Under the judges’ scrutiny will be a disputed Texas law enacted in 2013, which has already led to the closing of more than half of the 42 clinics that practised abortion and that has consequently eroded women’s reproductive rights in that state, particularly among the poor, opponents say. “The abortion industry doesn’t like these laws because abortion clinics would be forced to spend money to meet basic health and safety standards”, Tobias said. If the full law is backed by the Supreme Court another nine clinics would probably be shut their doors, leaving just 10 open across the state compared to over 40 before the law.
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MS had a petition before the court to hear a challenge over its law, but the court did not take up that case.
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That abortion facility meet the same health and safety standards as other ambulatory surgical centers. 2, and they all make small but meaningful changes to the way abortions have to be administered and clinics have to operate.
The case may turn out to be the third installment in a legal trilogy on the scope of the constitutional right to abortion, one that started with Roe and continued in 1992 with Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
In most cases dealing with ostensible public health and safety regulations, the Supreme Court employs a legal approach known as the rational-basis test. As the Court once described it, under the rational-basis test, “the burden is on the one attacking the legislative arrangement to negative every conceivable basis which might conceivably support it”.
The Supreme Court’s announcement comes months after a federal appeals court in June upheld the law and denied the challengers a stay. The court took no action on a separate appeal from MS, where a state law would close the only abortion clinic, in Jackson. A panel of the court ruled that the law, with minor exceptions, did not place an undue burden on the right to abortion.
The case is Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole. Unlike Texas, OH requires that clinics have patient transfer agreements with nearby hospitals.
The petitioner, Whole Woman’s Health, is an abortion provider that wants the court to strike down the new requirements because it asserts the requirements are an “undue burden” on women who wish to abortion their unborn babies.
The Supreme Court has not agreed to hear an abortion case in eight years, so the implications from their ruling on Texas’ abortion law could also have a significant impact on laws in other states that have tried to limit women’s access to abortion.
Texas legislators said the contested provisions were needed to protect women’s health.
Requiring women to wait a certain amount of time between their first doctor’s visit and the time they can have the procedure.
That would leave a few 900,000 women of childbearing age to drive more than 300 miles round-trip to get an abortion.
“This law is being painted as an outlier and really extreme but it really isn’t that extreme”, she said.
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She added that state legislatures could feel more secure in making these types of reforms without being concerned about what the Supreme Court will do.
