BISMARCK – North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a state law blocked last year that would prohibit abortions when a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which would be the most restrictive abortion ban in the nation.
The law passed by state lawmakers in 2013 and signed by Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple would make it a Class C felony for a doctor to perform an abortion if the fetus has a detectable heartbeat, which is at around six weeks of pregnancy.
The New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights and Bismarck attorney Thomas Dickson filed a lawsuit in June 2013 challenging the ban on behalf of the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, the state’s lone abortion provider.
U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Hovland declared the law unconstitutional and permanently blocked it in April 2014. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed his ruling in July.
Stenehjem, who could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday, has said asking the nation’s highest court to review the case is “a longshot,” but cited his duty to defend the laws of the state.
The Supreme Court receives about 10,000 petitions each year but grants and hears oral arguments in only about 75 to 80 cases, according to its website. The last case the U.S. Supreme Court heard involving a lawsuit against the state of North Dakota was in 1992.
