NYT…
The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a challenge to a Texas law that would leave the state with about 10 abortion clinics, down from more than 40. The court has not heard a major abortion case since 2007, and the new case has the potential to affect millions of women and to revise the constitutional principles governing abortion rights…
One part of the law requires all clinics in the state to meet the standards for “ambulatory surgical centers,” including regulations concerning buildings, equipment and staffing. The other requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.
Other parts of the law have already caused about half of the state’s 41 abortion clinics to close. If the contested provisions take effect, the brief said, the number of clinics would again be halved…
The case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole, No. 15-274, could provide the Supreme Court with an opportunity to clarify its 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which said states may not place undue burdens on the constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability. The court said undue burdens included “unnecessary health regulations that have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion.”
Texas legislators said that the contested provisions were needed to protect women’s health. Abortion providers responded that the regulations were expensive, unnecessary and a ruse intended to put many of them out of business.
In urging the Supreme Court not to hear the case, Ken Paxton, Texas’s attorney general, quoted from an earlier opinion. The justices, Mr. Paxton said, should not turn themselves into “the country’s ex officio medical board with powers to approve or disapprove medical and operative practices and standards throughout the United States.”
The lower courts are divided over how much deference lawmakers’ assertions about health benefits deserve, and whether courts must test the reasons offered for abortion legislation against the available evidence.
In June, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, largely upheld the contested provisions. A panel of the court ruled that the law, with minor exceptions, did not place an undue burden on the right to abortion…
Yeah, AG Paxton, the justices shouldn’t be the country’s ex officio medical board; y’al have the Texas legislature to do that.
