Judge will decide whether Alabama can sue people who help with out-of-state abortions

A federal judge is expected to rule soon on whether Alabama can sue health care providers and state advocates who help pregnant patients get an abortion elsewhere.

Abortion has been almost completely illegal in the ruby ​​red state since its triggering law went into effect following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Wade in 2022. It is one of the strictest bans in the country, with no exceptions for rape or incest.

Shortly after the ban became law, Attorney General Steve Marshall (R) said he would consider prosecuting any person or group that “aided and abetted” abortion using the state’s criminal conspiracy law.

His remarks alarmed health care providers who might advise someone about their options for getting an abortion out of state, as well as abortion funds, which help people in need defray the costs of getting an abortion.

Even before Roe was overturned, access to abortion in Alabama was restricted. Advocates said one in five people needed to travel out of state. Now, the entire Southeast has banned or restricted abortions, leaving people to travel hundreds of miles and navigate a complicated patchwork of laws if they want or need an abortion.

Advocates say this is why counseling patients is essential, and Marshall’s comments have prevented them from doing so.

So these groups, including the Yellowhammer Fund and the West Alabama Women’s Center, separately sued Marshall to stop him from carrying out his threats. The cases were eventually consolidated.

The Yellowhammer Fund said Marshall’s threats created an illegal chilling effect on the group’s freedom of expression and forced it to stop providing funds and logistical support to abortion seekers due to fear of being sued.

“While I believe that providing support to pregnant Alabama women who travel to other states for abortion care is a constitutionally protected activity, I am fearful of criminal prosecution against me, my staff, and my volunteers,” said Yellowhammer Fund Executive Director, Jenice Fountain, in the lawsuit.

Fountain said the fund “will not resume funding abortion and supporting out-of-state abortions until we are certain we will not face criminal prosecution for doing so.”

The West Alabama Women’s Center, now known as WAWC, stopped offering abortions in 2022. But the lawsuit claimed they are afraid to even share information about how to get an abortion in places where it is still legal because they don’t want to be sued.

“No Alabama law authorizes such lawsuits. Nor could it. This would be a flagrant extraterritorial abuse of state power,” the WAWC lawsuit said, arguing that Marshall’s threats violate not only the constitutional right to due process, but also the right to travel and the First Amendment.

WAWC and other clinics involved in the lawsuit are represented by the ACLU of Alabama. The suit claims they are afraid to even provide abortion-related care such as counseling or direct women to websites where they can order abortion pills if the pregnancy is early enough.

“We’re trying to walk that fine line between providing all the care we can to a patient and worrying about whether our staff will be arrested,” said Robin Marty, WAWC executive director.

Marty said patients are understandably scared and angry. Even two years later, people don’t always know that abortion is illegal in the state, but Marty said if anyone asks where they can go, his team can’t tell them because that would be considered the start of a conspiracy.

“We know that it was already extraordinarily difficult for people in Alabama to get an abortion, even when it was local, and now they are being told that they have to travel across multiple states, and no one will tell them how, where, or help them through the process. to do this,” she said.

Marshall’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

In court filings, Marshall declared that because abortion is illegal in Alabama, “a conspiracy formed in the State to have the same act performed outside the State is illegal.”

Marshall also urged the court to conclude that the plaintiffs do not have standing to sue on behalf of their patients, an argument that has been used in other abortion-related lawsuits.

“Plaintiffs’ evidence shows only distant relationships with hypothetical clients…and therefore does not establish a close relationship indicating that plaintiffs would be ‘as effective bidders’ as the women themselves,” Marshall argued.

Plaintiffs in the case said they were concerned about the broader implications of Marshall’s threats if the state prevailed in the case.

“Abortion is already illegal in Alabama. This is a step beyond that, isolating a pregnant person from the people they might want to talk to about their options, who they might want to get help from. And that isolation is incredibly dangerous,” said Jamila Johnson, an attorney at The Lawyering Project, which represents the Yellowhammer Fund.

“The attorney general’s position has been marginal,” Johnson said. “Most attorneys general, most law enforcers in prohibited states, don’t think this way…if Yellowhammer is successful, the world will continue as it is now. Most states don’t believe they can engage in this kind of overreach, and we hope that’s the outcome here.”

But they have some reason for optimism after U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson in May denied Marshall’s request to dismiss the case.

“Alabama cannot restrict people from coming to, say, California to engage in what is legal there, any more than California can restrict people from coming to Alabama to do what is legal here,” he wrote at the time. .

If the plaintiffs win, advocates said it would send a message to other states.

“I believe this will send a strong message to extremist politicians that they cannot use criminal laws to threaten people who help others access legal health care,” said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the Reproductive Freedom Project at ACLU.

“People in Alabama will still be forced to leave the state…those burdens will still be there. Alabama’s abortion ban will still exist. But at least people won’t be threatened with criminal sanctions while trying to help them access this care,” Kolbi-Molinas said.

This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story