Utah passed its trigger law in 2020 so the state could immediately limit abortions in almost all circumstances if the U.S. Supreme Court were to overturn Roe v. Wade. The nation’s high court did so in 2022, saying abortion was not constitutionally protected and that states should make their own laws regarding abortion.
Planned Parenthood Association of Utah immediately sued the state, claiming the trigger laws violated rights guaranteed to residents under the Utah State Constitution. A district court judge sided with PPAU, blocking the trigger law from taking effect and keeping abortions legal in Utah up to 18 weeks.
State attorneys appealed the ruling to the Utah Supreme Court, which on Thursday, Aug. 1, said the lower court wasn’t wrong when it paused implementation of the law.
On Friday, CEO of Planned Parenthood Association of Utah Kathryn Boyd told KPCW the state supreme court ruling confirmed that her organization has a right to represent its patients, providers and other staff in proving the ban would cause harm.
The court also found the trigger law breaches state constitutional rights to privacy, gender equality, the right for any person to decide on the makeup of their family and the right to personal bodily autonomy.
The case now goes back to a lower court to decide the constitutionality of the trigger law.
Boyd said if the court had instead allowed the trigger law to go into effect, “Chaos would ensue. Patients who seek care with us throughout the entire state, and even from other states around us, like Idaho, would not be able to access abortion care here.”
Boyd said in other states that have abortion bans there is a chilling effect where doctors are afraid to provide care to patients.
“Women come into emergency rooms, and they're having some kind of trauma, they're bleeding, they're worried that they may be losing the pregnancy," she said. "This is a wanted pregnancy, and those doctors, they're scared to treat those patients. They're scared to use the training that they spent years and years in school to learn to take care of people, so they're sending people home with potential life-threatening conditions.”
A 2022 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found Utah had one of the lowest abortion rates nationally. The most recent data from the Utah Department of Health and Human Services shows there were 41 abortions in Summit County and 17 in Wasatch County in 2021. That’s compared to the state total of almost 3,000.
