The case being heard is a Texas law requiring doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals and that clinics upgrade their facilities to hospital like standards.
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The court is taking the measure of two major components: One requires abortions be performed at ambulatory surgical centers, which are subject to extensive regulations that specify everything from the width of halls and doorways to air circulation and staffing.
Murray, calling the laws harmful to women, said that the current law in place in Texas puts women’s lives at stake by forcing women to drive hundreds of miles in order to receive abortion services.
On the other hand, the court’s four liberal justices indicated they believed the law interferes with a woman’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy established in a 1973 ruling.
At a rally on the University of Texas at Austin campus, Tricia Trigilio, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas repeated her group’s position: that the law from its very beginnings was meant to close the state’s abortion clinics.
The court was shorthanded with only eight justices following the February 13 death of conservative Antonin Scalia, leaving the liberals and conservatives evenly divided. “Medical abortions are up nationwide but down significantly in Texas”, Justice Kennedy said. Toti argued that the timing of the closures, as well as testimony from the plaintiffs, provided ample evidence to show that the clinics closed as a result of HB2’s mandates.
And we see Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore speaking at an anti-abortion event.
“The question is really are they going to decide this?”
“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?” In addition to that, if the court is split, the justices could also request re-argument next term. If Kennedy sides with the state of Texas, that will presumably leave the high court deadlocked 4-4. Clinic personnel argue that the Texas regulations already have closed half of the roughly 40 clinics that existed before the law was enacted and that only about 10 clinics would remain if the law is allowed to take full effect. Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, Judge Jennifer Elrod rejected the clinics’ argument that the appeals court should heed earlier Supreme Court action preventing Texas from fully implementing the regulations. “But send them off to New Mexico … and that’s perfectly all right”.
The state contends the Republican-backed 2013 law protects women’s health. But he also wrote the majority opinion in a 5-4 case in 2007 that upheld a federal ban on the procedure known as partial-birth abortion.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “The focus must be on the ones who are burdened…”
A decision is expected by the summer.
Pro-life activists and lawmakers spoke in front of the court in support of the Texas legislation.
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Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Steven H. Aden said Abortionists should not be given a free pass to elude medical requirements that everyone else is required to follow.
