Louisiana asks court to allow abortion ban enforcement

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Louisiana’s Supreme Court has been asked to allow enforcement of Louisiana’s ban on most abortions, Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office said Tuesday.

A north Louisiana abortion clinic and other abortion rights advocates are arguing against Landry’s request.

Louisiana’s anti-abortion statutes include so-called triggers that were designed to instantly take effect once the U.S. Supreme Court reversed abortion rights.

But a state judge in New Orleans last week blocked enforcement of the law pending a court hearing on a lawsuit filed by a north Louisiana abortion clinic and others. The suit claims the law is unclear on when the ban takes affect and on medical exceptions to the ban.

The filing by the attorney general’s office, announced Tuesday and dated July 1, says the order blocking enforcement should be dissolved. The filing says the abortion rights advocates who filed the suit “are willfully misreading clear terms in the law in an attempt to manufacture arguments that the statutes are unconstitutionally vague.”

Abortion rights supporters argued in briefs filed Tuesday afternoon, that it’s premature for the state Supreme Court to act on Landry’s request before the district court or a state appeal court has fully considered the case and weighed in on its merits.