Trump-Appointed Judge Decimates Health Care Access for Thousands in Maine

However, the organization’s lawsuit said the provision violated the Fifth Amendment and asked the court for a temporary injunction, arguing that the provision would cause their network and patients irreparable harm.

But Walker said they failed to prove that, while also noting that Roe is dead, and they could have stopped offering abortions after the Supreme Court decision, but they didn’t, so they don’t really have a constitutional leg to stand on. “Over the years, political winds have shifted and [Maine Family Planning] can only be understood as voluntarily standing its ground … despite the dramatically increased likelihood of defunding after Dobbs,” he wrote in his 19-page ruling. “Fair enough, but while its adherents may celebrate the firmness of its convictions, those convictions are not equal to the task of enjoining congressional will in this arena.”

Walker also includes Justice Antonin Scalia’s part-judgement/part-dissent from the Supreme Court’s 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed Roe v. Wade and upheld the right to abortion: “The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting,” Scalia wrote.

“That is precisely the type of democratic exercise that produced the BBB,” Walker writes, referencing Scalia’s passage. “It would be a special kind of judicial hubris to declare that the public interest has been undermined by the public.” Sounds to me like a special kind of judicial malpractice to deny healthcare to thousands because some of them voted for Trump. It’s almost like Walker just made the entire U.S. electorate into a death panel—the GOP’s favorite Obamacare boogeyman—for the poorest people in Maine. But anyways.

Maine Family Planning operates 18 clinics across the state, and serves around 8,000 patients a year, including both primary and reproductive health care. The organization already stopped accepting new patients after the bill passed; they’ll now be forced to close clinics and eliminate crucial services.

It’s worth repeating that the Hyde Amendment already bars federal funding from being used for abortion services, but Walker wrote that Congress has the power of the purse—so it can restrict and defund as it wants.

“The Trump Administration and Congress would rather topple a statewide health safety network than let low-income patients receive a cancer screening at a clinic that also offers abortions,” Nancy Northup, the President and CEO at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. “This ruling takes a sledgehammer to an already overstretched health care network, and Mainers statewide will feel the effects of defunding Maine Family Planning, regardless of their insurance status.”

The organization will likely appeal the decision, which will then go to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. As journalist and co-founder of Autonomy News, Garnet Henderson, pointed out, the First Circuit upheld Planned Parenthood’s injunction, so Maine Family Planning could still secure a win. Screw Walker and stay tuned.