But in 2004, the American College of Surgeons and the American Medical Association issued a document that said a “core principle” of public safety is that “physicians performing office-based surgery must have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, a transfer agreement with another physician who has admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, or maintain an emergency transfer agreement with a nearby hospital”.
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Abortion rights advocates also came together in another traditional Capitol Hill gathering space at the corner of Pine and Broadway in Seattle Central’s plaza to mark the court’s decision.
In short, the court has declared that the U.S. Constitution empowers it to serve as, in the words of former Justice Byron White, “the country’s ex-officio medical board with powers to approve or disapprove medical and operative practices and standards throughout the United States” – a proposition that an earlier court wisely rejected in 1992 in the seminal case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
The organization also said patient safety and care is their top priority.
The Supreme Court has reversed a landmark Texas pro-life law requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges and abortion facilities to meet more stringent health standards.
“I am pleased to see the Supreme Court protect women’s rights and health today”, he said.
For example, in 2009 Arizona lawmakers outlawed a longstanding practice of allowing specially trained nurse practitioners to perform certain abortions.
She called it the “death of a thousand cuts for abortion clinics”.
Justice Stephen Breyer’s majority opinion for the court held that the regulations are medically unnecessary and unconstitutionally limit a woman’s right to an abortion. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing in a concurring opinion, said it was “beyond rational belief” that the Texas law looks after women.
Texas had 41 abortion facilities in 2013, when the Republican-controlled Legislature approved the law. More to the point, he said there was no apparent reason for it. Mississippi’s law bans abortion after just 18 weeks. And colonoscopy, which he said normally takes place outside a hospital or surgical center “has a mortality rate 10 times higher than abortion”.
“It isn’t their job to determine what and how regulations are imposed, ” he said.
While the historic ruling gives clinics that shuttered in the wake of HB 2 a green light to reopen, providers say they expect abortion opponents in state government to attempt to put up more roadblocks.
However, Penny Nance, CEO & president of Concerned Women for America (CWA) said the Supreme Court decision represents a great setback for woman’s health and safety.
For the moment, there will be no immediate change in Arizona law.
“The state interest behind these policies is very clear that it was maternal health”, Seago said. “If there is any change we would notify our providers, just like any rule or law change”.
The seven states with pending abortion cases are likely to be the first to feel the legal consequences of the decision.
However that response was met with many saying that they are “pro-choice”, but “abortion is not a laughing matter”. The law provides “few, if any, health benefits for women, poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions, and constitutes an undue burden on their constitutional right to do so”.
Wilder said OR lawmakers introduced five bills, one of which would have shut down almost every abortion provider in the state.
Ginsburg wrote a short opinion noting that laws like Texas’ “that do little or nothing for health, but rather strew impediments to abortion, can not survive judicial inspection” under the court’s earlier abortion-rights decisions.
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“Thus, there was no significant health-related problem that the new law helped to cure, ” he noted. “We add that, when directly asked at oral argument whether Texas knew of a single instance in which the new requirement would have helped even one woman obtain better treatment, Texas admitted that there was no evidence in the record of such a case, ” Breyer noted. The requirement is in effect in most of Texas, Missouri, North Dakota and Tennessee. But because the complication rate from abortions is so minuscule, most abortion providers can not meet the minimum number of admittances that hospitals require before granting privileges.
