In response to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, then-North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) stated, "This decision is a victory for the many North Dakotans who have fought so hard and for so long to protect the unborn in our state."
The law 'protects unborn children throughout gestation from abortion, except to prevent the death of the mother as well as other exceptions.'
While Burgum was ultimately right in claiming victory, his celebration was premature as it pertained to the Roughrider State. It was not, after all, until Friday when abortion was formally and finally banned in the state.
The overturning of Roe triggered a 2007 law making it a Class C felony to perform an abortion in North Dakota, except to save the life of the mother or in the case of rape or incest.
Just prior to the law taking effect, the abortionists from the Red River Women's Clinic who moved their abortion clinic from Fargo to Minnesota successfully sued to get an injunction.
Months after South Central Judicial District Court Judge Bruce Romanick blocked the law, the North Dakota Supreme Court ruled that the abortion ban would remain blocked while the legal battle over the law's constitutionality proceeded.
Jon Jensen, chief justice on the court, noted that the abortionists had "demonstrated likely success on the merits that there is a fundamental right to an abortion in the limited instances of life-saving and health-preserving circumstances, and the statute is not narrowly tailored to satisfy strict scrutiny."
Republican state Sen. Janne Myrdal, the former head of ND Choose Life, subsequently introduced a similar piece of legislation, which repealed and replaced the 2007 law. Myrdal's Senate Bill 2150 passed the North Dakota House and Senate in landslide votes and was ultimately ratified by Burgum in April 2023.
Desperate as ever to keep abortion legal, the abortionists behind the initial challenge filed an amended complaint asking that the same judge who previously gave them an injunction would deem the ban unconstitutional under the North Dakota Constitution.
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Romanick proved happy to oblige them, stating on Sept. 12, 2024, that the law was "void for vagueness" and that it was violative of the North Dakota Constitution, which supposedly recognizes a fundamental right to choose abortion before viability.
The state kept pressing the issue in court — North Dakota Attorney General Drew H. Wrigley (R) appealed Romanick's decision — and prevailed.
The North Dakota Supreme Court reinstated the abortion ban on Friday. While three of the five justices deemed the ban "unconstitutionally vague," the state constitution requires at least four justices to agree in order to find a law unconstitutional.
In his dissent, which was joined by Jensen, Justice Jerod Tufte said that the state district court erred both in concluding the law was unconstitutionally vague and in concluding that the state constitution protects a right to abortion broad enough to conflict with Senate Bill 2150.
Pro-abortion activists were apoplectic over the codification of the people's will on the matter of abortion in North Dakota.
"This decision is a devastating loss for pregnant North Dakotans," Meetra Mehdizadeh, senior attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. "As a majority of the Court found, this cruel and confusing ban is incomprehensible to physicians."
Tammi Kromenaker, executive director of the Red River Women's Clinic, complained that "making it illegal just makes it harder" to get abortions.
Pro-live activists, alternatively, were overjoyed.
Ingrid Duran, the National Right to Life's director of state legislation, welcomed the decision, noting that the law "protects unborn children throughout gestation from abortion, except to prevent the death of the mother as well as other exceptions."
Myrdal, the Republican who introduced the legislation, reportedly said that she is "thrilled and grateful that two justices that are highly respected saw the truth of the matter, that this is fully constitutional for the mother and for the unborn child and thereafter for that sake."
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President Donald Trump has announced initiatives to expand access to in vitro fertilization and reduce associated costs — as each round of IVF can cost $12,000 to $25,000 — and one round is often not all it takes.
“In the Trump administration, we want to make it easier for all couples to have babies, raise children,” Trump said at the White House on October 16.
“That’s why today I’m pleased to announce that after extensive negotiations, EMD Serrano, the largest fertility drug manufacturer in the world, has agreed to provide massive discounts to all fertility drugs they sell in the United States, including the most popular drug of all, the IVF drug,” he continued.
While many Republicans have cheered Trump’s announcement, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey is not on the same page.
“Trump says that, you know, he’s unaware of conservative religious objections to IVF, but IVF is inherently pro-life. And I’ll just say it doesn’t surprise me at all that Trump has this position. IVF is extremely popular, even among Republicans, and he represents the position that a lot of people have,” Stuckey says.
“But let me just explain something,” she continues. “The pro-life position is not just ‘more babies.’ We want more babies that are conceived in loving marriages between a man and a woman. Being pro-life doesn’t mean that we are pro every form of conception. Obviously, we can agree, right, that not every form of conception is moral and ethical.”
“There is a cost to IVF. In fact, most babies, most embryos that are made via IVF, the vast majority of those embryos will never be transferred and will never make it to a live birth. In fact, the IVF industry kills more babies every year than the abortion industry does,” she explains.
“If we really believe in our pro-life ethics, that a life is a life no matter how small, that human life starts at conception, then how we treat those embryos that are created in a lab that are frozen indefinitely, that are very often eugenically discarded because they’re the wrong gender or they have Down syndrome or they have some other kind of disability or they were just that unlucky extra guy that was created and their parents don’t want them anymore,” she says.
“All of that really matters. It’s not only about not killing a baby inside the womb. It’s about not discarding and mistreating life that has been created,” she adds.
To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
The Bayou State has reportedly issued an arrest warrant for a Northern California doctor accused of sending abortion pills to a Louisiana woman in 2023 — a woman who has indicated she was pressured to take the drugs and is now "haunt[ed]" by her chemical abortion.
"On multiple occasions, I have raised concerns about the unlawful distribution of these pills in our sate and the harm that it does to women," Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement. "It’s dangerous, irresponsible, unethical, and illegal to distribute these pills to strangers in violation of the criminal laws of our state, without any relationship whatsoever to the individual who may ultimately be consuming them."
'I would have told the doctor that I wanted to keep my baby.'
"I will enforce and defend the laws of our state, including suing the governors whose shield laws purport to protect these individuals from criminal conduct in Louisiana," added Murrill.
The warrant for Remy Coeytaux's arrest is the latest action in a broader battle between red and blue states over federal approvals for mifepristone — an abortion drug that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has indicated is linked to a number of serious adverse events as well as the deaths of dozens of mothers.
Rosalie Markezich, the recipient of the drug who is now "haunt[ed]" by her chemical abortion, has joined Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill in requesting to join a lawsuit aimed at prompting the FDA to prohibit telehealth prescriptions to mifepristone. Texas and Florida are similarly keen to get involved in the lawsuit that was revived last year by Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho.
Markezich claimed in a court filing earlier this month that despite initially celebrating her pregnancy, her boyfriend "soon changed his mind," then used her personal email address and mailing address to obtain mifepristone and misoprostol "from an online provider that his sister has used multiple times before."
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A few days after allegedly forwarding to Remy Coeytaux the $150 her boyfriend sent her, Markezich received the drugs by mail.
According to her declaration, Markezich changed her mind about killing her child, but her boyfriend, who apparently "had anger issues and a criminal record," allegedly coerced her into taking them — and she proved unable to throw them back up.
"The trauma of my chemical abortion still haunts me," said Markezich. "Had the FDA required an in-person visit with a doctor before dispensing the drugs, my boyfriend would never [have] been able to obtain the drugs that he made me take. I also would have told the doctor that I did not want to take them. And I would have told the doctor that I wanted to keep my baby."
'Safeguards for women regarding the administration of mifepristone have been significantly reduced.'
Murrill, who has not elaborated on what charges Coeytaux faces or when the warrant was issued, said in a statement to the Associated Press that Markezich is bravely representing many women "who are victimized by the illegal, immoral, and unethical conduct of these drug dealers."
Coeytaux, who did not immediately respond to the Associated Press' request for comment, is also named in a civil complaint filed in July with the federal court for the Southern District of Texas.
The Texas complaint, filed on behalf of Jerry Rodriguez, alleges that Rodriguez's girlfriend, Kendal Garza, became pregnant with his child but was ultimately pressured by her estranged husband to use abortion drugs allegedly obtained from Coeytaux "to murder Mr. Rodriguez's unborn child."
Weeks after the filing of Rodriguez's suit, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ordered Coeytaux to cease and desist from mailing abortion drugs into the state of Texas and indicated such conduct not only violates Texas state law but the federal Comstock Act of 1873, which prohibits the mailing of abortion-related drugs.
Whereas some red states have laws on the books enabling mothers to take legal action against out-of-state abortion drug pushers, several Democrat-run states — including California, as of Friday — have passed laws shielding abortion-pill peddlers from legal consequence for violating other states' abortion bans.
While the multi-state lawsuit that Markezich and Murrill seek to join could end up resolving this conflict, the Trump administration may end up deciding independently to impose restrictions on mifepristone prescriptions.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Martin Makary reportedly told Republican state attorneys general in a Sept. 19 letter that the Department of Health and Human Services was conducting a safety review of the abortion drug.
"Recent studies — such as the study by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), which you highlighted in your letter — indicate potential dangers that may attend offering mifepristone without sufficient medical support or supervision," said the letter. "FDA's own data collected between 2000 to 2012 indicated 2,740 adverse events, including 416 events involving blood loss requiring transfusions. Since then, safeguards for women regarding the administration of mifepristone have been significantly reduced."
A coalition of 20 Democratic attorneys general cited Kennedy's letter in a joint statement on Monday where they noted, "If access to mifepristone is challenged, we will take action to protect it."
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The simple effort of religious sisters sending postcards and Christmas cards can be a lifeline to workers feeling trapped and searching for a way out of the abortion industry.
Establishing a norm of egg freezing and IVF will further entrench the view that marriage is a capstone in life, rather than a foundation.
Parenting is not a collaborative effort in which moms and dads give gentle guidance and suggestions while offering the child an opportunity to haggle over each.
These city ordinances are not 'hollow gestures,' but real-world solutions that make an actual difference in the fight against abortion.
True compassion is equipping women to build strong, healthy pregnancies so fewer problems ever arise — not telling them to end the life of their child when challenges appear.
'We are in a fertility crisis; you would think that any physicians with expertise in this field would be a welcome addition.'
Like a sapling wounded early, my life bent and grew around the gaping wound of abandonment. It became a part of me.
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