The U.S. Supreme Court on June 27 struck down anti-choice legislation in Texas with a decisive 5-3 ruling, imperiling similar measures in other states.
By June 28, the high court had ruled against Wisconsin and Mississippi, where Republican leaders sought to appeal lower court rulings on their anti-choice provisions.
Also, the Alabama attorney general announced the state would no longer defend its admitting-privilege requirements.
The “complete and total victory … renews the promise of Roe v. Wade for the next generation,” said Nancy Northrup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
At the ACLU, Jennifer Dalven of the Reproductive Freedom Project said, “The Supreme Court’s decision made crystal clear that laws like Alabama’s, Mississippi’s and Wisconsin’s that rely on sham justifications to prevent a woman from having an abortion are unconstitutional.”
Such laws are called Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers or TRAP measures.
“Wisconsin has not been immune to its share of TRAP laws,” said U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis. “In the last year alone, Gov. Scott Walker signed two different bills with the goal to defund our state’s Planned Parenthood centers. These health clinics are vital to the well-being of our communities.”
Moore said she was thrilled by the developments at the Supreme Court, beginning with that Monday morning decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt out of Texas.
The Texas measure
The Texas law, HB2, was devastating in its impact on women and their families in just a few years.
More than 40 abortion clinics were open in January 2013, when Rick Perry led an avowed push to end abortion in Texas.
The law, signed by Perry in July 2013, required that doctors who perform abortions have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles of their clinic and required clinics to meet hospital-like standards for outpatient surgery. Such standards include requirements for corridor width, floor tiles, parking spaces, elevator size, electrical wiring, plumbing and even the angle water flows from drinking fountains.
Proponents of HB2 said the intent was to protect women undergoing medical procedures.
Critics said the intent was to reduce or eliminate women’s access to abortions and to force clinics out of business.
By the time the justices issued their ruling June 27, only 19 clinics remained open in Texas.
Planned Parenthood and other providers filed the first challenge to HB 2.
A federal judge blocked implementation of the measure in October 2013, but an appeals court lifted the hold in March 2014.
Whole Woman’s Health and other providers brought a new challenge in 2014. A district court ruled the admitting privileges and clinic requirements were an unconstitutional burden on women’s access to reproductive health care, but an appeals court again reversed the lower court.
Care providers turned to the Supreme Court, which put a hold on further enforcement of the law and then heard the merits of the case in March.
During oral arguments, it was clear where the court’s four liberal justices stood, where the court’s three most conservative justices stood but not which side Justice Anthony Kennedy would stand on. His vote, always crucial, had even more impact after the death of Antonin Scalia in February.
Kennedy and Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were in the majority.
Breyer wrote the opinion for the majority: “The surgical-center requirement, like the admitting privileges requirement, provides few, if any, health benefits for women, poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions and constitutes an ‘undue burden’ on their constitutional right to do so.”
Ginsburg wrote a concurring opinion, saying the Texas law, and laws like it, “do little or nothing for health, but rather strew impediments to abortion, (and) cannot survive judicial inspection.”
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the dissenting opinion, which was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.
Thomas said the court has a “troubling tendency to bend the rules when any effort to limit abortion, or even to speak in opposition to abortion, is at issue.”
President Barack Obama and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton praised the decision, as did many Democrats across the country — from Capitol Hill to state capitols and city halls.
Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, in a conference call with reporters after the June 27 announcement, called the decision an enormous victory for women.
And Teri Huyck, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, said, “We applaud the court’s ruling affirming that abortion is a decision that should be between a woman and her doctor and a decision that should be made without politicians interfering.
“Yet, today’s victory does not undo the past five years of damage and restrictions already written into law. No woman or doctor should be punished for receiving or providing essential medical care.”
On the opposing side, Judie Brown of the American Life League responded to the court decision with a call to escalate anti-choice campaigns. She said the decision “serves as a blaring wake-up call to the mainstream pro-life movement that dinking and dithering over regulating the killing can never serve as a replacement for the fundamental battle that is not being fought — the battle for the recognition that every innocent preborn human being is a unique person from the moment of his biological beginning.”
The impact
Within hours of the court ruling, the Alabama attorney general announced the state would not defend its admitting-privileges requirements.
Then, on June 28, the Supreme Court rejected appeals from Wisconsin and Mississippi.
“The Supreme Court’s decision today denying cert in Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin v. Schimel is not surprising given the court’s decision yesterday in a similar Texas abortion law case,” said Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel in a statement to the press. “The opinion of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals stands and those portions of our law addressed by the decision are now permanently enjoined.”
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin said the court’s rejection of the appeal means the case is over and Republicans’ admitting-privileges restrictions are permanently blocked.
Planned Parenthood was involved in the lawsuit, along with Affiliated Medical Services. They were represented by attorneys from Cullen Weston Pines and Bach, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the ACLU.
“We are pleased the Supreme Court recognized the true intention behind this law,” said Tanya Atkinson, executive director of PPAW. “Gov. Walker’s relentless pursuit and defense of unconstitutional laws clearly shows just how much elections matter. We need to elect leaders who understand that abortion is a deeply personal decision that a woman should be able to make in consultation with her family, her faith and her health care provider — without government interference.”
At WiG press time, other states with admitting-privilege requirements included Missouri, North Dakota and Tennessee, where they were in force, and Kansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, where they were on hold.
Other states with laws requiring clinics to follow hospital-like surgery center standards include Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Tennessee.
Planned Parenthood’s Richards said the ruling in Whole Woman’s Health was just the beginning:
“This decision has opened the door to go state by state, legislature by legislature, law by law, and restore access to safe, legal abortion.”