By Baptist Message staff NEW ORLEANS, La. (LBM) – A Shreveport abortion clinic and multiple doctors who perform abortions have voluntarily dropped their lawsuit that challenged the state’s clinic licensing regulations. Hope Medical Group for Women, formerly June Medical Services, originally filed the case in 2016 and sought to invalidate most of the state’s health and safety requirements relating to abortion, including those to ensure informed consent, provide for the reporting of accurate data on abortion complications, require compliance with the sanitary code and require abortion clinic medical staff to meet basic qualifications for competency. The U.S. Fifth Circuit of Appeals reviewed the case in October and called into question both the plaintiffs' standing to bring the challenge the “cumulative effects” theory they argued. The case had returned to the U.S. Middle District Court in Baton Rouge when it was dismissed, and last week Hope Medical Services and the physicians who perform abortions dropped their challenge to the lawsuit. “The abortion industry's voluntary dismissal of their radical lawsuit aimed at dismantling nearly every one of Louisiana’s health and safety requirements related to abortion is further … [Read more...]