The U.S. Supreme Court formally rejected Schimel’s appeal Tuesday, along with a similar appeal out of Mississippi.
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“Today’s decision from a divided court is a prime example of activist jurists imposing their will on the people”, Walker said of Monday’s ruling.
Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, which has represented the Fargo clinic, said in a statement that Monday’s ruling “sent a loud and clear message that politicians can not use deceptive means to shut down abortion clinics”.
“Every day, Whole Woman’s Health treats our patients with compassion, respect and dignity”, said the group’s CEO and founder, Amy Hagstrom Miller.
Stenehjem said unlike the Texas law, North Dakota did not impose additional requirements for an abortion facility. Opponents of the laws said abortion already is a very safe procedure, and contended the real motive of the laws was to reduce women’s access to abortion.
In addition, Alabama’s attorney general said late on Monday that his state would abandon defense of its own “admitting privileges” requirement for abortion doctors, in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling. The hospital-like outpatient surgery standards are in place in Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and are on hold in Tennessee, according to the center. In addition to Alabama, the provision had been on hold in Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Wisconsin.
The court refused to hear the two states’ appeals against lower court rulings that have blocked them from enacting restrictions on abortion doctors and clinics.
“There were hospitals that wouldn’t entertain them at all or they told us because we provide abortion care, we were not consistent with their mission”, Parker told The Associated Press in a phone interview Tuesday.
Peter Linzer, a constitutional law expert at the University of Houston Law Center, who was cited in a dissenting opinion in the case written by Justice Clarence Thomas, called the court’s decision a “two-fisted opinion” with national implications.
Most remaining centers are in or near large cities, leaving women in large areas of the state without ready access to abortion providers.
A restrictive Texas law restricting abortion is plainly unconstitutional, but politics has trumped the Constitution in the Supreme Court before.
In Pennsylvania, a Democratic state senator, Daylin Leach, said he would introduce legislation seeking to repeal a 2011 law that tightened requirements at abortion clinics. Mississippi’s law never fully took effect because of a protracted court battle.
The law was signed by then-Gov.
An abortion-rights lawyer, Sue Frietsche, said the law inflicted heavy financial burdens on abortion clinics throughout Pennsylvania and contributed to the closure of several of them.
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The impact on other states with similar laws is not yet clear.
