{"id":43284,"date":"2019-02-15T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/alaska-supreme-court-strikes-down-medically-necessary-abortion-law\/"},"modified":"2019-02-15T15:31:39","modified_gmt":"2019-02-16T00:31:39","slug":"alaska-supreme-court-strikes-down-medically-necessary-abortion-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/alaska-supreme-court-strikes-down-medically-necessary-abortion-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaska Supreme Court strikes down ‘medically necessary’ abortion law"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Alaska Supreme Court on Friday struck down as unconstitutional a state law and regulation seeking to define what constitutes medically necessary abortions for purposes of Medicaid funding.<\/p>\n

The court, in a 4-1 decision, upheld a 2015 lower court ruling that had also barred the measures from being enforced.<\/p>\n

Both the law, passed in 2014, and regulation, penned during the administration of then-Gov. Sean Parnell, sought to define medically necessary abortions. Supporters argued the state should not be required to pay for elective abortions.<\/p>\n

The measures were challenged by Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands.<\/p>\n

[Alaska attorney general says he can set aside personal views on abortion]<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\n

The majority opinion written by Justice Susan Carney states that disparate restrictions on government funding for women based on their choice of abortion or childbirth deter the exercise of a fundamental right because rejection of one option entails embrace of the other.<\/p>\n

The state argued the feasibility of a program like Medicaid depended on the ability to set limits, according to the decision. However, the legislative record contained no evidence that Medicaid had actually funded non-medically necessary abortions, the ruling states.<\/p>\n

The law and regulation violate the state constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, the court ruled.<\/p>\n

Justice Craig Stowers dissented, saying he believes the Legislature can constitutionally determine as a matter of state policy what is medically necessary for purposes of Medicaid funding.<\/p>\n

[Custody case goes before Supreme Court]<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\n

He said the court in the majority opinion “goes to great lengths in construing the statute and regulation to ensure that the conclusion of unconstitutionality is inevitable.”<\/p>\n

Jessica Cler, Alaska state director for Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest and Hawaii, praised the court for striking down “this cruel, inequitable restriction on abortion access for low-income women. Politics have no place in the exam room, and today Alaska’s highest court agreed, again.”<\/p>\n

State Department of Law spokeswoman Cori Mills had no immediate comment.<\/p>\n

The law defined medically necessary abortions as those needed to avoid a threat of serious risk to a woman’s life or physical health from continuation of a pregnancy. That could mean a serious risk of death or “impairment of a major bodily function” because of one of 21 different conditions, such as congestive heart failure, seizures and epilepsy.<\/p>\n

It also included a more general category: “another physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy that places the woman in danger of death or major bodily impairment if an abortion is not performed.”<\/p>\n

The regulation is similar but also included consideration of psychiatric disorders.<\/p>\n

\n

\u2022 This is an Associated Press report by Becky Bohrer.<\/b><\/p>\n

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