In Planned Parenthood South Atlantic v. Stein, (MD NC, Sept. 30, 2023), a North Carolina federal district court issued a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of two provisions of North Carolina's law regulating abortions. The court said in part:
The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their vagueness challenge to the requirement that providers determine and document the probably intrauterine location of a pregnancy before administering medication intended to terminate a pregnancy. The Act does not provide a clear standard by which providers can make this determination....
The plaintiffs are also likely to succeed on the merits of their equal protection challenge to the Act's requirement that surgical abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy must be performed in a hospital. The plaintiffs have offered uncontradicted evidence that the same medical procedures used for surgical abortions are used for miscarriage management and that the risks of those identical procedures are the same whatever their purpose... The plaintiffs have shown the absence of any rational medical basis for distinguishing between these two classes of patients....
CNN reports on the decision.
