(Antoinette Grajeda/Arkansas Attorney)
Legal issue over Arkansas’ near-total abortion ban remains dynamic in Pulaski County Circuit Court after judge’s ruling overturned her diseased leave matters.
Pulaski County District Judge Cara Connors’ decision Friday came nearly a month after she dismissed the lawsuit because of a 2025 law requiring the Arkansas Court of Appeals to hear certain constitutional legal challenges.
But this ruling was issued on the morning of April 30, shortly after the Arkansas Supreme Court announced the 2025 bill, Act 975unconstitutional. Connors on Friday agreed with the plaintiffs that the Supreme Court’s ruling means the district court can continue hearing the case.
Act 975 took effect after several high-profile cases in which Pulaski County judges invalidated laws passed by the Republican-majority state legislature.
Arkansas has banned abortion, with the constrained exception of saving the life of a pregnant person, as of June 2022 under a law that took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Six women and an obstetrician-gynecologist – asked the district court to declare the act unconstitutional and temporarily block its enforcement.
Five of the six women traveled to Kansas or Illinois to obtain legal abortions. According to “Three of them had an unviable pregnancy, one experienced sexual violence, and one did not want to have children.” corrected complaint submitted in April. The sixth woman continued her pregnancy for seven weeks when she learned it was unviable because doctors refused to give her an abortion.
Arkansas Law makes it a crime punishable by a maximum of 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $100,000, or both, for a doctor who performs an abortion.
The plaintiffs are represented by Amplify Legal, the litigation arm of Abortion in America. Abortion in America is an abortion rights group co-founded by former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, who died last year.
Arkansas has one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, and opposing it is Amplify Legal’s first filing. The case brought national attention to the fact that the law leaves health care decisions for miscarriages in the hands of lawyers, not doctors.
“We are pleased that we can now move quickly to a hearing on our motion to block abortion bans while this lawsuit continues,” Amplify Legal said in a statement Tuesday. “Our clients will testify about their horrific experiences with abortion bans, and we look forward to demonstrating why the state’s remaining jurisdictional arguments are without merit.”
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin’s office “will continue to vigorously defend the state’s duly enacted abortion laws,” spokesman Jeff LeMaster said Tuesday.
This story was originally produced by Arkansas Attorneywhich is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network that includes the Ohio Capital Journal and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
