Access Independent Health Services v. Wrigley
The North Dakota Supreme Court upheld the state’s abortion ban despite three of five justices concluding a health-risk exception was unconstitutionally vague, because the state constitution requires four justices to declare legislation unconstitutional. The court reversed a trial court that had struck down the ban on grounds it violated a woman’s fundamental right to obtain an abortion pre-viability and the exceptions were unconstitutionally vague. The state high court in January 2025, refused to stay that trial court ruling, finding at that juncture the state had not shown it was likely to prevail on appeal.
In the court’s November 2025 decision, three justices found vagueness in the ban’s health-risk exception violated due process by deterring pregnant women’s constitutionally protected right to receive an abortion to preserve their life or health, declining to decide whether the state constitution’s natural-rights clause protects the broader right to abortion the trial court recognized. Two justices, however, concluded the ban prohibits abortion only in circumstances outside the scope of the right, as they interpreted it, “to defend one’s life from probable serious bodily injury or death,” so did not trigger the more stringent vagueness standard the majority applied. The law is not void for vagueness under the court’s ordinary test, those two justices opined.
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