schools.
Of the latter, Judge Thompson wrote “that the state’s efforts to reduce disruption at schools located near two clinics placed an undue burden on women seeking abortion,” according to Amy Yurkanin of the Birmingham News. The law would have closed abortion facilities in Huntsville and Tuscaloosa.
The ban on dismemberment abortions allows for the use of a different technique but Thompson countered, ”As explained, in the absence of an injunction [against the law], Alabama women would immediately lose the right to obtain a pre-viability abortion anywhere in the State when they reached 15 weeks of pregnancy, whereas all the State will face is that a likely unconstitutional law passed by legislators will not go into effect.”
The Dismemberment Abortion Act passed the state House of Representatives, 74-26, the state Senate, 30-2, and was signed into law by Gov. Robert Bentley.
Bans against dismemberment abortions have passed in the other five states by similarly huge margins.