Federal judge allows challenge to Alabama abortion prosecution threats to proceed

A federal judge Monday allowed a lawsuit aimed at stopping Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall from prosecuting those who help Alabamians seek out-of-state abortion care to move forward.

U.S. District Judge Myron H. Thompson denied Marshall’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, upholding the plaintiff’s claims of right to travel and limits on the extraterritorial application of state law.

“The claim will not be dismissed because (a) the right to travel includes the right both to move physically between states and to do what is lawful in those states, and (b) prosecuting those who facilitate lawful out-of-state abortions, as the attorney general threatens to do, would violate that right,” Thompson wrote in the ruling.

Thompson wrote that Marshall’s characterization of the “right to travel as merely a right to move physically between the states contravenes history, precedent, and common sense,” and added that “such a constrained conception of the right to travel would erode the privileges of national citizenship and is inconsistent with the Constitution.”

A message seeking comment was left with Marshall’s office Monday. Alabama passed an effective abortion ban in 2019 which became law in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down federal abortion rights protections in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

A coalition of reproductive and civil rights groups sued Marshall last year, citing statements he made in an August 2022 radio interview in which Marshall said that health care providers could face felony charges for assisting Alabamians in traveling to other states to obtain legal abortion care.

Marshall’s office sought dismissal of the lawsuit, arguing that state statute allows law enforcement to charge people with committing a crime outside the state if it were illegal to do so in Alabama. The office wrote that “a crime receives no constitutional protection.”

Alison Mollman, legal director of the ACLU of Alabama, said in a phone interview Tuesday that the ruling signals that Marshall’s threats may pose constitutional concerns.

“I think this is a victory in many ways for Alabama and for health care providers and their patients, but it’s only a partial victory,” she said. “This case will still need to go forward, and we’re looking forward to having our day in court.”.

The ACLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of West Alabama Women’s Center in Tuscaloosa; Dr. Yashica Robinson and Alabama Women’s Center, both in Huntsville, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama in Montgomery.

Alabama Attorney General doubles down on threats to prosecute out-of-state abortion care

The plaintiffs alleged that without court intervention, pregnant individuals could face delays in accessing necessary care, and that some may be coerced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.

The lawsuit emphasized the potential serious consequences in a state with the nation’s third-highest maternal mortality rate, particularly among Black women, who experience a disproportionate number of maternal deaths due to systemic racism.

Meagan Burrows, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement that “Today’s ruling sends a strong signal to anti-abortion politicians that their efforts to prevent pregnant people in states with bans from obtaining the help they need to access legal, out-of-state abortion care are blatantly unconstitutional.”

Robin Marty, the operations director of West Alabama Women’s Center, said Tuesday that it’s been “far too long” that providers have been able to offer information that is legally available to patients about their reproductive health choices. 

“For people who are becoming pregnant, they deserve the right to know everything that they could possibly choose to do with that pregnancy, and being cut off from the ability to provide full care to our patients has been horrifying,” Marty said.