SCOTUS hands pro-choice a huge victory

The Supreme Court saved one of its most significant decisions of the term for the end.    By a 5 to 3 majority (Kennedy joining the four liberals) the Texas abortion law was declared unconstitutional.

Justice Breyer wrote the majority opinion, the gist of which is this:

Both the admitting privileges and surgical center requirements place a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a pre-viability abortion, constitute an undue burden on abortion access, and thus violate the Constitution.

This was the law that would close most abortion clinics in the state of Texas, meaning women in large parts of the state would have to travel hundreds of miles to find a facility. Experts have said that neither requirement is medically necessary.  First-term abortions are far safer, with fewer complications, than some other procedures allowed to be carried out in doctors' offices and clinics, such as tonsillectomies and colonoscopies.   Clearly, the law was part of the relentless political effort to impose a religious belief on the law of our land.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg concurred with Breye's opinion, adding her own paragraph that warned lawmakers that any laws like this one that "do little or nothing for health, but rather strew impediments to abortion," will not survive judicial review.


Ralph