The medical abortion, that doesn’t involve any hospital procedure.
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Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel for Americans United for Life, said the group’s most recent focus on health and safety provisions for abortion clinics was spurred by several events.
“Let’s say he knew he was going to vote to overturn in Texas”.
The two other clinics, in nearby Bossier and Baton Rouge, will now be performing abortions again. “If your argument is right, then New Mexico is not an available way out”, she said.
The Supreme Court on Friday temporarily blocked a Louisiana law that its opponents say would leave the state with only one abortion clinic.
As those arguments were heaped on Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller, Kennedy occasionally joined the chorus.
Just one week before the Supreme Court heard these arguments, however, the Fifth Circuit handed down another anti-abortion decision.
The Louisiana Coalition for Reproductive Freedom is a statewide alliance of organizations and individuals that work to ensure sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice for all people through advocacy, law and policy change, and movement building. Now the Supremes have sided with the district court, reinstating the injunction on Act 620 and keeping the Bayou state’s remaining clinics open for the time being.
The Fifth Circuit has issued three separate opinions in over two years (October 2013; October 2014; June 2015) regarding that law which shuttered clinics in Texas; two of three orders were effectively reversed because the Supreme Court intervened to keep the clinics open. But abortion providers say the requirement is medically unnecessary as hospitals accept any patient who developed complications after an abortion, whether the doctor had admitting privileges or not.
Friday’s action by the Supreme Court will allow two Louisiana clinics that closed after the 5th Circuit’s ruling to reopen, and saved another from imminent closure, the CRR said. Louisiana immediately appealed, asking the court to stay its decision blocking the law while that appeal proceeded.
Justice Anthony Kennedy – a swing vote on the court – questioned whether the Texas law encouraged more women to get abortions through surgery instead of simply taking pills. The Louisiana law at issue in June Medical Services closely resembles a provision of the Texas law at issue in Whole Woman’s Health.
The court’s process for dealing with emergency appeals is opaque. The law also requires clinics to upgrade their standards to meet those of an ambulatory surgical center.
Kennedy suggested Wednesday another outcome that would in essence put the Texas issue on hold for a time to see whether the remaining clinics in the nation’s second-most-populous state are able to accommodate the demand for abortions. “That lone doctor, working in one clinic, can not meet the need for approximately 10,000 abortions in Louisiana, a need that was previously met by six physicians in five clinics across the state”, they said. It also argues that the law creates unreasonable delays for women who need abortions, and does not further valid state interests.
Aware of the stakes, the three women on the court took a lead role and said it was obvious to them that the Texas lawmakers had singled out abortion clinics for unduly strict regulations.
In its previous abortion case in 2007, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to uphold the federal ban on partial-birth abortion, signed into law in 2003 by President George W. Bush.
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According to Seago, “We saw the liberal justices, whom we expect to oppose this legislation, really trying to change the role of the Court” by reviewing the medical evidence for the law themselves – a role normally reserved to the Legislature.
