By Dave Andrusko
U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker
Back at the end of July, NRL News Today reported on an order handed down by activist U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker blocking four pro-life Arkansas laws. The most prominent is Arkansas’s Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act [Act 45] which bans the grotesque practice of dismemberment abortions
Over the weekend Linda Satter reported that on Friday
attorneys for the state called the laws “four commonsense Arkansas abortion regulations,” and chastised U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker’s conclusion that they are likely unconstitutional.
“In addition to its groundless assertion that abortion is safer than pregnancy, the district court’s opinion is riddled with error,” the brief asserts. “It applies the wrong legal standards, confuses legal and factual conclusions, misconstrues statutory language, and fails to determine whether the challenged provisions would impose substantial obstacles on a large fraction of patients.”
The attorneys for the state requested oral arguments of 25 minutes per side before a three-judge panel.
As we reported, in her 140 page decision, Judge Baker defended issuing a preliminary injunction on the grounds that “The threatened harm to Dr. [Frederick] Hopkins and the fraction of women for whom the mandate is relevant clearly outweighs whatever damage or harm a proposed injunction may cause the State of Arkansas.”
Eight states– Kansas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas–currently forbid an abortion “technique” that uses sharp metal clamps and scissors to crush, tear and pulverize living unborn human beings, to rip heads and legs off of tiny torsos until the defenseless child bleeds to death.
Judge Baker’s preliminary injunction also affected, according to Satter
- Act 603, “which also would have taken effect July 30 and governs the disposal of fetal remains after surgical abortions”;
- Act 1018, “which also faced a July 30 effective date and requires doctors to notify local law enforcement agencies when an abortion has been performed on a girl who is 16 or younger.” And
- Act 733, “which was to go into effect Jan. 1. It requires doctors to seek a woman’s previous medical records if she knows the sex of her fetus, to ensure the woman isn’t using abortion as a means of sex selection.
“Judge Baker never considered the societal degradation that accompanies ‘normalizing’ this horrific abortion procedure,” said Ingrid Duran, director of state legislation for National Right to Life. “NRLC believes that this is a temporary setback and we appreciate the hardworking effort from the Attorney General’s office to appeal and defend this constitutional law.”