Pro-choice activists assemble in downtown Memphis during a “Stop Abortion Bans Day of Action” rally hosted by the Tennessee chapter of Planned Parenthood in Tennessee, U.S., May 21, 2019. (Karen Pulfer Focht/Reuters)

Over the weekend, a federal judge sided with abortion providers and granted a preliminary injunction to block an emergency order in Alabama that attempted to delay abortion procedures until the COVID-19 pandemic has died down.

Alabama’s Republican governor Kay Ivey issued the order in mid March and it is slated to last until April 30. Contrary to what opponents claim, the policy had to do with far more than restricting abortion. It required that all health-care professionals in Alabama delay any medical procedures other than those related to health emergencies or that were needed to “avoid serious harm from an underlying condition or disease, or necessary as part of a patient’s ongoing and active treatment.”


The state’s argument in favor of the policy was similar to those presented in other states where similar orders were put in place: Limiting health-care procedures to emergencies lowers the number of instances in which COVID-19 could spread and preserves scarce medical equipment for health-care professionals dealing with the current crisis.

Uninterested in this rationale, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the state on behalf of an abortionist in Alabama, and this past Sunday, U.S. district judge Myron Thompson ruled against the order.

“Based on the current record, the defendants’ efforts to combat COVID-19 do not outweigh the lasting harm imposed by the denial of an individual’s right to terminate her pregnancy, by an undue burden or increase in risk on patients imposed by a delayed procedure, or by the cloud of unwarranted prosecution against providers,” Thompson wrote.



In response to the decision, ACLU attorney Alexa Kolbi-Molinas said, “Preventing someone from getting an abortion doesn’t do anything to stop the COVID-19 virus, it just takes the decision whether to have a child out of their hands.” Here Kolbi-Molinas employs a sleight of hand beloved by abortion defenders. A woman who gets an abortion already has a child; the decision to have an abortion is a choice to dispense with an existing child. What Kolbi-Molinas means, as do all who defend the right to abortion, is that a woman who already has a child may decide whether she wishes to give birth to him or end his life.

Meanwhile, judges like Thompson across the country rule that even a global pandemic is not reason enough to give states greater leeway in temporarily limiting access to abortion, among many other non-essential procedures (which, unlike abortion, aim at health rather than at death). While a few courts have sided with states on this matter in recent weeks, most have not, proving once again that under U.S. jurisprudence, there are few things more sacred than the manufactured constitutional right to abortion.