A Louisiana Sheriff is promising to defy a state law that prohibits abortion by refusing to imprison anybody apprehended for violating it. Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson provided a declaration on Thursday revealing she will contradict anybody into custody at the Orleans Justice Center who is apprehended for breaking the state’s 2006 “trigger law,” which prohibits abortions in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court reversing Roe v. Wade.
“Our community elected me to bring progressive change to our jail, not bring us back to the days before Roe v. Wade,” Hutson said. “I stand with our district attorney and city council in saying we will not use the limited resources of our offices to criminalize a women’s right to choose or a physician’s duty of care.”
The statement followed a New Orleans City Council conference on July 7th, when members voted 6-0 to authorize a resolution asking the city’s cops, district attorneys, and other police not to utilize local resources to assist enforcement of the state’s abortion restriction.
“The city of New Orleans recognizes that reproductive rights are human rights and embraces the tenets of equality, dignity, autonomy, access to critical health care information, bodily integrity and respect for private life with the highest attainable standard of health, including sexual and reproductive health, without discrimination, as well as the right to freedom from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” the resolution read.
“The city of New Orleans has a responsibility to protect its residents from any violation of their human rights and any criminalization of the free exercise thereof.”
It’s uncertain what, if any, effect the resolution will have on females looking for abortions or doctors who carry out the treatment. Attorney General Jeff Landry has actually promised to hold the latter criminally responsible regardless of a legal challenge in progress.
“The temporary restraining order does not – and cannot – immunize medical providers from liability from criminal conduct,” Landry wrote in a letter to Louisiana State Medical Society Executive Vice President Jeff Williams on June 29. “Louisiana medical providers should not fall prey to breathless media reports of injunctions. Subject to certain exceptions, abortion is a criminal offense in the state of Louisiana, and it has been since last Friday.
“It is incumbent on this office to advise you that any medical provider who would perform or has performed an elective abortion after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs is jeopardizing his or her liberty and medical license,” Landry wrote.
A New Orleans judge enforced a momentary limiting order three days after the U.S. Supreme Court judgment in a suit brought by a Shreveport abortion center and abortion supporters, however, the judge agreed with Landry in a hearing on Friday, concurring that the appropriate place for the case in East Baton Rouge Parish.
The Friday judgment eliminates a short-term limiting order that enabled the state’s three abortion centers to resume. Complainants in the case claim Louisiana laws that prohibit abortions in nearly all scenarios, other than if a mother’s life is in danger or the child will not survive after birth, are uncertain both in regards to exceptions and when it works. Landry argues the complainants are “willfully misreading clear terms in the law in an attempt to manufacture arguments that the statutes are unconstitutionally vague.”
It is possible an East Baton Rouge judge might enforce another injunction to obstruct the law, which supplies as much as a 15-year prison term for medical professionals who carry out abortions, as the case progresses.
Any ruling in the case is anticipated to be appealed.
The Louisiana Supreme Court today voted 4-2 to reject a demand from Landry and the Louisiana Department of Health Secretary Courtney Phillips to intervene in the case “at this preliminary stage of proceedings.”
H/T Just The News
