The Texas rules required doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and forced clinics to meet hospital-like standards for outpatient surgery.
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The decision, written by Justice Stephen Breyer, found the Texas law placed an “undue burden” on women seeking an abortion.
Supporters of the Texas law argued it raised the level of care for women, but opponents said it would have closed all but a handful of clinics in Texas.
U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III let the law take effect but prevented the state from closing the clinic while physicians sought hospital privileges. The court declared that both key provisions of the law – requiring abortion doctors to have difficult-to-obtain “admitting privileges” at a local hospital and requiring clinics to have costly hospital-grade facilities – violated a woman’s right to an abortion.
“As a pro-life American, I am deeply disappointed in today’s Supreme Court decision”. Abortion doctors would need hospital admitting privileges or clinics would have to have a transfer agreement with a hospital close by. Tom Corbett, a Republican, in the aftermath of a Philadelphia criminal case in which an abortion provider, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, was convicted of killing newborn babies during illegal, late-term abortion procedures performed in filthy surroundings.
North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said state attorneys on Monday were reviewing the Supreme Court decision, but that another legal battle appears unnecessary. The opinion directed lower courts not to defer to legislative judgments, but to independently examine abortion regulations to determine if they genuinely served to protect women’s health.
Some U.S. states have pursued a variety of restrictions on abortion, including banning certain types of procedures, prohibiting it after a certain number of weeks of gestation, requiring parental permission for girls until a certain age, imposing waiting periods or mandatory counseling, and others.
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Many anti-abortion leaders were openly disappointed, bracing for the demise of restrictions that they had worked vigorously to enact over the past few years.
