United States top court rejects anti-abortion group’s Planned Parenthood case

Latina women living in counties bordering Mexico and women who found it hard to obtain reproductive services were the two groups mostly likely to attempt a self-induced abortion. If the Supreme Court rules to uphold the law, the number of clinics in the state of 27 million people could drop to just 10.

The United States Supreme Court this week refused to accept a New Hampshire case stemming from a 2011 federal grant to Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. Texas, as many other States, has clearly recognized the risks associated with both surgical and medication abortions and has taken steps to regulate these abortions to minimize these known and potential risks and to protect women’s health and safety.

The high court’s decision not to hear the dispute came days after the justices agreed on Friday to hear a challenge by abortion providers to parts of a strict, Republican-backed Texas law they claim seeks to shutter abortion clinics.

“We had hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would consider this case, which would have addressed whether the government can continue to veil its support for Planned Parenthood”, Tierney said in a statement this morning, joined by ADF. Now, it’s fascinating that Justice Anthony Kennedy stands to be the deciding vote here, because Kennedy is the one that wrote a key opinion back in 1992, saying, states do have a legitimate interest in regulating abortion but could not impose an undue burden, and now Kennedy will be left to decide if Texas, in fact, is imposing an undue burden.

Texas’ state lawyer said the new law would “raise the standard of care and ensure the health and safety of all abortion patients”. “I didn’t have any money to go to San Antonio or Corpus [Christi]”, said a 24-year-old woman who was interviewed for the Texas Policy Evaluation Project. The first provision, which has already forced more than half of the clinics in the state to close, requires providers to secure hospital admitting privileges.

In Beck v. Edwards, Arkansas asks that the Court should overrule the “viability rule”, which essentially mandates unfettered access to abortions before unborn babies are considered “viable” even if the child already has a heartbeat, brain activity, or the ability to feel pain.

In an interesting development, Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia published their reasons for wanting to grant review in the case. The result is that USA abortion policy has become extreme among developed nations in allowing elective, late-term abortions and a lucrative, yet largely unaccountable, abortion industry daily endangers the lives and health of women.

The Supreme Court ruling will also pave the way for a number of similar regulations in other states to find resolution. However, a requirement that physicians who perform one particular outpatient procedure, abortion, be privileged at a hospital is not the appropriate way to accomplish these goals.

“That’s what happens when you put a medical procedure in a political realm, it shouldn’t be there”, Derzis said. On the other side, groups like Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union lobby against new abortion restrictions.