In a terrifying and uncertain time for reproductive freedom, people all across the country have needed a win, and North Dakota District Court Judge Bruce Romanick delivered. Last week, Romanick overturned North Dakota’s extremely strict abortion ban that stated that doctors could be imprisoned and fined $10,000, with exceptions only in cases of risk to the mother, before six weeks, incest or “gross sexual imposition.” This was a gross violation of women’s rights to bodily autonomy that the government should not be able to touch. Though North Dakota Gov. Doug Burnum claims he will appeal the decision, for now, the state’s women can breathe a bit.
Regarding the previous ban, I think it was grossly unconstitutional and a complete violation of the right to bodily autonomy. Though this law did have some exceptions, these exceptions did not always support the people they were meant to protect. To start, laws that only allow abortion when the mother’s life is threatened are still incredibly dangerous. Doctors have to go through many legal channels and wait until the last possible minute before helping the pregnant person, and sometimes at that point, it is too late. A woman in Georgia died because of this very issue just weeks after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that allowed states to create these extreme abortion bans. Amber Thurman got abortion pills from a clinic in North Carolina because she knew she wouldn’t be able to support twins on top of her young son. Unfortunately, not all of the fetal tissue was expelled from her uterus and she needed an emergency procedure. Because her Georgia doctors had to follow the law against this procedure and they could not try to operate until she was septic with organ failure, she died from an entirely preventable complication. She is not the only one who has or will die from this; thousands more are dealing with dire health complications.
Additionally, abortion bans like this one that have exceptions for cases of rape are also problematic. It is not always easy for victims to prove their pregnancy was by force, and the justice system ignores many rape cases, so many victims will still not receive the care they need and deserve. These bans open up many other laws to be overturned. Many states are also working to ban contraceptives and birth control, which adds more pregnant people with unwanted pregnancies and no way to address them.
Furthermore, if Roe v. Wade could be reversed after almost 50 years of being in effect, who’s to say the Supreme Court won’t overturn other landmark cases, like Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized gay marriage in 2015? All marginalized communities are under attack, and if the Supreme Court continues this pattern, we could lose all the progress we’ve made in the last century.
Romanick had several reasons for overturning this ban, arguing that it took away constitutional rights that should be protected. First, he argued that women have a “fundamental right” to abortion and “procreative autonomy.” Under the North Dakota state constitution, women have a right to abortion before fetal viability. It is entirely contradictory for the state to have a ban that goes against its very own constitution, which in the United States is the most important government document. Secondly, he claimed that the law took away from “a woman’s liberty and her right to pursue and obtain safety and happiness.” This is absolutely true and has been since the founding of our country. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness have always been ideals that we strive to follow, but when we force birth in dire circumstances onto women who cannot or do not want to have children at that time, we take those fundamental liberties away. Finally, Romanick ruled that the ban was constitutionally void for vagueness in terms of how it defined “what compelling interest it has in informing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term.” Without intentional language that identifies the exact parameters of the ban, it can get muddy and cause dangerous situations in which doctors don’t know when they are allowed to operate.
While this is a much needed victory for North Dakota citizens, we need to ensure that it will stick and that people across the country can get this same access. To do this, Congress must codify Roe v. Wade to protect the right to abortion at a federal level. If we allow each individual state to make its laws surrounding reproductive rights, millions of people will be impacted, and thousands more will have negative health impacts without access to proper medical care. The overturning of the North Dakota ban can serve as a beacon of hope and a step in the right direction in this fight. If this extremely conservative state is overturning its ban, we may be on the way to turning the nation back around and reinstating Roe v. Wade.
Molly O’Connor, FCRH ’28, is a journalism major from Weymouth, Mass.
