The Supreme Court on Tuesday night blocked a Texas law that had drastically reduced the number of abortion clinics in the nation’s second most populous state.
The court’s order, staying a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that the law could go into effect, will allow more than a dozen of the clinics to resume operation, according to the group that challenged the law, the Center for Reproductive Rights.
The court’s brief order did not say why it was disagreeing with the appeals court. Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. would have allowed the law to go into effect while abortion providers pursued their claims that it is unconstitutional.
The order was unsigned, but that apparently meant Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the other five justices — Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — were in agreement.
The action will allow 13 abortion clinics that closed after the appeals court decision to reopen, said Nancy Northup, president of the center. “We’re absolutely thrilled.”
The group told the justices that “if the stay entered by the 5th Circuit is not vacated, the clinics forced to remain closed during the appeals process will likely never reopen.”
The court’s decision is not a judgment on the Texas law, but whether the law’s new restrictions should be delayed while the legal battle continued.
Texas has been a leader among a number of states that have enacted new requirements for abortion clinics. The states say the laws are meant to protect a woman’s health, but Northup and others have called them “shams” meant only to make abortion less accessible.
These TRAP laws don’t guard women’s health. They are deceptive and disingenuous and do nothing other than place extreme financial burden on clinic owners. In this case, the TRAP laws made abortion much less accessible in Texas. The size of Texas made this decision even more critical, since patients often had to travel hundreds of miles for services.
Abortion clinics should not be singled out for special rules of operation when dentists, podiatrists, periodontists and much of the medical profession operates in an outpatient capacity routinely without outside government interference. Often the various procedures that happen in medical offices and clinics are far more invasive that the abortion procedure, especially when the RU-486 method is employed. Taking a pill and going home hardly needs special architectural accommodations.
The continual whittling away at abortion rights really needs to stop. Yesterday I watched protestors up at our local clinic. I can see them from my gym. One has to wonder if providing reduced child care costs might help reduce abortions far more than parading back and forth on Sudley Road. If all those people out there volunteered that amount of time to young mothers in the form of child care, how many abortions would that prevent? Child care is a huge expense on parents, especially single mothers.
Sadly, the people out demonstrating are providing free advertisement for the clinic owner. She loves having them out there. It saves her thousands of dollars a year in advertising costs.
Good for the Supreme Court. Doing nothing is often a good thing. The John Roberts Court has just been full of suprises lately. Most apparently are looking at the Constitution rather than their personal beliefs.
