American Civil Liberties Union

In a case brought by the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, a federal district court judge in South Dakota yesterday blocked the enforcement of the state's extreme abortion law, which was scheduled to take effect today.

The extreme law is just that: extreme. As we've blogged before here and here, this law requires women to wait 72 hours between the first counseling session with the doctor and the abortion; it also requires women to first visit "crisis pregnancy centers," entities that are notorious for providing false and misleading information; and requires doctors to tell the woman of any possible risk factor published in medical and psychological journals since 1972.

Today, South Dakota's governor, Dennis Daugaard, signed a bill that creates unprecedented restrictions on access to abortion care. As we've blogged before, this law requires women to wait 72 hours between the first counseling session with the doctor and the abortion; it also requires women to first visit "crisis pregnancy centers," entities that are notorious for providing false and misleading information; and requires doctors to tell the woman of any possible risk factor published in medical and psychological journals since 1972. These new restrictions are on top of the long list of abortion restrictions in South Dakota, and come from a state that has one abortion provider.

Today is an historic day, no doubt. President Obama signed into law a bill repealing the discriminatory “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Now that that has been checked off the list, we need to remind his administration that there are lots of other things to address, including ensuring that hospitals provide emergency abortion care to pregnant women.

This issue came to the nation’s attention when a hospital in Phoenix, St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, provided a life-saving abortion to a young mother of four children who was dying from pulmonary hypertension and was 11 weeks pregnant. (We’ve previously blogged on this issue here and here.) Last week, the Bishop in Phoenix threatened to strip St. Joseph’s of its status as an official Catholic hospital unless St. Joseph’s agreed to sign a written pledge that it would not perform another life-saving abortion. The diocese made good on that threat yesterday, and stripped St. Joseph’s of its endorsement after the hospital defended its actions. As Amie Newman of RH Reality Check discussed last night, St. Joseph’s refused to agree to allow their patients to die. The hospital said, “Morally, ethically, and legally we simply cannot stand by and let someone die whose life we might be able to save.”