The 5-3 ruling held that the Republican-backed 2013 law placed an undue burden on women exercising their constitutional right to end a pregnancy established in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
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The US Supreme Court [official website] on Monday ruled [opinion, PDF] 5-3 in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt [SCOTUSblog materials] that a Texas law [HB2 text] imposing certain requirements on abortion clinics and doctors creates an undue burden on access to abortion, and is therefore unconstitutional. It goes into effect Friday. “It’s exceedingly unfortunate that the court has taken the ability to protect women’s health out of the hands of Texas citizens and their duly-elected representatives”. Abortion rights activists Morgan Hopkins of Boston, left, and Alison Turkos of New York City, rejoice in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, June 27, 2016, as news is announced that the justices struck down.
Abbott said his state’s goal remains “to protect innocent life, while ensuring the highest health and safety standards for women”.
Thomas wrote that 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”‘.
The justices split largely along liberal-conservative lines in their emergency orders, with the court’s conservative justices voting repeatedly to let the law be enforced.
She said the Texas law “simply required abortion facilities to meet the same health and safety standards as other ambulatory surgical centers”. Supporters claim they’re meant to protect women’s health and safety, but critics point out that abortion is one of the safest medical procedures, with fewer than one-half of 1 percent of procedures resulting in serious complications.
Sekulow added: “Sadly, the majority embraced the false narrative of the pro-abortion industry – that childbirth is more unsafe to a woman than getting an abortion”.
Thomas quoted the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February, in his dissent.
Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represented the clinics, said, “The Supreme Court sent a loud and clear message that politicians can not use deceptive means to shut down abortion clinics”.
Clinton noted that states introduced more than 400 measures restricting access to abortion and said at the federal level “We’ve seen a concerted, persistent attack on women’s health and rights”.
After Justice Stephen Breyer read a summary of his majority opinion aloud in court, Alito summarized his dissenting opinion.
“We conclude that neither of these provisions offers medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens upon access that each imposes”, Breyer wrote of the “admitting-privileges requirement” and the “surgical center requirement”. The Texas restrictions, which threatened to close all but nine clinics capable of complying with the tough new standards, would leave the state unable to handle an estimated 65,000 to 70,000 abortions a year.
The dissenters were chief justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas.
The bill was passed by the Texas legislature in 2013.
The Supreme Court has struck down Texas’ widely replicated regulation of abortion clinics in the court’s biggest abortion case in almost a quarter century. Rick Perry says he wants “to make abortion at any stage a thing of the past” as the Republican-controlled Legislature returns to work.
In 2014, lawmakers passed a law requiring all abortion clinics providing 50 or more surgical abortions to meet the requirements of ambulatory surgical care centers.
For a district court to give significant weight to evidence in the judicial record in these circumstances is consistent with this Court’s case law.
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Additionally, prior to the passage of HB 2, more than 40 facilities across Texas provided abortions.
