Zincwarrior
Diamond Member
Federal judge overturns Alabama's AG's attempts to threaten citizens for helping women travel outside the state to have abortions, declaiming that state laws only exist in those states, and that the right to travel is fundamental. Thoughts USMB? This appears in line with state's rights.
Alabama’s attorney general cannot threaten groups in the state with prosecution for helping women travel out of state to obtain abortions, a federal judge ruled late Monday.
“It is one thing for Alabama to outlaw by statute what happens in its own backyard,” U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson concluded in a 131-page decision. “It is another thing for the State to enforce its values and laws, as chosen by the Attorney General, outside its boundaries by punishing its citizens and others who help individuals travel to another State to engage in conduct that is lawful there.”
That right to interstate travel, which Thompson deemed “one of our most fundamental constitutional rights,” was central to the lawsuit. So, too, was the First Amendment.
And Thompson focused on “the extraordinary nature” of Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall’s effort to keep women in Alabama from obtaining abortions elsewhere, in part by suggesting that groups aiding them might be involved in a “criminal conspiracy.”
Alabama’s attorney general cannot threaten groups in the state with prosecution for helping women travel out of state to obtain abortions, a federal judge ruled late Monday.
“It is one thing for Alabama to outlaw by statute what happens in its own backyard,” U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson concluded in a 131-page decision. “It is another thing for the State to enforce its values and laws, as chosen by the Attorney General, outside its boundaries by punishing its citizens and others who help individuals travel to another State to engage in conduct that is lawful there.”
That right to interstate travel, which Thompson deemed “one of our most fundamental constitutional rights,” was central to the lawsuit. So, too, was the First Amendment.
And Thompson focused on “the extraordinary nature” of Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall’s effort to keep women in Alabama from obtaining abortions elsewhere, in part by suggesting that groups aiding them might be involved in a “criminal conspiracy.”
