Enabling advanced practice clinicians in Alaska to provide medication abortion

In a strongly worded opinion, the Superior Court in Alaska granted Legal Voice’s request for a preliminary injunction to enable advanced practice clinicians to provide medication abortion, concluding that: 

“Planned Parenthood has shown that it is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that prohibiting advance practice clinicians from providing medication abortion violates patients’ right to privacy under the Alaska Constitution by significantly restricting the availability of abortions in this state without sufficient justification. The law also likely violates patients’ right to equal protection, since it prevents patients eking abortions from receiving care from advance practice clinicians that patients experiencing miscarriage may receive from the same providers.”

Legal Voice has partnered with Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i. Alaska, Indiana, and Kentucky (PPGNHAIK) in challenging Alaska’s “physician-only” law. More information on the case can be found here.