Supreme Court Invalidates Texas Abortion Restrictions

Supreme Court Rules Texas Violated The Constitutional Right To Abortion. On June 27, the Supreme Court reached a 5-3 decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, holding that Texas’ requirements that abortion providers meet the regulatory standards of ambulatory surgical centers, and doctors have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, constitute “an undue burden on abortion access.” From The New York Times:

The Supreme Court on Monday reaffirmed and strengthened constitutional protections for abortion rights, striking down parts of a restrictive Texas law that could have drastically reduced the number of abortion clinics in the state, leaving them only in the largest metropolitan areas.

The 5-to-3 decision was the court’s most sweeping statement on abortion since Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, which reaffirmed the constitutional right to abortion established in 1973 in Roe v. Wade. It found that Texas’ restrictions — requiring doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and clinics to meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers — violated Casey’s prohibition on placing an “undue burden” on the ability to obtain an abortion.” [The New York Times, 6/27/16]

National Editorial Boards Praise “Significant Victory” In Fight For Reproductive Rights

NY Times: Court Strikes Down Texas’ Anti-Abortion Law “In The Most Significant Victory In A Generation For A Woman’s Right To Make Decisions About Her Own Body.” In a June 27 editorial titled “A Major Victory for Abortion Rights,” the New York Times editorial board said Texas’ invalidated HB 2 was never about women’s health, but about making “safe and legal abortions nearly impossible to obtain.” The board stated “the decision was unquestionably correct,” lauded the Supreme Court for ruling against Texas’ “harsh and dishonest anti-choice law,” and called the ruling “the most significant victory in a generation for a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body.” 

In the most significant victory in a generation for a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body, the Supreme Court on Monday struck down Texas’s harsh and dishonest anti-abortion law by a vote of 5 to 3.

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While the decision was unquestionably correct, the vote should have been unanimous. The 2013 Texas law — which forced abortion clinics and their doctors to meet absurd, pointlessly strict medical standards — was the textbook definition of what the court had prohibited in a major 1992 ruling on abortion: “unnecessary health regulations that have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion.”

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If there were any lingering doubt that the point of Texas’ law was to make safe and legal abortions nearly impossible to obtain, it was dispelled by the declarations of top state officials. The former governor Rick Perry, in pushing for the law, said it was one step toward an “ideal world” where there was no abortion. Immediately after the State Senate passed its version of the law, known as SB5, David Dewhurst, the lieutenant governor at the time, posted a map on Twitter showing the expected closure of most abortion clinics across the state. “We fought to pass SB5 through the Senate last night, and this is why!” he wrote.

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For years, the court has looked the other way as lawmakers around the country have grown increasingly bold in their efforts to weaken or obliterate a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. Versions of the Texas law are on the books in 23 other states, and other laws have tried to block abortion rights even more directly — for instance, by banning all abortions six weeks after conception, when many women don’t even know they are pregnant.

Monday’s ruling should spell the end for many if not most of these regressive, unconstitutional laws. [The New York Times, 6/27/16]

LA Times: Court Provided “A Welcome Rebuke” To Anti-Choice “Legislative Gimmicks.” In a June 27 editorial, the Los Angeles Times editorial board celebrated “the bluntness of the court’s ruling” as “a welcome rebuke to the disturbingly widespread efforts” from state Republican legislators to block abortion access “in the name of medical safety.” The board anticipates that the “Supreme Court ruling should lead courts across the country to wipe” similar laws “off the books.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down two onerous provisions in a Texas abortion law sends a clear and powerful message that medically unjustified restrictions that obstruct a woman’s access to abortion are unconstitutional. In its most sweeping decision on abortion since 1992, the court reaffirmed what it said at that time: If a law regulating abortion before the fetus is viable is more an obstacle to women than a benefit to them then it violates the Constitution.

 

It’s reassuring that the court dismissed the state’s argument that the restrictions were designed to protect women, finding it to be mere subterfuge for an effort to block women from getting legal abortions. Notably, Texas isn’t the only state with such regulations. There are lawsuits in a variety of states currently challenging similar laws. The Supreme Court ruling should lead courts across the country to wipe them off the books.

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The bluntness of the court’s ruling is a welcome rebuke to the disturbingly widespread efforts by states to obstruct access to abortion by imposing tougher requirements on abortion providers in the name of medical safety. Sadly, the ruling is unlikely to stop anti-abortion lawmakers. Instead, they will simply look for other legislative gimmicks to undermine the constitutional right recognized in Roe vs. Wade. But when those laws appear, the courts should recognize them for what they are as swiftly and succinctly as the five justices did in this case. [Los Angeles Times, 6/27/16]

Wash. Post: Supreme Court “Re-Cemented Reproductive Freedom’s Status As A Constitutional Right.” On June 27, the Washington Post editorial board celebrated the Supreme Court’s “repudiating” of “Texas’ transparent attempt to hollow” out reproductive rights and lauded the “sensible and clear” ruling in an editorial titled, “The Supreme Court Saves Reproductive Freedom”. 

Twenty-four years ago, the Supreme Court declared that politicians could not impose “unnecessary health regulations” that create “a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion.” This year, the court heard a challenge to a Texas law that did exactly that — impose superfluous and burdensome rules on abortion providers in an obvious attempt to close them down. Even before the constitutionality of Texas’s law had been fully determined, the law showed its potency as abortion clinics closed across the state.

On Monday, five justices stayed true to the guidance the court offered 24 years ago and re-cemented reproductive freedom’s status as a constitutional right, repudiating Texas’s transparent attempt to hollow it out. The 5-to-3 majority struck down a provision that required that doctors performing abortions have admitting privileges at local hospitals and another that forced abortion clinics to meet the standards Texas imposes on ambulatory surgical centers — governing hallway widths, heating, cooling, plumbing and the like. Neither provision would have made medical abortions appreciably safer. But together they would have resulted in 750,000 Texas women of childbearing age living farther than 200 miles from the closest in-state abortion provider.

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[A]bortion has been among the most contentious legal subjects of the past half-century, and several issues have desperately required lucid guidance from the court since the last major ruling. The majority’s eagerness to clarify what the Constitution requires resulted in a ruling that, on the merits, is both sensible and clear: Politicians may not use obvious pretexts to erode a woman’s right to end a pregnancy. Forty-three years after Roe, they should stop trying. [The Washington Post, 6/27/16]

USA Today: “A Big Win For Abortion Rights.” On June 27, the USA Today editorial board celebrated that the Supreme Court’s “strong language” striking down Texas’ “onerous restrictions” and the “bogus” reasoning behind them. The board affirmed that the Supreme Court made “clear that abortion rights can't be trampled with laws that pretend to protect women but actually endanger their health.”

For more than 25 years, abortion opponents unable to overturn Roe v. Wade have been building ever-higher barriers to a woman’s right to an abortion. On Thursday, in the most far-reaching abortion ruling in a generation, the Supreme Court in essence told them, “Stop, you’ve gone too far.”

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In recent years, abortion foes have turned their sights from women seeking abortions to the clinics providing them, passing especially rigorous laws in 15 states. Texas’ 2013 law — which requires all providers to have “admitting privileges” at a nearby hospital and to maintain hospital-like standards of ambulatory surgical centers — was among the harshest.

While both provisions might sound like they promote health, as Texas insists they do, the Supreme Court unmasked that rationale as bogus. In 2013, Texas already had strong abortion clinic regulations, particularly low rates of complications and virtually no deaths from abortions, but passed a new law anyway.

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Balancing a “virtual absence of any health benefit” from the restrictions against the obstacles they placed in women’s paths, the court ruled that the Texas law violates the “undue burden” standard it spelled out in a 1992 decision.

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Thursday's decision will not change the country's deep, emotional divide over abortion. But it should make clear that abortion rights can't be trampled with laws that pretend to protect women but actually endanger their health. [USA Today, 6/27/16]