Abortion is already safe. Will the Supreme Court please tell Texas?

Mar 03, 2016, 13:54

The case gives the eight justices, one short following the death of Antonin Scalia on February 13, the chance to decide how much states can regulate abortion without infringing upon the right to abortion. Licensed facilities would have to meet the same standards that ambulatory surgical centers do, and they would have to be staffed by doctors with admitting privileges at local hospitals.

Activists warn that if the law is upheld, that would leave just 10 abortion clinics in the second largest USA state, home to an estimated 5.4 million women of child-bearing age.

States mainly led by Republicans have tried to limit when in a pregnancy abortions may be performed, restricted abortion-inducing drugs that take the place of surgery and increased standards for clinics and the doctors who work in them. It is not intended, they say, to restrict access to abortion or unfairly burden women seeking an abortion.

With the court now split evenly between liberals and conservatives, all eyes are on Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose swing vote on this issue that has long roiled United States politics could determine the availability of abortion services nationwide.

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That's the impact of Texas draconian anti-abortion House Bill (HB) 2, passed in 2013. The appeals-court decision went into effect immediately, forcing women slated to get abortions Friday to reschedule.

Those who object to the Texas law argue that if abortion clinics shut down it would violate the rights of women in a given area.

Willie Parker describes in the film his irritation at having, under MS law, to tell patients about a link between abortion and breast cancer.

"A lot of people sort of want to draw this into the life debate, and the reality is that this goes to our ability as Texas to set the health standards that we think are appropriate for women's health and beyond", said Chip Roy, first assistant attorney general. "Other circuits disagree and emphasize that courts must review the facts that justify legislation restricting exercise of a constitutional right". These requirements have not been shown to have any medical benefit, but they will cause 32 of the state's 42 clinics to shutter.

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If you factor in other restrictions, such as parental consent, waiting periods and mandatory counseling, it can be next to impossible to obtain an abortion in states where the right's laws have been enacted.

That law is HB2, which in 2013 law imposed some strict regulations on abortion clinics throughout Texas. The state immediately appealed to the USA 5th Circuit of Appeals, which in June upheld most of its provisions. Across the country, 8 other states have introduced similar restrictions, and 23 states signed a brief sent to the Supreme Court in support of the regulations. In Mississippi for example, physicians at the state's only abortion clinic were rejected out of hand - two hospitals wouldn't even accept applications from the clinic's doctors, while others rejected them exclusively because they perform abortions. The only clinic in the Rio Grande Valley would be allowed to remain open on a limited basis. "A decision to overrule Roe's essential holdings under the existing circumstances would address error, if error there was, at the cost of both profound and unnecessary damage to the Court's legitimacy, and to the nation's commitment to the rule of law", they wrote. If it effectively doesn't rule at all, that leaves this particular question of "undue burden" open, with years more litigation to come.

"I'm particularly troubled I'm looking at page ten of the order that the trial court says that because he has no evidence he's going to conclude that the second trip-he can't conclude that it is not an additional burden".

Even if other factors contributed to some closures, the law played a role, Toti said. But in reality if the ruling assures that this measures are necessary, thousands of women seeking for legal abortion will be forced to flee towards the border to Mexico and acquire illegal abortion pills to finish the unwanted pregnancies. In the five years since the Whole Women's Health clinic in San Antonio built its ASC, they haven't used it once.

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