The 5-3 decision in favor of Texas women’s clinics performing abortions was viewed as the biggest case in about a quarter century.
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Rothert says this could mean a real shift in regulations placed on abortion providers.
Around the country, and across OH, pro-choice supporters said Monday’s Supreme Court ruling gives them a reason to rejoice. “We have seen that firsthand here in Houston”, said Rochelle Tafolla, Spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.
The US Supreme Court has handed a victory to abortion rights advocates, striking down a Texas law imposing strict regulations on abortion doctors and facilities that its critics contended were specifically created to shut down clinics.
The case, known as Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt, involved a challenge to a Texas law which is similar, in part, to OH law. And many doctors couldn’t obtain admitting privileges, because they performed abortions.
Monday’s ruling is likely to remove an ongoing threat to the only abortion clinic still operating in Mississippi.
More fundamentally, in the face of no threat to women’s health, Texas seeks to force women to travel long distances to get abortions in crammed-to-capacity superfacilities.
“We remain strongly committed to the protection of women’s health, including protecting a woman’s access to safe, affordable health care and her right to determine her own future”.
In Alabama, Attorney General Luther Strange said his office is ending the legal fight over its law requiring abortion doctors to have hospital-admitting privileges. Arkansas is appealing a federal judge’s decision temporarily blocking that law’s enforcement. The law that imposed restrictive regulations on the procedure have forced more than three-quarters of the state’s clinics to shut down.
In her concurring Supreme Court opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said “it is beyond rational belief that HB2 could genuinely protect the health of women”.
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The decision concerned two parts of a law passed by the Republican legislature and signed by Republican Governor Rick Perry in 2013 that helped reduce abortion clinics in the huge state from 40 to 10 in number. It also required clinics to meet hospital-like standards for outpatient surgery.
