Utahns will continue to have access to abortion up to 18 weeks of pregnancy, the majority-woman Utah Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a long-awaited decision on whether a near-total ban on such care could take effect.
The ruling only impacts a previously ordered block on the law, and does not determine the final outcome of abortion policy in the Beehive State. The case now goes to a lower court to determine the constitutionality of the trigger law.
Justices Paige Petersen, Diana Hagen and Jill Pohlman joined Associate Chief Justice John Pearce in the opinion, with Chief Justice Matthew Durrant dissenting.
Pearce wrote that Planned Parenthood Association of Utah has the legal standing to bring the case — a question the state raised when challenging the pause on the law — and that a lower court acted within its bounds when it stopped the ban from being enforced.
“The court did not abuse its discretion when it concluded that PPAU and its patients would be irreparably harmed without the injunction,” Pearce wrote. “Likewise, the court did not abuse its discretion when it concluded that the balance of harms tipped in favor of enjoining SB 174 [the trigger ban] while the parties litigate its constitutionality.”
Despite the Utah Legislature’s Republican supermajority passing the abortion ban in 2020, the law wasn’t active until June 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the precedent established in Roe v. Wade that, generally, abortion rights are protected by the federal Constitution.
Read the full story at sltrib.com.
This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.