Although restricting abortion has long been a conservative goal in Mississippi, the Republican-appointed judge considering the constitutionality of the state's stringent new abortion law doesn't play politics in the courtroom, according to those who know him.
U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III temporarily blocked the new law that, if enforced, could shut down the state's only abortion clinic.
Jordan (pronounced JER-dun) is a former GOP county chairman. He was recommended for the bench in 2006 by his former boss, Republican U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, and nominated by President George W. Bush. But even in a state where top Republicans supported a failed 2011 ballot initiative to declare that life begins when a human egg is fertilized, attorneys from across the political spectrum say Jordan is not ideologically inclined.
"Some judges play politics, but that's one who does not," said attorney John Reeves, a Republican former state lawmaker who has handled cases before Jordan but has no business pending before him.
"Judge Jordan doesn't have any agenda," Reeves told The Associated Press. "His only agenda, from what I can tell, is to follow the law."
The state's only abortion clinic, Jackson Women's Health Organization, filed a lawsuit June 27 challenging the new law that was to take effect July 1. The law would require anyone doing abortions at the clinic to have privileges to admit patients to a local hospital.
Clinic owner Diane Derzis contends the law would regulate the facility out of business and limit women's access to a constitutionally protected procedure.
If the clinic closes, abortion providers could become nearly impossible to find in Mississippi. To avoid regulation as an abortion clinic, a doctor's office may perform no more than 10 of the procedures a month. The closest abortion clinics to Jackson are about 200 miles away, in Louisiana, Tennessee or Alabama.
The law was passed with bipartisan support in a Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, who often says he wants the state to be "abortion-free." Supporters said the admitting privileges requirement should protect women's health, but Bryant also said the day he signed the law: "If it closes that clinic, then so be it."
At a hearing Wednesday, Jordan will hear arguments about whether to extend the temporary block he put on the law the day it was to take effect. Regardless of what he decides, his ruling is certain to be appealed.
"Though the debate over abortion continues, there exists legal precedent the court must follow," Jordan wrote in his temporary restraining order.
The U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 established a nationwide right to abortion. In 1992, the court's decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey upheld the Roe decision and allowed states to regulate abortions before fetuses are viable. The 1992 decision also said states may not place undue burdens or substantial obstacles to women seeking abortion, said George Cochran, a constitutional law professor at the University of Mississippi.
Because of the 1992 ruling, Cochran said Jordan's decision should be "a very straightforward thing."
"When you have members of the Legislature and the governor publicly saying that this is an attempt to have an 'abortion-free' state, then it's clear that it's designed to place an undue burden or substantial obstacle to women seeking abortion," Cochran said.
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