North Dakota has asked a judge in the state to suspend his decision from last week, which overturned the abortion ban of the state until the Supreme Court decides on an appeal.

The state filed a motion to stay an appeal pending on Wednesday. State District Judge Bruce Romanick found that North Dakota’s abortion ban was “unconstitutionally vague” and that pregnant women have a right to abortion prior to viability.

Attorneys for North Dakota said that “a stay was warranted” until the North Dakota Supreme Court issued a ruling and mandate on the appeal, which the State would be pursuing immediately. This case raises serious, complex and new legal questions.

In 2022 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Roe v. Wade which established a constitutionally protected right to abortion. The only abortion clinic from North Dakota, which was located in Fargo, moved to Moorhead, Minnesota shortly afterward. They challenged the North Dakota trigger ban, which had been repealed and outlawed most abortions.

In 2023, North Dakota’s Republican-controlled Legislature revised the state’s abortion laws amid the ongoing lawsuit. The amended ban made all abortions a felony, except for those performed to prevent the death of a woman or to protect her from a “serious risk”. It also prohibited all abortions in cases of rape and incest. The law went into effect in April 2023.

Red River Women’s Clinic and several other doctors challenged the law, claiming it was unconstitutionally vague, especially for doctors, and that its health exception was too narrow. The state, in court, asked the judge, a little over a month prior to a trial date, to dismiss the case. Meanwhile, the plaintiffs requested that the trial be held on August. The judge canceled the August trial, and found that the law was unconstitutional. However, he has not yet issued a final judgement.

Marc Hearron, Senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in an interview on Tuesday that plaintiffs would be against any stay.

He said: “They don’t need to appeal and they don’t need to seek a halt because, as I said, the decision will not lead to any clinics opening in the near future across the state.” “We are talking about necessary, timely health care and abortion care that is generally provided by hospitals or maternal-fetal medicine experts. For the state to appeal or seek a stay of a decision which allows these physicians to just practice medicine, I find it shameful.”

Janne Myrdal of the Republican Party, who sponsored the bill 2023, expressed confidence that the Supreme Court would overturn the ruling. She said the ruling was one of the worst legal decisions she had ever read.

She said, “I challenge anyone to read his opinions and find anything other than ‘personal opinions’.”

Romanick’s ruling stated that the court was left to make findings and conclusions about an issue that is of vital importance for the public, when federal precedents on this issue are no longer in place. Much of the North Dakota precedent relied on federal precedents that have been overturned, with little idea of how the appellate courts of North Dakota will handle the issue.