Abortion Rights Group Celebrates Court Win

Abortion rights advocates on Monday cheered a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that struck down restrictions to abortion access in Texas, calling it a major victory for women and predicting similar laws are now endangered nationwide.

Additionally, HB 2 required abortion doctors to have “admitting privileges”, a type of formal affiliation that can be hard to obtain, at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic, in order to treat patients needing surgery or other critical care. “With today’s Supreme Court ruling, I let out a big exhale”, said Tracy Droz Tragos, director of “Abortion: Stories Women Tell”, to be released in August by HBO Documentary Films.

Watson said she hoped the state’s attorney general office would abandon the effort to appeal the Alabama case.

Third, the majority held that when states enact clinic shutdown laws, courts should invalidate them as a whole, forbidding the state from enforcing them.

Critics of the law claimed it was specifically created to shut down clinics with stricter regulations deemed medically unnecessary by abortion providers.

Deferring to state legislatures over “questions of medical uncertainty is also inconsistent with this court’s case law”, Breyer added.

By a 5-3 vote, the justices rejected the state’s arguments that its 2013 law and follow-up regulations were needed to protect women’s health. The law required clinics to have costly, hospital-grade facilities, and dictated specific requirements for building features, such as corridor width, floor tiles, parking spaces, and the angle at which water flows from drinking fountains.

Proponents say the decision was about protecting womens’ health.

At the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices’ decision in the Texas abortion clinic case provoked a strong response from Justice Samuel Alito.

“Today, women lost. Today the supreme court put politics over the health and safety of women in our country”, Kristan Hawkins, President of Students For Life Of America said.

Missouri Planned Parenthood officials applauded the Supreme Court’s decision but said it’s unclear whether additional legal action will be necessary to try to invalidate state laws.

“It’s incredible news for the women of Texas”, Davis said.

In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas insisted that that the Court must abide “by one set of rules to adjudicate constitutional rights”, but the majority’s ruling helps serve this goal. According to a recent New York Times op-ed, the Guttmacher Institute found that MS was the state with the most Google searches for how to perform self-induced abortions in 2015.

“Just to re-establish services in a community and get the licensures is just not something that is going to happen overnight”, said Richards, who is the daughter of former Texas Gov. Ann Richards.

Leading figures in the Republican Party – whose presumptive nominee for president Donald Trump has said women should be “punished” for having an abortion – expressed dismay.