WASHINGTON, D.C. (September 26, 2018)
Today, Americans United for Life filed a “friend of the court” brief in Planned Parenthood of Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma v. Jegley, asking the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the lower court’s decision prohibiting Arkansas from enforcing its law requiring medication abortion providers to have a contract with a physician to handle complications. This common-sense health and safety law was challenged by Planned Parenthood, and despite the vast evidence that abortion—and especially medication abortion—is unsafe, the district court concluded that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt settled the issue of abortion safety and required it to find that abortions are safe in the first and second trimesters. AUL’s brief explained that Hellerstedt actually requires a trial court to both consider the specific facts of each case and plaintiffs to present sufficient evidence that the law causes an “undue burden” on abortion access, neither of which occurred in the lower court.
