The head of an abortion rights legal nonprofit says she expects a MS law to be among the first affected by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning a Texas abortion law.
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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. The decision means Texas can’t require all abortion doctors to obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital nor force abortion clinics to meet surgical-center standards regardless of whether they perform surgical abortions.
Merkley also hailed the court ruling in Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt which challenged a Texas law severely limiting women’s access to reproductive health services.
More than 40 abortion clinics in Texas were open at the time, but neither Richards nor abortion rights groups would predict whether Texas would ever reach that number again.
Abortion providers said the rules would have cut the number of abortion clinics in Texas to fewer than 10 if they had been allowed to take full effect.
Backhanded regulation of abortion clinics sold under the guise of women’s safety has been one of the most popular, and successful, tactics of the pro-life movement in recent years.
While the ruling is an enormous victory for abortion providers, it also leaves them and their allies facing the quandary of how to restore access in Texas, which has more than 5 million women of reproductive age.
In Kansas, lawmakers passed similar requirements in 2011, but that law has been temporarily blocked pending trial in a Shawnee County courtroom.
A separate appeal is pending at the Supreme Court from Wisconsin, where federal judges have struck down that state’s admitting-privileges law.
“Our Texas health centers were inundated with calls from frightened and upset patients, and women were lined up outside our doors in the morning, waiting to see if they can still access the care they need”, the Planned Parenthood release added.
Breyer was joined by the court’s liberal-leaning justices – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan as well as Anthony Kennedy, frequently the court’s swing vote.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.
The ruling sheds new light on what constitutes an “undue burden”, the standard the court laid out in 1992 when it affirmed states’ rights to restrict abortion.
Former state Sen. Wendy Davis says the Supreme Court striking down Texas’ abortion law validates a 2013 filibuster she staged against it.
If the admitting privilege requirement was enforced, as many as four of the state’s five abortion clinics would close.
“By caving to the demands of abortion extremists who seek to normalize the ending of an innocent human life in the womb regardless of the dangers, the Supreme Court has left nearly no room for common sense and simple decency in our nation’s approach to abortion”.
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“This is a clear signal” that legislators “should no longer waste taxpayer money, their time or the court’s time on things that are clearly deceptive in nature and have a very good chance of being struck down under this new precedent”, said Copeland.
