What is this “undue burden” you speak of?
by digby
Well, this certainly bodes well for the future of reproductive rights:
Splitting five-to-four, the Supreme Court late Friday afternoon refused to block a Texas abortion law that critics say is forcing the closing of one-third of all clinics in the state. The Court had been studying the issue for the past week. The majority said that the challengers had not met the requirement for setting aside a federal appeals court order permitting the law to take effect.
The majority specifically included Justices Antonin Scalia, who wrote separately in a concurring opinion joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Clarence Thomas. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy presumably voted with those three, because it would have taken five votes to act definitively on the plea by doctors and clinics. Roberts and Kennedy did not say they had not taken part. The specific order denying the application (13A452) was unsigned.
The law requires any doctor in the state who is going to perform an abortion to have professional privileges to admit patients to a hospital within 30 miles of the site where the abortion will take place. The challengers had argued that this provision, enforced by a criminal fine of up to $4,000 for a violation, will have a particularly harsh impact in Texas’s rural areas.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote for the four dissenters, including Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Their dissenting opinion argued that the Fifth Circuit Court order in the case “seriously disrupts” the status quo in Texas.
Basically, what they’ve done is validate the anti-abortion zealots’ strategy of closing down clinics with any spurious reasoning they can come up with regardless of whether it makes sense.
*Oh, and by the way, there will always be abortions no matter how much birth control is widely available and how much health care and support women get. Always have been always will be. The only question for any decent society is if they will be safe and available.
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