US supreme court blocks Texas abortion restrictions
Ruling, with three dissenting votes, puts on hold parts of earlier federal decision that allowed clinics to close
The US supreme court on Tuesday blocked key parts of a 2013 law in Texas that had closed all but eight facilities providing abortions in America’s second most-populous state.
In an unsigned order, the justices sided with abortion rights advocates and health care providers in suspending an October 2 ruling by a panel of the New Orleans-based US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that Texas could immediately apply a rule that would force abortion clinics statewide to spend millions of dollars on hospital-level upgrades.
Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.
Last week, a coalition of women’s rights groups asked the supreme court to place a hold on a key provision of the law while the appeals process proceeds.
“The US Supreme Court gave Texas women a tremendous victory today,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “Tomorrow, thirteen clinics across the state will be allowed to reopen and provide women with safe and legal abortion care in their own communities.”
Lawyers for the abortion providers had argued “the clinics forced to remain closed during the appeals process will likely never reopen”.
The supreme court blocked a provision of the state’s omnibus abortion law that requires all clinics in the state to meet the standards of hospital-like ambulatory surgical centers. Abortion rights advocates and health care providers who opposed the law say the upgrades are costly and unnecessarily burdensome – the stringent operational requirements would force clinics to spend millions to comply, which most can’t afford.
The court also put on hold another portion of the Texas law as it apples to clinics in McAllen and El Paso. This provision, which remains in effect of the rest of Texas, requires doctors that perform abortion to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.
Before the law went into effect, Texas had 36 abortion clinics. In its entirety, the Texas law shortens the timeframe for legal abortions to 20 weeks, requires abortion providers to maintain hospital admitting privileges, places new restrictions on medicated abortions, and compels clinics to meet the same building requirements as ambulatory surgical centres.
The abortion providers had urged the Supreme Court to block the law from taking effect, arguing that Texas women would be forced to seek unsafe abortions. “Texas has already seen a surge in illegal abortions in areas where legal abortion services are no longer available, and that trend will continue if the [circuit court ruling] remains in place,” the filing said.
Texas officials argued that the measure protected the health of pregnant women in the state.
The appeals court has not yet ruled on the merits of the case; its decision was on whether the law should be prevented from going into effect while the case works its way through appeals.
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