UPDATE

FARGO, N.D. (AP) — The owner and operator of North Dakota’s lone abortion clinic says a judge’s ruling that will delay the closing of the state’s lone abortion clinic should provide more than enough time for her to move it a few miles away to Minnesota. Red River Women’s Clinic director Tammi Kromenaker said Thursday that she was prepared to reopen her Fargo clinic in neighboring Moorhead, Minnesota, next week if the state’s abortion ban had taken effect Thursday. She says now, she’ll have more time to ensure everything goes smoothly when she reopens in Moorhead, likely within the next month. Minnesota has become an island of legal abortion in the Upper Midwest.

Previously

FARGO, N.D. (AP) — A North Dakota judge has put on hold the state’s trigger law banning abortion pending resolution of a lawsuit that argues the law violates the state constitution. Burleigh County District Judge Bruce Romanick ruled in a lawsuit brought by Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, the state’s only abortion clinic. The ban was set to take effect on July 28. The clinic argues that the North Dakota Constitution guarantees the rights of life, liberty, safety, and happiness, all of which protect the right to abortion. The state Supreme Court has previously ruled that the constitution does not offer protection for abortion.

Previously

FARGO, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota’s only abortion clinic is preparing for what could be its final day of performing procedures. The Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo will offer abortion care on Wednesday, and on Thursday a trigger ban is set to make abortion illegal in the state. Barring a judge’s intervention, it likely means an indefinite period when patients will have to travel to receive abortions until the clinic can open in a new location just across the river in Moorhead, Minnesota, where abortion remains legal. Clinic director Tammi Kromenaker has not said when the facility will be ready and did not respond to messages Tuesday.