A judge has temporarily halted a Colorado bill that banned abortion reversal treatment after a clinic alleged in a lawsuit that the new law violated its Constitutional rights.
Judge Daniel Domenico, who noted that Colorado is the only state to ban the treatment, issued the temporary restraining order over the weekend after Bella Health and Wellness argued that barring them from prescribing the abortion pill reversal treatment violates their First Amendment right to free speech and religious exercise.
Medical abortion is administered by taking two medications—mifepristone and then misoprostol—over a few days. Bella Health and Wellness provides patients with progesterone, which they claim walks back the effects of mifepristone.
The halt on Colorado’s bill will be evaluated in a preliminary injunction hearing scheduled for April 24.
Judge Domenico’s halt is valid for 14 days and applies only to Bella Health and Wellness.
Colorado State’s ban on abortion reversal will last at least until October when the State’s medical boards will have to determine whether the treatment is a “generally accepted standard of practice” and therefore allowed.
The idea of reversing a medical abortion has become a point of interest in the abortion clash nationwide after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving abortion up to the states. Roughly a dozen states have passed laws in the preceding years compelling abortion providers to inform their patients about the “reversal” treatment.
A Republican proposal to do the same in Colorado this year floundered in the Democrat-controlled statehouse. That is partly because the treatment has found condemnation from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, saying it’s “not based on science and [does] not meet clinical standards.”
The ban was part of a three-bill package enshrining abortion and transgender care rights in the state.
The temporary restraining order, first reported by The Colorado Sun, applies to the bill.
In Colorado, Bella Health and Wellness argued that prohibiting them from prescribing the treatment would “violate their sincerely held religious beliefs” and that they had a patient whose current treatment would be interrupted if the new law was enforced.
One of the organization’s attorneys, Laura Wolk Slavis from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, wrote in a statement: “Colorado’s new law is the opposite of choice—it targets women who have changed their minds and forces them to undergo abortions they want to stop. This law tramples the constitutional rights of these women and their doctors.”
Domenico, a district judge nominated by former President Donald Trump, wrote in his ruling: “I find that the plaintiffs are sufficiently likely to succeed on the merits of one or more of their claims that short-term relief is warranted until the defendants can be heard in opposition.”
The lawsuit arrives as the U.S. Supreme Court hears a case regarding the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone.
Spokespersons for Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and another for Colorado’s Senate Democrats declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has temporarily put a lower court order imposing significant restrictions on the distribution of the abortion drug mifepristone on hold through next Wednesday as the high court considers a request by the Biden administration to block the restrictions.
The order stems from a lawsuit by pro-life groups and doctors seeking to ban the pill.
