No such thing as an undue burden?
by digby
Jeffrey Toobin has written an informative piece in the New Yorker about the disappearing “undue burden” standard for access to abortion in the federal courts. He gives a useful recent history of cases that have challenged the concept all the way up to the most recent in Texas in which is looks as thought the conservative 5th Circuit will whittle it away to nothing. As he writes:
[T]he members of the Fifth Circuit panel seem to believe that anything short of a nationwide ban on abortion does not amount to an undue burden on women’s rights. This is the argument that will soon be heading to the Supreme Court. Will the Court’s conservatives—who appear to have, with the addition of Anthony Kennedy, a one-vote majority on this issue—define the “undue burden” test into meaninglessness? Or will they junk the test altogether and give states an even freer hand to restrict abortion rights?
The good news is that liberals are winning the culture war so I’m quite sure this could never happen. Right? After all, once a right has been secured — as reproductive rights have been for the past 40 years — there’s no going back.
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