Unusual made the announcement Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a almost identical law in Texas.
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The ruling is likely to encourage abortion rights advocates to challenge similar restrictive laws in other states.
The high court’s ruling on Monday also tossed out a provision in the Texas law requiring abortion clinics to have costly hospital-grade facilities in addition to the “admitting privileges” mandate.
Texas said its law, passed by a Republican-led legislature and signed by a Republican governor in 2013, was aimed at protecting women’s health.
Alabama’s Republican attorney general, Luther Strange, said that “there is no good faith argument that Alabama’s law remains constitutional in light of the Supreme Court ruling”. Doctors were required to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and clinics had to meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers in order to complete the procedure.
“The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision today endangers the lives of women and their unborn children in MS and all across America”, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves said.
In a bitter dissenting opinion – justice clarence thomas wrote “the court has simultaneously transformed judicially created rights like the right to abortion into preferred constitutional rights, while disfavoring numerous rights actually enumerated in the constitution”.
“Keeping abortion providers accountable should not be a political wedge issue”. Many clinics had faced multimillion-dollar renovations to comply with the law, such as upgrades to air ventilation systems and hallways wide enough to accommodate hospital beds.
If the admitting privilege requirement was enforced, as many as four of the state’s five abortion clinics could close. “Each places a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a previability abortion, each constitutes an undue burden on abortion access … and each violates the Federal Constitution”.
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“It’s going to be interesting to see if responsible lawmakers realize they need to start upholding women’s rights or continue with this game of Whack-a-Mole that’s been going on”, said Northup, referring to states that launched new anti-abortion legislation even as earlier measures were blocked by litigation.
