Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall today responded to a lawsuit challenging the state’s new law that seeks to ban almost all abortions.

The move was the next step in the anticipated legal battle over the nation’s strictest abortion ban, which is not in effect.

Alabama’s three abortion clinics, with backing from the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood Southeast, filed the lawsuit in May, saying the law would violate their clients’ constitutional rights by making abortion illegal.

That was just days after Gov. Kay Ivey signed the law, which seeks to make abortion a felony in almost all cases.

In today’s 11-page answer to the lawsuit, attorneys for the state said there is no right to abortion in the U.S. Constitution.

That’s in conflict with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Roe v. Wade case in 1973, which held that women have a constitutional right to abortion up until the time a fetus is viable. That has remained the law of the land since.

Proponents of Alabama’s abortion ban said their intent was to seek a reversal of Roe v. Wade.

The Alabama law is scheduled to take effect Nov. 15.

The Alabama law makes it a Class A felony, punishable by up to 99 years in prison, for a doctor to perform an abortion. The law allows an exception to protect the woman from a serious health risk or in cases of fetal anomalies that would result in a stillbirth or death shortly after birth.

The plaintiffs asked the court to declare the Alabama law unconstitutional and issue an injunction to block it.

The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson in the Middle District of Alabama.

Thompson ruled in 2017 that Alabama’s ban on the most commonly used second trimester abortion method was unconstitutional. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Thompson’s decision. Marshall has asked the Supreme Court to review the decision, a request that was backed by other states.