Abortion Advocates Won’t Like What a Democratic Attorney General Did with This Pro-Abortion Lawsuit

Some states require women to wait 24 hours before getting abortions and to receive counseling about the procedure, which includes information about fetal development. Some states also require clinics to do ultrasounds before the procedure.

Abortion advocates, who call such restrictions medically unnecessary and burdensome, file lawsuits to block states from enforcing them. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that a Texas law requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges to hospitals within 30 miles of a clinic and for abortion clinics to meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers, was an undue burden on women.

One of the plaintiffs in the Texas case was Whole Women’s Health, which Live Action News reported has a long list of health violations. This clinic was also part of the Virginia lawsuit, but this time the outcome was different.

Virginia requires, among other things, that women wait 24 hours before getting abortions if they live within 100 miles of a clinic and that abortion clinics provide an ultrasound before the procedure.

But the person charged with enforcing the law is a pro-abortion Democrat. Would he defend it? From Live Action News (emphasis added):

Pro-lifers were concerned that Virginia’s attorney general, Democrat Mark Herring, would refuse to fight for the state. Thankfully, Herring chose to defend the law, and filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Yet his objection to the lawsuit wasn’t as stringent as some might have hoped.

In the motion, which Herring filed last week, he cited what he called Planned Parenthood’s “powerful arguments,” but merely argued that the court is not the place to fight the abortion restrictions. “Many of the challenged laws are decades old, some of the challenged regulations are under active review, and plaintiffs make powerful arguments that certain other requirements warrant reconsideration by the Virginia General Assembly,” he wrote in the motion. “But a federal courtroom is not the proper venue for debating the wisdom of these policies.”

Herring is “pro-choice” but understands that the legislative branch must write laws, not the executive branch.

Featured photo credit: Dave Bledsoe (Creative Commons) – Some rights reserved