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Former ND clinic challenges state’s abortion restrictions
The Red River Women’s Clinic, now operating in Moorhead, Minn., was North Dakota’s sole clinic providing abortions. An ongoing lawsuit challenges the stricter law.
BISMARCK, N.D. — A former North Dakota abortion provider challenged one of the nation’s strictest abortion laws Monday, arguing the law “flagrantly violates” a court ruling supporting the right of patients in the state to obtain the procedure to preserve their life or health.
The lawsuit initially filed last year by what was the conservative state’s sole abortion provider seeks to block a law recently approved by the Republican-led Legislature and signed by Gov. Doug Burgum. The law outlaws all abortions except in cases where women could face death or a “serious health risk” or pregnancies caused by rape and incest, but only in the first six weeks, when many women often don’t know they are pregnant.
It seems unlikely that a patient who is pregnant due to rape or incest could get an abortion “within such a narrow time frame” as six weeks, Center for Reproductive Rights attorney Meetra Mehdizadeh told The Associated Press.
Conservative states have been working to restrict abortion access in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court last year overturning the constitutional right to an abortion. Other states, such as neighboring Minnesota, have moved to protect abortion access.
North Dakota had a so-called trigger ban, passed in 2007, to outlaw virtually all abortions if the Roe v. Wade decision was overturned. The Red River Women’s Clinic last year challenged the now-repealed trigger ban as unconstitutional, and on Monday, attorneys for the clinic and several physicians throughout North Dakota filed an amended complaint targeting the new law. The clinic moved from Fargo to neighboring Moorhead, Minn. after the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Bill sponsors pitched the changes as clearing up language in the state’s overlapping abortion laws, including the trigger ban and a 2013 law that sought to ban abortions as soon as cardiac activity is detected.
The new law includes a felony penalty for those who perform an abortion. The penalty excludes patients who undergo the procedure.
The law allows for treatment of ectopic and molar pregnancies, both nonviable complications.
The amended complaint says the new law “prevents pregnant people from accessing necessary, time-sensitive healthcare and threatens their lives, health and fertility.” The complaint says the law also “flagrantly violates” what the state Supreme Court recently held as “a fundamental right to obtain an abortion to preserve (a patient’s) life or her health.”
Mehdizadeh said it is still “pretty confusing” what the law allows, such as “when people are actually allowed to provide an abortion under the exceptions.”
The new law’s death and health risk provisions are narrow, she said. They don’t include mental health conditions, which Mehdizadeh said can be caused or exacerbated by pregnancy and are “one of the most common causes of pregnancy-related death.”
North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley said he expected the amended complaint to be filed, and said his office is reviewing it.
Republican state Sen. Janne Myrdal, the bill’s sponsor, said she expected the amended complaint, which she hadn’t read. She said the judge should dismiss the case and the plaintiffs should sue on the merits of the new law, “instead of amending an old case where the chapter (of state law) is no longer there.”
She attributed the “complaint about six weeks” to “some of the most liberal elements in our state.”
“I hope that if anybody experiences rape that they immediately, immediately go to a hospital and get a rape kit, get it taken care of so we can go after the rapist,” Myrdal said.
A state district court judge last year had temporarily blocked the trigger law and the court in March upheld the decision before the law was repealed.
Chief Justice Jon Jensen wrote in the majority opinion, “The North Dakota Constitution explicitly provides all citizens of North Dakota the right of enjoying and defending life and pursuing and obtaining safety. These rights implicitly include the right to obtain an abortion to preserve the woman’s life or health.”
The Legislature in response to the ruling added the “serious health risk” and molar pregnancy provisions to the bill, and put all of its language into a new chapter of state law. A molar pregnancy is when a tumor forms in the uterus.
Mehdizadeh said placing the law into a new section of code “is essentially an attempt to replace and repackage the trigger ban in defiance of the state’s high court and without any regard to the dangerous consequences to people’s health and lives.”
Myrdal said the move was to help the drafting process and to make the bill clearer.
Burgum, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president, has said the new law “clarifies and refines existing state law … and reaffirms North Dakota as a pro-life state.”
The amended complaint also adds several physicians licensed in obstetrics, gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine as plaintiffs, because “this ban has vague, confusing and non-medical language that has left providers without any clarity over when they can provide abortion care, and threatens them with severe punishment if they do,” according to Mehdizadeh.
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The U.S. Army says 19-year-old William E. Colby was reported missing in action on Dec. 2, 1950. His remains were identified just this year using DNA technology.
MINNEAPOLIS — Nearly 74 years to the day since he was officially deemed Missing in Action during the Korean war, a Minneapolis soldier finally reached his final resting place.
The burial at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, which came with full military honors, brought closure to the family of Army Corporal William Colby, but it couldn’t bring back the family – and memories – that have long since passed.
“I was little,” said Jinny Bouvette, Corporal Colby’s cousin, who is also among the few surviving family members who ever met him. “We were about nine years difference when he joined the service, I was ten.”
For years, Bouvette says her memories of her cousin Billy, were always clouded by sadness by what happened just months after he deployed to fight in the Korean War.
Colby was just 19 years old and serving in the Korean War when he was declared missing in action on Dec. 2, 1950, after his unit was attacked by the Chinese People’s Army as they attempted to withdraw from the Chosin Reservoir.
“They figure that’s where Billy was,” Bouvette said, pointing to a green circle on a printed map of the Chosin Reservoir. “That’s where he was the last time that he was reported (alive).”
The young soldier could not be recovered following the battle, and the U.S. Army issued a presumptive finding of death on Dec. 31, 1953.
“We never thought of him as being killed in action, we always thought of him as just missing,” Bouvette said. “My aunt, she always thought he was alive somewhere.”
His fate was finally confirmed for family members by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency on May 2, 2024, after Colby’s remains were identified from 55 boxes of remains returned to the U.S. by the North Korean government in 2018.
The process required a DNA analysis of his remains and a sample from a living relative before it could be matched and verified.
Bouvette says representatives initially tried to reach her, but it wasn’t until learning that her aunt and cousin had submitted those DNA samples that she realized what was happening.
“At first I thought they were just people trying to scam old people, and I wouldn’t answer them,” she said, with a laugh. “But eventually, that’s how I found out that he was really, really gone.”
Just a few months later, the Army’s Past Conflict Repatriations Branch helped return his remains, along with a jacket adorned with a full accounting of his honors.
“He didn’t get them when he was alive,” Bouvette said. “So I told them to put them in the casket with him, so he’s got them now.”
She did decide to hold on to one of his awards for herself, Colby’s Purple Heart.
“I just can’t tell you what it feels like,” she said, looking at the military medal in her hand. “It fills your heart right up. It just fills your heart right up.”
Yet it can’t quite compare to seeing his procession finally reach its end.
“My heart is so full… it is overflowing,” she said. “I just can’t… I have no words. I’m just glad that he’s here, and to know he’s home now. He’s home.”
JayCee Cooper filed a lawsuit against USA Powerlifting after the organization banned her from participating in women’s competitions.
SAINT PAUL, Minn. — The conversation inside the Minnesota State Capitol on Tuesday was focused on sports, but a different type of competition was taking place inside the court chambers. Two opposing sides are vying for the Minnesota Supreme Court to rule in their favor in the case of Cooper v. USA Powerlifting.
Transgender woman and athlete JayCee Cooper filed discrimination charges with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights in 2019 after USA Powerlifting banned her from participating in women’s competitions. In 2021, Cooper filed a lawsuit against USA Powerlifting.
The lawsuit claims USA Powerlifting’s ban on transgender women is “an outlier among international, national and local sports organizations,” pointing to the International Olympic Committee’s framework regarding inclusion of athletes and their gender identities.
The case made its way through the state’s courts over several years before landing in the hands of the Minnesota Supreme Court. Oral arguments took place Tuesday morning, in which Cooper was represented by Gender Justice attorney Christy Hall and USA Powerlifting was represented by attorney Ansis Viksnins.
Gender Justice is a legal nonprofit organization based in St. Paul. In a press conference Tuesday morning, the organization’s legal director Jess Braverman said USA Powerlifting is violating Cooper’s rights under the Minnesota Human Rights Act.
“Every Minnesotan deserves the freedom to pursue their dreams without fear of exclusion or discrimination,” Braverman said. “Ms. Cooper was denied that right, solely because she is transgender.”
Viksnins, the attorney representing USA Powerlifting, said Cooper was excluded from women’s competitions due to her biological sex, not gender identity. “It’s not discrimination based on gender identity. That’s the problem for Ms. Cooper’s case: that the differentiation here was because of her biological sex, not for gender identity.”
In 2021, USA Powerlifting launched its MX category, providing a separate division for athletes of all gender identities. “It doesn’t solve the problem of transgender women being barred from women’s competitions, which is the issue here,” Braverman said.
There is no clear timeline as to when the Supreme Court will makes its decision on the case.
The portion of the Kellogg-Third Street Bridge over I-94 is coming down.
ST PAUL, Minn. — The portion of the Kellogg-Third Street Bridge over I-94 is coming down this weekend.
Demolition started in August but they’ve been doing one section at a time. MnDOT says to expect jackhammering around the clock.
City engineers first noticed cracks in its supports in 2014 and limited its capacity. But it’s taken 10 years for the city to come up with the $91 million it will take to build a new one, and it won’t be finished until 2027.
I-94 will be closed this weekend between 35E and Highway 61 in St. Paul.
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