Hold on Texas Abortion Law Will Allow Unsanitary Clinics to Remain Open. Is This Better Than a Clothes Hanger?
The
U.S. Supreme Court has blocked Texas from enforcing key provisions of a
2013 law that would close all but eight of the state’s abortion
facilities. Texas' law resembles a law that Mississippi legislators
passed that requires abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a
nearby hospital.
Today,
over the dissents of the three most conservative justices—Antonin
Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito—the court suspended a ruling by
the lower 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that allowed Texas to
enforce the rule requiring abortion clinics to comply with
hospital-level standards.
That
appeals court’s ruling suspended a previous decision by U.S. District
Judge Lee Yeakel, who found that such upgrades were less about the
health and safety of women than making access to abortion increasingly
more difficult.
In July, the 5th Circuit also ruled against Mississippi's law because it would have shuttered the state's only abortion clinic, Jackson Women's Health Organization in Jackson.
The
court also put on hold a separate provision of the Texas law only as it
applies to clinics in McAllen and El Paso that requires doctors at the
facilities to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. The
admitting privileges remains in effect elsewhere in Texas.
The
5th Circuit is still considering the overall constitutionality of the
sweeping measure overwhelmingly passed by the GOP-controlled Texas
Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Rick Perry last year.
But
even as it weighs the merits of the law, the appeals court said that it
can be enforced in the meantime — opening the door for the emergency
appeal to the Supreme Court.
Allowing
the rules on hospital-level upgrades to be enforced — including
mandatory operating rooms and air filtration systems — shuttered more
than a dozen clinics across Texas.
Until
the nation's highest court intervened, only abortion facilities in the
Houston, Austin, San Antonio and the Dallas-Fort Worth areas remained
open. And none was left along the Texas-Mexico border or outside any of
the state's largest urban areas.
Some
other clinics, meanwhile, had closed even earlier amid enforcement of
the rule on admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. That portion has
already been upheld twice by the appeals court.
The
fight over the Texas law is the latest over tough new abortion
restrictions that have been enacted across the country. The office of
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican who is the favorite in
next month's governor's race, is leading the defense of the law.
Critics call the measure a backdoor effort to outlaw abortions.
Attorneys
for the state have denied that Texas women would be burdened by fewer
abortion facilities, saying nearly 9 in 10 would still live within 150
miles of a provider. The law's opponents, however, note that still
leaves nearly a million Texas women embarking on drives longer than
three hours to get an abortion.
Democrat
Wendy Davis launched her campaign for governor behind the celebrity she
achieved through a nearly 13-hour filibuster last summer that
temporarily blocked the law in the state Senate.
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