Port: Abortion ban injunction is an egregious act of judicial activism and the judge ought to be recalled
Minot, N.D. — I’m probably spitting in the wind on this one, because everyone who has an opinion on District Court Judge Bruce Romanick’s decision to keep in place an injunction blocking North Dakota’s abortion ban is going to filter it through their existing abortion opinions.
Pro-choice people are going to like his position, because they don’t want the ban to take effect. And vice versa for the pro-life folks.
But, for a moment, try to suspend your opinions about abortion (personally, I’d prefer we keep it legal before about 15 weeks) and consider Romanick’s decision from a legal perspective.
Currently, in North Dakota, there is not one paragraph, sentence, word, or syllable written into our state constitution with the intention of creating a right to abortion. Nor is there any precedent, set by our state courts, reading such a right into the penumbras of our state’s founding document.
To the extent that there is jurisprudence in North Dakota that has recognized the right to an abortion, it has been built on federal precedent — Roe vs. Wade, primarily — which the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down.
