If so, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, potentially the most consequential abortion rights case in a generation, could return to a court that included Justice Antonin Scalia’s successor.
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The US Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday over a Texas law placing tough new restrictions on abortion providers that would potentially shut down all but nine or 10 clinics across the entire state.
Ginsburg also disputed the state’s argument that the majority of Texas women still live within 100 miles of an abortion provider, arguing that the law should be more concerned with those who aren’t so lucky.
Seago remarked that he was “very encouraged” by what he heard from Kennedy, whose questioning was more along the lines of Roberts, et al., focusing on whether Texas has a legitimate interest in passing the legislation, rather than on whether the restrictions place an “undue burden” on women’s access to abortion.
There are at least three possible outcomes (and they mostly turn on Justice Kennedy, who holds the key vote in this case).
The U.S. Supreme Court is deciding if two Texas abortion regulations are constitutional. The clinics are hoping he’ll join the court’s four liberal justices in deeming the regulations unconstitutional.
“Having more than one clinic to be able to address the needs of an entire state is important”, Casteel said.
Stephanie Toti, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told the justices there was “no evidence of medical benefit” derived from the regulations, according to the National Law Journal account.
If the law is allowed to stand, the 10 remaining clinics will be centered in four metropolitan areas – Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio.
The justices are scheduled to meet Friday when they will take a preliminary vote on the Texas abortion case.
“Go back in time to the period before the new law was passed, where in the record will I find evidence of women who had complications, who could not get to a hospital, even though there was a working arrangement for admission, but now they could get to a hospital because the doctor himself has to have admitting privileges?”. He was reluctant to accept Texas’s arguments that there was no reason to weigh the state’s grounds for making the 2013 changes against the obstacles created for women.
“What evidence is there that under the prior law, the prior law was not sufficiently protective of the women’s health?” But abortion remains a disputed issue in the United States and some states have passed laws aiming to place a variety of restrictions on a woman’s ability to terminate a pregnancy.
The abortion providers also challenged a provision, not yet in effect, requiring clinics to have hospital-grade facilities with standards for corridor width, plumbing, parking spaces, room size, the spacing of beds and many other attributes. The indirect attacks were challenged before the Court. Pressed by Ginsburg, Keller acknowledged that was a relatively small complication rate but said the state still could act to make abortion safer. The best pro-lifers can hope for is a 4-4 split, which would uphold a lower court’s ruling in favor of the law. Sotomayor asked. Then, ignoring Roberts’ signals for the lawyer to wrap up, Sotomayor said it plainly: “This law was targeted at abortion only”.
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HB2 has so far been successful, which not only shows that pro-life laws work, but also how little the abortion industry really cares about women’s health.
