The laws in both states required doctors to have “admitting privileges”, a type of difficult-to-obtain formal affiliation, with a hospital within 30 miles (48 km) of the abortion clinic. The ruling determined that a 2013 Texas law, which required all abortion providers to have admitting privileges at local hospitals, constituted an undue burden on the right to terminate a pregnancy. Supporters of the Texas law, and similar laws enacted in other states, said both provisions were necessary to ensure safe, high-quality care for women.
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Bethany Van Kampen, left, hugs Alejandra Pablus as they celebrate during a rally at the Supreme Court after the court struck down Texas’ widely replicated regulation of abortion clinics. Dissenting were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas, who said the decision “exemplifies the court’s troubling tendency ‘to bend the rules when any effort to limit abortion, or even to speak in opposition to abortion, is at issue'”.
While anti-abortion lawmakers have focused on the procedure itself in the past by banning certain methods or requiring waiting periods, this time the sole objective was to take steps to protect the health of women seeking abortions.
Kansas is now embroiled in at least three lawsuits challenging various state laws restricting abortion services.
From now on, the court warned, it would no longer, as the White Queen said in “Through the Looking Glass”, believe “as many as six impossible things before breakfast”. Since its passage, about half of the state’s approximately 40 clinics have been closed, with another 10 expected to have been shuttered if the additional requirements had been put into place.
“I am pleased to see the Supreme Court protect women’s rights and health today”.
And on Monday, Alabama’s attorney general announced he was dropping legal appeals to uphold a similar law in that state. And the justices also ruled that the appeals court had wholly erred when it attempted to rely on technicalities of civil procedure to prevent this suit from proceeding.
Texas Republican legislative leaders promised to continue their fight against abortion next year, suggesting they will look for ways to impose new restrictions on clinics in the wake of Monday’s Supreme Court ruling striking down two of the state’s major abortion rules as unconstitutional. S. 833 (1992), Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers laws like H. B.
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.
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U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey found that Missouri health officials had yielded to political pressure and treated the clinic, which is operated by Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, differently than other ambulatory surgical centers.
