Supreme Court ruling imperils abortion laws in many states

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down an abortion law in Texas. “As a woman, I am absolutely appalled that the Supreme Court would take the profits of the abortion industry over the health and safety of women”.

Monday’s opinion, by Justice Stephen Breyer, reiterated the court’s longstanding position that women have a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. In a landmark 5-3 ruling on Monday, the high court found that the Texas law imposed an “undue burden” on women seeking an abortion.

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which led the legal challenge, similar admitting-privilege requirements are in effect in Missouri, North Dakota and Tennessee, and are on hold in Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Wisconsin.

In brief orders without comment, the court refused to take up appeals by MS and Wisconsin, effectively upholding lower court rulings blocking their laws on requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Opponents of the laws said abortion already is a very safe procedure, and contended the real motive of the laws was to reduce women’s access to abortion.

Mississippi’s law would have closed the lone abortion clinic in the state, in Jackson. In Mississippi, that would have meant the closure of the state’s only clinic.

Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said: “We will not stop fighting until every person can make their own personal medical decisions about abortion no matter who she is, or where she lives”.

In Pennsylvania, a Democratic state senator, Daylin Leach, said he would introduce legislation seeking to repeal a 2011 law that tightened requirements at abortion clinics.

“While I disagree with the high court’s decision”, said state Attorney General Luther Strange, “there is no good faith argument that Alabama’s law remains constitutional in light of the Supreme Court ruling”.

The abortion rights group Trust Women opened a clinic in 2013 in the same Wichita building abortion provider George Tiller once practiced before he was murdered in 2009 by an anti-abortion zealot. She also noted the provisions in Texas that were struck down are similar to ones in Kansas that are part of a larger anti-abortion law now under injunction. Conservatives saw that ruling as signaling the court would be less likely to second-guess legislative decisions to regulate abortion.