Supreme Court Blocks Mississippi Pro-Life Law That Could Have Closed Its Last Abortion Clinic

National   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Jun 28, 2016   |   5:19PM   |   Washington, DC

The U.S. Supreme Court’s liberal justices have been handing down one devastating decision after another this week.

On Monday, in a historic but wrongly decided opinion, the justices struck down a Texas law that protected women’s safety and saved tens of thousands of unborn babies’ lives by requiring abortion facilities to meet the same health and safety standards that legitimate medical facilities do. It also required that abortionists have hospital admitting privileges in cases of patients’ medical emergencies.

Earlier on Tuesday, the liberal justices decided to allow Washington state to force pro-life pharmacists to sell abortion pills.

Now, the high court has refused to hear appeals from Mississippi and Wisconsin, allowing lower court rulings to continue blocking their abortion regulations. WAPT News reports the state laws would have required abortionists to have hospital admitting privileges in cases of patient emergencies. However, lower court decisions blocked the state laws from taking effect.

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Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel said he was disappointed but “not surprised” to hear the decision in light of the ruling Monday on the Texas case, the Wisconsin State Journal reports. Gov. Scott Walker also expressed his disappointment on Twitter, but promised that he will continue to work “to protect the sanctity of life.”

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant called the high court’s decision disappointing, and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves said it will endanger women’s lives, according to the local news report.

The Mississippi law could have closed the last abortion facility in the state, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and made it the first abortion-free state in the U.S.

In 2014, a three member panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals stopped the pro-life law from taking effect in Mississippi, LifeNews reported.

Writing for the majority, Judge E. Grady Jolly stated: “Such a proposal would not only place an undue burden on the exercise of the constitutional right, but would also disregard a state’s obligation under the principle of federalism—applicable to all fifty states—to accept the burden of the non-delegable duty of protecting the established federal constitutional rights of its own citizens.”

“As a result, we hold that JWHO has demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on its claim that H.B. 1390’s admission-privileges requirement imposes an undue burden on a woman’s right to choose an abortion in Mississippi, and is therefore unconstitutional as applied to the plaintiffs in this case.”

As a result of the Supreme Court’s decision, the appeals court opinion against the law stands.

One of the primary abortionists employed by Mississippi abortion facility owner Diane Derzis is Bruce Elliot Norman. Norman was caught by pro-life activists operating an illegal abortion business with Derzis in Birmingham, Alabama, which was ordered to halt operations by a judge in August 2013.

Elliot was also responsible for sending three abortion patients to the hospital on the same day in January 2012, that resulted in complaints to the Alabama Department of Public Health by pro-life groups, including Operation Rescue, CEC for Life, and Life Legal Defense Foundation. Those complaints prompted an inspection of Derzis and Norman’s abortion facility where 76 pages of serious violations were discovered.

Derzis’ and Norman’s shoddy abortion practices are replicated in Jackson, Mississippi, where Operation Rescue has documented a long history of incompetent abortionists and abortion-related injuries, including one last August.

Norman and other abortionists hired by Derzis do not live in Mississippi. Currently, they travel to Mississippi to do abortions, then leave the state. Experts have testified that this has practice leaves women to fend for themselves when complications arise and can delay emergency care in the event of a life-threatening complication.

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