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Supreme Court to Hear Texas Abortion Case, May Have Major Impact
In a series of interviews with women who had attempted to induce their own abortions, also released by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project this week, the cost or hassle of traveling to a clinic emerged as just one of the reasons women gave for self-induction.
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The study identifies two populations where histories of self-induced abortion were most prevalent: Latina women living in a county that borders Mexico-a more rural area of the state that has seen several clinic closures-and women who reported difficulty gaining access to reproductive health care in the past.
A number of conservative-leaning states have passed laws in recent years governing abortion providers and clinics. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to temporarily block certain provisions in a Texas omnibus antiabortion-rights law from taking effect, allowing the remaining clinics in the state to stay open until the high court decides whether to review the case (New York Times, 11/13).
The court will hear a challenge to the nation’s toughest abortion law that was passed in Texas.
Abortion providers argue that neither of the two stipulations in the law is necessary and puts an undue burden on women seeking an abortion. The Texas law mandates that clinics have hospital-style surgical procedures. Hospitals provide care to women who experience complications during an abortion – complications, it should be noted, that are extraordinarily rare – regardless of whether the physician who performed the abortion has admitting privileges or not. “I am hopeful that the supreme court will uphold the rights that have been in place for four decades and reaffirm that every woman should be able to make her own decision about continuing or ending a pregnancy”, Miller says.
“When the justices consider Whole Women’s Health, they will first ask whether the Court is the proper tribunal for a fine-grained factual analysis of the impact of HB 2 on Texans”, explains The Economist.
Dr. Charmaine Yoest, head of Americans United for Life, hopes the Supreme Court will “strike a decisive blow for women’s health and safety” by upholding the Texas law.
The ruling served to keep the Supreme Court “in the abortion-umpiring business”, Justice Antonin Scalia said in a scathing dissent, adding: “Roe fanned into life an issue that has inflamed our national politics in general and has obscured with its smoke the selection of justices to this court in particular ever since”.
You’d think that Planned Parenthood, for all its talk of “women’s safety” and “rigorous medical standards”, would be the sponsors of this law and vigorous advocates of its affirmation in federal court.
Back in 2013, the law prompted then-Texas Senator Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth) to famously filibuster while wearing pink sneakers.
Even if many women end up choosing safe abortion pill methods, this is a serious problem for public health and women’s rights, said Amy Hagstrom Miller on the press call.
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Update: The Supreme Court has declined to hear a suit from an anti-Planned Parenthood group. Only 13 percent of those surveyed stated that self-induced abortion should be against the law and women should be prosecuted for it. By contrast, 34 percent of women stated that while they themselves were against abortion, they understood “why a woman would try this”.