This was something we knew would happen eventually, or at least we knew that once the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs case this spring.
But the efforts of the pro-abortion Left to stave off Louisiana’s abortion ban statute triggered by the Dobbs decision delayed things for a little while. Not long.
A Louisiana appeals court has ruled that the state can once again enforce a ban on abortion throughout pregnancy, in a major victory for pro-lifers in the Pelican State.
The Louisiana 1st Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday granted Attorney General Jeff Landry’s request to let the ban take effect while the state appeals a lower court ruling that blocked it last week.
Louisiana’s trigger law, enacted in 2006 and revised in June, bans abortion from “fertilization and implantation” except when necessary to preserve the mother’s life or prevent a serious physical injury or if an unborn baby is deemed “medically futile.” Many pro-life advocates argue that there is never a circumstance in which abortion is medically necessary.
Judge Donald Johnson of the 19th District in Baton Rouge had issued a preliminary injunction against the law on July 21 at the request of abortion providers.
“Louisiana’s pro-life trigger laws can be enforced,” Landry tweeted on Friday. “The First Circuit has ordered Judge Johnson to grant our suspensive appeal.”
It’s not yet clear when the ban will go back into effect, as Johnson has not signed the 1st Circuit’s order as of Friday afternoon, according to The Advocate. The three remaining abortion clinics in Louisiana will shut down when he does.
We would expect Johnson to sign the order today. But he might not. Johnson is running for a seat on the First Circuit against a pair of Republicans, and as the Democrat in the race you could make the argument that he’d help himself politically taking a pro-abortion stance. Republican and pro-life voters aren’t going to vote for Don Johnson, and all he’ll do by acquiescing to the First Circuit’s order is dispirit his own voters.
But delaying won’t actually accomplish anything. It certainly won’t change the outcome.
And everybody knows that the Louisiana abortion ban will stick. There is no constitutional reason to invalidate it. There never was in the Louisiana constitution.
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So Louisiana’s abortuaries will be shutting down soon. And we’ll see what the pro-abort crowd does then. Will we have more attacks on care pregnancy centers around the state? Will we have outright rejection of state law in lawless jurisdictions like New Orleans? And what consequences will there be for that kind of behavior?
Those sound like bad outcomes, and perhaps they are. But the killing of innocent unborn on an industrial scale, which has been the case in this state for years, is worse.
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