Judge Makes Arkansas Pay $69,000 For Losing Abortion Lawsuit

That's Dave Rapert up there. He's the guy who sponsored Arkansas' ban on abortions after 12 weeks. He's the guy responsible for getting the Arkansas legislature to override Governor Mike Beebe's veto, knowing the Governor said the ban was clearly Unconstitutional.

Well, in March, the ban was overturned.

Well yesterday the bill came in for the state and it doesn't make Rapert look good at all:

Federal Judge Susan Webber Wright has ordered the state of Arkansas to pay more than $69,000 in the lawsuit striking down the state's ban on most abortions at 12 weeks of pregnancy.

The total comes out to $65,580 in attorney fees to attorneys for Drs. Louis Jerry Edwards and Tom Tvedten and $3,445 in costs. Which is actually a REDUCTION from what the lawyers were asking, because she challenged the expense for two New York lawyers who attended a preliminary hearing but didn't speak.

But wait. It gets better. And worse for Rapert and the forced-birthers in Arkansas: If you recall, the original order striking down the ban left in place a forced ultrasound provision with fetal heartbeat detection. Check this out (emphasis mine):

Note in the judge's order that the bill was run up by plaintiffs' having to fight an effort to intervene by an anti-abortion group. The judge wrote, too, should Bre'er Rapert try to tell you he somehow won this case because a fetal heartbeat test was preserved as severable from the abortion ban:

    A plaintiff achieves prevailing party status when actual relief on the merits of his claim materially alters the legal relationship between the parties by modifying the defendant's behavior in a way that directly benefits the plaintiff. Here, Plaintiffs successfully blocked Defendants’ ability to enforce the prohibition on abortions at or after twelve weeks when a fetal heartbeat is detected, and there is no question that they are prevailing parties.

Read Judge Webber Wright's order here.

Naturally Dave Rapert, the victim of not one but TWO legal defeats, had a temper tantrum.

When judges assert the will of the people wholly in this country, they are pulling the rug out from underneath representative democracy. By the way, Saudi Arabia, they don’t live under the same kind of law that we do. They live under the law that they see fit to live under there. We have that right here, too. And that’s why there’s such an injustice here.

Yep, you heard that right. He wants America to be more like Saudi Arabia. I guess he can join Dave Brat in his theocratic wet dreams.