A hearing scheduled for this morning to consider a Little Rock abortion clinic's arguments against the state's temporary ban on surgical abortions has been canceled after state officials indicated they were preparing to lift the ban.
U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker canceled the hearing in an order handed down Thursday afternoon.
She did so at the request of Little Rock Family Planning Services. Attorneys for the abortion clinic said in a court filing that the announcement Wednesday by Gov. Asa Hutchinson that the Health Department would lift its ban on elective surgical procedures starting Monday had potentially made the matter moot.
The Health Department had ordered Little Rock Family Planning Services to stop performing surgical abortions on April 10 to comply with its prohibition on elective procedures.
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A few days later, Baker blocked the order, allowing the clinic to continue the procedures. Baker was overruled on Wednesday by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which reinstated the ban.
The Health Department has yet to issue its official directive on how elective surgeries will resume. A spokeswoman for the agency said that the directive likely would be issued today.
In the meantime, the ban on surgical abortions remains in place.
"We're waiting for the final directive, we're not resuming anything," Bettina Brownstein, an attorney for the clinic, said Thursday.
Health Secretary Nate Smith told reporters at the governor's daily briefing Wednesday that all medical procedures resuming on Monday will have to be done following certain guidelines, including that the patient must be tested ahead of time for the coronavirus. Asked specifically if that meant that surgical abortions would be allowed to resume, Smith suggested that decision would be left with the clinic.
"I think that will really depend on what the facility decides to do in terms of whether they can comply with these points in the directive," Smith said Wednesday.
Little Rock Family Planning Services is one of two abortion providers in the state, and the only one that performs surgical procedures.
The other operating clinic, a Planned Parenthood facility in Little Rock, offers only medication-induced abortions, also known as the abortion pill.
The pill is typically used in the first 11 weeks of pregnancy, and accounted for less than a third of the total abortions performed in the state in 2018, according to Health Department records.
Surgical abortions can be legally obtained in Arkansas until the 20th week of pregnancy.
In a court filing late Wednesday, attorneys for Little Rock Family Planning Services asked Baker to block the state's elective-surgery prohibition as it applies to women who would be too far along in their pregnancies to legally receive an abortion once the restriction is lifted. That request was to be considered at the hearing today, before it was canceled.
Baker ordered attorneys for the state to reply to Little Rock Family Planning Services' motion for an injunction by Monday.
"I am pleased that public health officials will not be distracted and look forward to filing a brief Monday," Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said in a statement Thursday.
In a similar move on Thursday, abortion providers in Texas withdrew their request to have a judge block a prohibition on abortions after Gov. Greg Abbott issued new guidelines for elective procedures that the clinics were able to abide by, The Dallas Morning News reported.
Metro on 04/24/2020