The Texas legislation that was overturned on Monday, House Bill 2, reflected a shift in strategy by anti-abortion forces: rather than try to outlaw abortion outright, create regulations that effectively make it more difficult to provide or obtain abortions. Texas officials have asserted that their law, passed in 2013, is designed to protect women's health and not to thwart abortions.
- Doctors who perform abortions must have privileges to admit patients at a full-service hospital within 30 miles
- Abortion providers must meet the requirements of an "ambulatory surgical center, " with the building, equipment and staff to match — essentially equivalent to a small hospital.
"Neither of these provisions offers medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens upon access that each imposes," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the 5-3 majority. "Each places a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a previability abortion, each constitutes an undue burden on abortion access, and each violates the Federal Constitution.”
Consequences of the law
Of the 41 abortion providers operating in Texas when the law was passed, 19 remain in business. Abortion-rights advocates say 10 more might have closed if the law had been upheld. The justices asked sharp questions during oral arguments in March about whether the clinic closings were directly traceable to the law.
Controlling law
In Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, the Supreme Court ruled that the states may not create "unnecessary health regulations that have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion." The question before the justices was in large part whether Texas regulations violated the standard set in the Casey case. They concluded on Monday that it did.
The current case
The case was Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt. (The former is an abortion provider, the latter is Dr. John Hellerstedt, head the Texas Department of State Health Services.) The Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld House Bill 2, saying it did not impose an undue burden on women seeking an abortion in Texas.
