Friday, November 13, 2015

Supreme Court agrees to hear abortion case

Los Angeles Times - 21 minutes ago

Supreme Court agrees to hear biggest abortion case in 2 decades

The Supreme Court on Friday set the stage for its most important pronouncement on abortion in two decades, agreeing to hear a dispute over efforts by some conservative states to regulate the procedure.
The justices accepted an appeal from abortion-rights advocates who are challenging a Texas law that imposed new medical regulations that would effectively shut down three-fourths of the state's clinics that perform abortions.
The decision will likely to be handed down in June, just as the presidential campaign moves into high gear.
Under a 2-year-old law that has not been fully enforced, Texas clinics that perform abortions must meet the standards of an outpatient surgical center and have doctors who are granted admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.
At issue is whether these are reasonable regulations designed to protect the health of women or costly and unnecessary rules adopted to close down as many abortion facilities as possible.
In 1992, the high court said states may regulate abortion as long as they do not put an "undue burden" on women seeking to an end a pregnancy. But since then, justices have not defined exactly what that means.
In recent years, Republican-led states have adopted a series of stringent medical regulations that apply only to abortion facilities. Lower courts have split over whether these laws violate the right to abortion set in the Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973.
The new case before the high court, Whole Woman's Health vs. Cole, poses two major questions -- one medical and one legal.
The medical question is whether the Texas regulations would "raise the standard of care and ensure the health and safety of all abortion patients," as the state's lawyer has said.
Abortion-rights advocates maintain that the regulations "will jeopardize women's health by drastically reducing access to safe and legal abortion services throughout the state." Outside the state's five major cities -- Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio -- women will not have an abortion facility within easy driving distance, they said.
About 17% of the women in the huge state "would face travel distances of 150 miles or more," the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals said in upholding the regulations.
Four major medical groups, including the American Medical Assn. and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, filed a brief telling the high court that the Texas regulations "do nothing to protect the health and safety of women." Early abortions rarely result in complications, they said.
"From 2009 through 2013 [when the new law was adopted], there were zero reported deaths in 360,059 abortions performed in Texas," the medical groups reported. They noted that other "generally riskier" medical procedures are not regulated as stringently. "For example, no law requires colonoscopies or liposuction to be performed in an ambulatory surgical center or hospital, and the mortality of both procedures is higher than abortion," they said.
The legal question concerns the standard for deciding whether state abortion regulations are constitutional.
The 5th Circuit Court in New Orleans said judges should not "second guess" legislatures and must uphold a disputed law as long as it is "rationally related to a legitimate state interest. ... Medical uncertainty underlying a statute is for resolution by legislatures, not the courts."
In their appeal, lawyers for the Center for Reproductive Rights said that standard would render the right to abortion a "hollow protection" for pregnant women. They said the state should have to show some evidence its regulations would improve the health of women and would not put a "substantial obstacle" before women seeking an abortion.
They also noted that the 7th Circuit Court in Chicago had blocked a Wisconsin law that was similar to the Texas measure.
“Today the Supreme Court took an important step toward restoring the constitutional rights of millions of women, which Texas politicians have spent years dismantling through deceptive laws and regulatory red tape,” said Nancy Northup, president of the center. “We are confident the court will recognize that these laws are a sham and stop these political attacks on women’s rights, dignity, and access to safe, legal essential health care.”
Friday's announcement was no surprise, because the justices intervened in June to block the Texas law from taking effect. But the court's order came on a 5-4 vote, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito dissenting.
Twitter: @DavidGSavage
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Supreme Court agrees to hear biggest abortion case in 2 decades

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