A federal judge has ruled that Alabama cannot prosecute anyone who helps someone travel out of state for an abortion.
While there have yet to be any such charges filed, the state AG has announced that he is looking into this, so there is already a chilling effect on healthcare providers:
Alabama’s attorney general cannot prosecute individuals and groups that help Alabama women travel to other states to obtain abortions, a federal judge ruled on Monday.
The US district judge Myron Thompson sided with an abortion fund and medical providers who sued Alabama’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, after he suggested they could face prosecution under anti-conspiracy laws. Thompson’s ruling declared that such prosecutions would violate both the first amendment and a person’s right to travel.
Marshall has not pursued any such prosecutions. However, he said he would “look at closely” whether facilitating out-of-state abortions is a violation of Alabama’s criminal conspiracy laws. The ruling was a victory for the Yellowhammer Fund, an abortion assistance fund that had paused providing financial assistance to low-income people in the state because of the possibility of prosecution.………
“It is one thing for Alabama to outlaw by statute what happens in its own backyard. It is another thing for the state to enforce its values and laws, as chosen by the attorney general, outside its boundaries by punishing its citizens and others who help individuals travel to another state to engage in conduct that is lawful there but the attorney general finds to be contrary to Alabama’s values and laws,” Thompson wrote in the 131-page opinion.
It's like prosecuting people for organizing a trip to Los Vegas, and it i9 clearly unconstitutional.
Or at least it is until the Supreme Court issues yet another corrupt ruling.
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