This case is the most significant abortion case to reach the Supreme Court since 2007.
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The challengers’ brief said the law “would delay or prevent thousands of women from obtaining abortions and lead a few to resort to unsafe or illegal methods of ending an unwanted pregnancy”. “Before the law began to take effect”, The Guardian reports, “Texas had 41 abortion clinics”.
The Texas law has two key provisions. Two provisions in the law require that doctors at clinics have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of the clinics, and that clinics have facilities equal to those of an outpatient surgical center.
To bolster their point about HB2’s true aim, advocates often indicate a statement former Texas Gov. Rick Perry made at an anti-abortion rally held in 2012, when he said that “an ideal world is one without abortion”.
In the Supreme Court’s review of the case, Kennedy is poised to be a key player, and there’s already a sense of how he might come down.
In the 1992 Casey case, the court said states can’t enact “unnecessary health regulations that have the goal or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion”.
Proponents of the law say the provisions are necessary to ensure women’s health and safety.
At issue is a 2013 Texas law requiring abortion services meet standards applied to ambulatory surgical centers.
The court took no action on a separate appeal from MS, where a state law would close the only abortion clinic, in Jackson.
The measures were modest and sensible, Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, said Friday. According to this ruling, statues have the right to regulate abortion, so long as the regulations they institute do not impose an undue burden on women’s right to choose.
The case will make the Supreme Court rule on one of the thorniest, most divisive issues in the country, and will also land right in the middle of the presidential campaign for the 2016 elections. They also claim that the HB 2 restrictions do not advance the state’s interest in promoting health.
Congresswomen and former nurse Diane Black of Tennessee said in response to the news, “As a nurse for more than 40 years, I know that the abortion laws on the books in Texas exist to protect the health and safety of women”.
Texas has been one of several states governed by Republicans which have pushed through new laws that effectively circumscribe the ability of women to seek terminations and challenge the broad current legal status quo that was laid down in the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling.
“What the Supreme Court does with that case will inform us as to the status of our legislation”, he said. “Texas women deserve their constitutionally-protected privacy and health care like every other American”.
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The petitioner, Whole Woman’s Health, is an abortion provider that wants the court to strike down the new requirements because it asserts the requirements are an “undue burden” on women who wish to abortion their unborn babies.
