After the terrible Supreme Court decision on Monday striking down a portion of a Texas pro-life law that protects women’s health and has also saved the lives of thousands of unborn children and closed abortion clinics that can’t ensure adequate protection for women, abortion activists are now going after pro-life laws in Louisiana.
Breyer’s majority opinion for the court held that the regulations are medically unnecessary and unconstitutionally limit a woman’s so-called right to an abortion.
Pro-abortion forces have filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn every single pro-life law Louisiana approved this year. The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a new lawsuit in federal district court today on behalf of abortion businesses suing to stop the state’s new 72-hour waiting period and a new law that would ban dismemberment abortions.
- Prohibiting Dismemberment Abortion, in which an abortionist uses forceps to grasp body parts of the unborn child and dismember it piece by piece while it is still alive.
- Requiring abortionists to be Board Certified in OBGYN or Family Medicine, or to be under the direct supervision of a provider who is Board Certified in OBGYN or Family Medicine.
- Giving women a 72-hour reflection period prior to abortion in order to have adequate time to consider all their options, as well as to allow women who are being coerced or trafficked time to seek help to protect themselves and their unborn children.
- Prohibiting abortion businesses from profiting from the sale of body parts gathered from aborted babies and requiring instead that the abortion businesses bury or cremate aborted children.
- Protections for unborn children over 20 weeks who are diagnosed with genetic abnormalities that are consistent with life, and requiring that abortionists give a woman information about treatments and resources that may be available for her child.
- Prohibiting state taxpayer dollars and contracts from going to abortion businesses, which is especially important when state funding for education and healthcare are floundering.
“Louisiana politicians are trying to do what the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled decisively they cannot, burying women’s right to safe and legal abortion under an avalanche of unjustified and burdensome restrictions,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “This law creates a web of red tape that women and their doctors cannot hope to escape, driving safe and legal care out of reach for many Louisiana women and putting their health and well-being at risk.”
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The 5-3 decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt shows the paramount importance of judge’s in this year’s presidential election. In approving the appeal from abortion companies, the Supreme Court did not allow Texas’ pro-life law to stand.
At issue in the ruling were two provisions–that abortion clinics meet the same building standards as ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs) and that abortionists have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital for situations of medical emergencies.
Texas’ law is arguably responsible for saving the lives of tens of thousands of unborn babies by closing abortion clinics that are unable to protect women’s health. The laws protects women’s health and welfare by requiring abortion clinics to meet the kinds of medical and safety standards that legitimate medical centers meet.
Breyer wrote that “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.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, who authored the dissenting opinion, wrote, “Today the Court strikes down two state statutory provisions in all of their applications, at the behest of abortion clinics and doctors. That decision exemplifies the Court’s troubling tendency ‘to bend the rules when any effort to limit abortion, or even to speak in opposition to abortion, is at issue.’”
He continued, “… today’s decision creates an abortion exception to ordinary rules of res judicata, ignores compelling evidence that Texas’ law imposes no unconstitutional burden, and disregards basic principles of the severability doctrine. I write separately to emphasize how today’s decision perpetuates the Court’s habit of applying different rules to different constitutional rights— especially the putative right to abortion.”