A coalition of abortion-rights advocates announced Wednesday that they are filing a sweeping federal lawsuit challenging several Virginia laws and regulations that they said create unjust restrictions on access to abortion.
The national Center for Reproductive Rights — partnering with Planned Parenthood, the ACLU of Virginia and several Virginia-based abortion providers — was expected to file the suit Wednesday in the Eastern District of Virginia’s Richmond division.
The suit challenges several elements of Virginia’s abortion rules, including the state’s licensing policies for abortion providers and laws that require all second-trimester abortions to be performed in hospitals, prevent clinicians from performing abortions by limiting the practice to licensed doctors, and force women to undergo a mandatory ultrasound before obtaining an abortion.
People are also reading…
Underpinning those rules, the suit says, are criminal laws that make it a felony to perform an abortion that doesn’t fall within the state’s medical standards.
“For too long, we have looked to our state legislature to ensure that our rights and liberties are protected. But they have failed us,” said Rosemary Codding, the founder and director of the Falls Church Healthcare Center, a plaintiff in the case.
“These laws have been designed to pile layer upon layer of burdensome, unwarranted and unconstitutional restrictions on abortion,” said Shelley Abrams, executive director of the Richmond-based A Capital Women’s Health Clinic, also a plaintiff.
Democrats have controlled Virginia’s executive branch since 2014, preventing the Republican-controlled General Assembly from imposing new restrictions on abortion. Then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat who left office in January, rolled back Republican-approved regulations that required abortion clinics to meet hospital-like building standards.
Family Foundation’s position
The Family Foundation, a conservative group that has sued to fight McAuliffe’s action on clinic regulations, said abortion providers are seeking a “lifeline” from the courts that they haven’t been able to get in the legislature.
“It’s clear that the abortion industry will let nothing stand in the way of it making another buck, no matter how reasonable or commonsense a practice may be in protecting vulnerable women and unborn children,” said Victoria Cobb, The Family Foundation’s president.
On a conference call Wednesday, the abortion-rights advocates behind the lawsuit described it as a way to go on offense after a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that set new legal standards for what states can and can’t do to limit abortions.
In a 5-3 opinion in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, a case that arose in Texas, the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot create a burden for women seeking abortions by passing unnecessarily restrictive health regulations.
“The vibrant, proactive coalition in Virginia has been working hard since that time to have Virginia’s law comply with the standard in Whole Woman’s Health,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “Women do not need to wait any longer in Virginia to have their laws comply with the constitutional standard.”
The lawsuit names a group of state health officials and local prosecutors as defendants.
Attorney general’s role
The task of defending the state’s abortion framework in court will fall to Attorney General Mark Herring, a Democrat who has received more than $200,000 in campaign contributions from Planned Parenthood, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. In 2014, Herring refused to defend the state’s now-obsolete ban on gay marriage. His office said Wednesday that it was still reviewing the abortion lawsuit.
In a statement, Republican leaders in the House of Delegates said they’re confident the state’s “commonsense” abortion laws will “undoubtedly be upheld in federal court if adequately defended by the attorney general.”
“We strongly urge Attorney General Mark Herring to defend the laws of the commonwealth with the full force of his office,” the GOP leaders said in a statement released by the office of Speaker Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights.
“Should he once again neglect his duty to do so, the speaker will consider using his authority to hire counsel to defend the law on behalf of the House of Delegates.”
