ATLANTA — New state abortion laws likely to become bogged down in legal challenges face another potential obstacle: prosecutors who refuse to enforce them. The four district attorneys who said they would not enforce the laws at all cited the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide, saying their states’ abortion laws clearly conflict with that decision. The pushback highlights the vast authority of elected prosecutors and raises the potential for uneven enforcement of abortion laws within states. Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner in St. Louis, Missouri, said in a statement that her office was examining the effect of the state’s abortion law on health care providers in the city. “It does not allow prosecutors to ignore whole cloth the laws that our legislature passes.

Source: National Post May 30, 2019 05:31 UTC