'John Doe' doctors to testify anonymously in Louisiana abortion case

Lawyer will immediately dive into evidence and testimony as a federal judge opens a six-day trial of three clinics’ challenge to Louisiana’s law requiring them to be able to admit patients to a hospital within 30 miles.

Clinic doctors will testify with a screen hiding them from spectators. The doctors sued anonymously, as “John Does”, and a court order has made virtually all information about the clinics confidential. That includes any details about the clinics’ staff, physicians and patients.

The docket notes that attorneys for three of Louisiana’s five abortion clinics and for the state have waived opening arguments. Judge John deGravelles suggested they do so, said Ilene Jaroslaw, an attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, a New York non-profit representing three of Louisiana’s five abortion clinics.

DeGravelles has scheduled the six-day nonjury trial starting Monday in Baton Rouge.

The law is among hundreds of abortion restrictions passed around the country in the past several years. Lawyers for the state of Louisiana say this one was written to protect women. Opponents say it was meant to make it essentially impossible to get abortions.

Only one of the six doctors at Louisiana’s five abortion clinics – an obstetrician who also does a few abortions – “unequivocally” would be able to meet the law’s requirements, Jaroslaw said. She said the others all applied for admitting privileges before the lawsuit was filed in August, but have not received them.

Louisiana does not require doctors doing any other sort of procedures to have admitting privileges at a local hospital, the lawsuit says. “Physicians perform similar, and often higher risk, outpatient procedures in their offices without admitting privileges,” it says.

Washington attorney Kyle Duncan and Natalie Decker of the Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based conservative legal non-profit, are defending the state. Duncan said attorneys also waived closing statements.

Duncan has asked deGravelles to throw out claims that the law was passed to keep women from getting abortions. Duncan says that claim was erased by a federal appeals court ruling for a more stringent Texas law.

It was a ruling that largely upheld Texas’s abortion law, which required doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and required abortion clinics to meet hospital standards.

The Louisiana clinics’ response, filed Tuesday, said the fifth US circuit court of appeals’ ruling on Texas is not final and will be appealed.

“We’re confident that we’ll be able to present all our evidence,” Jaroslaw said.

David Brown, a Center for Reproductive Rights attorney who is working on both the Texas and Louisiana lawsuits, said attorneys will ask the nation’s highest court sometime this summer to consider the Texas ruling.

“We won’t necessarily know by July whether the supreme court will review the case or not. But we’ll know at least whether the 5th circuit ruling in the Texas case will be stayed” by the high court or the full 5th circuit, he said.

The 5th circuit sets law for Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi unless the supreme court overturns it.