Alabama Can’t Prosecute Those Who Help With Out-of-State Abortions, Judge Rules

Politics|Alabama Can’t Prosecute Those Who Help With Out-of-State Abortions, Judge Rules

Alabama cannot prosecute doctors and reproductive health organizations for helping patients travel out of the state to obtain abortions, a federal judge ruled on Monday.

Alabama has one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, and in 2022 its attorney general, Steve Marshall, a Republican, raised the possibility of charging doctors with criminal conspiracy for recommending abortion care out of state.

Multiple clinics and doctors challenged Mr. Marshall’s comments in court, accusing him of threatening their First Amendment rights, as well as the constitutional right to travel. The Justice Department under the Biden administration had also weighed in with support for the clinics, arguing that “threatened criminal prosecutions violate a bedrock principle of American constitutional law.”

On Monday, the judge, Myron H. Thompson of the Middle District of Alabama, in Montgomery, ruled that Mr. Marshall would be violating both the First Amendment and the right to travel if he sought prosecution.

“It is one thing for Alabama to outlaw by statute what happens in its own backyard,” Judge Thompson, who was named to the court by President Jimmy Carter, wrote in his 131-page opinion.

“It is another thing,” he added, “for the state to enforce its values and laws, as chosen by the attorney general, outside its boundaries by punishing its citizens and others who help individuals travel to another state to engage in conduct that is lawful there but the attorney general finds to be contrary to Alabama’s values and laws.”