NY 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 idea that abortion providers needed to be outfitted like hospitals had long been rejected by medical researchers, who said abortion is one of the safest procedures a woman can get, far more so than carrying a pregnancy to term
If Casey limited the right established in Roe, allowing states to regulate abortion in ways Roe had barred, Monday’s decision effectively expanded that right. It means that similar requirements in other states are most likely also unconstitutional, and it imperils many other kinds of restrictions on abortion. It is also sure to energize anti-abortion forces and make abortion a central issue in the presidential campaign.
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BLOOMBERG NEWS
The ruling may doom similar restrictions in other states, including Mississippi, Louisiana and Wisconsin. The justices may act Tuesday on appeals of rulings that struck down admitting-privileges rules in Mississippi and Wisconsin. Republican lawmakers’ push to legislate the industry out of existence in those places and others have helped reduce abortion access at the fastest annual pace: Since 2011, at least 162 providers have shut or stopped offering the procedure, while just 21 opened.
Monday’s ruling put abortion-rights supporters in an unfamiliar place: on the side of victory.
While the ruling is an enormous victory for abortion providers, it also leaves them and their allies facing the quandary of how to restore access in Texas, which has more than 5 million women of reproductive age.
Texas lost more than half its clinics, leaving vast swaths of the state with no access, and researchers documented a 42 percent decline in the number of physicians providing abortion -- to 28 from 48. Access won’t be restored overnight.
"Once a clinic closes and the license expires, the building lease may be gone, equipment is sold, there may not be a doctor,” said Daniel Grossman, a researcher at the University of California at San Francisco.
Officials at Planned Parenthood and its political action fund vowed to redouble efforts to both restore access and fight "state by state, legislature by legislature, law by law." They also used the ruling to underscore what’s at stake in the presidential election, given the likelihood that the next president could alter the current makeup of the court.