Decision Preserves Access to Safe, Legal Abortion
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Anna Núñez, ACLU of Texas, 713-325-7010, [email protected]
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court of the United States today temporarily blocked a Texas law that would have forced most of the abortion clinics in Texas to close.
The law, which was designed to force abortion clinics to close, requires medically unnecessary and prohibitively costly renovations. It was challenged by the Center for Reproductive Rights.
The law would have closed all but nine of the state’s clinics, decimating abortion access for Texas’ more than 5.5 million women of reproductive age. Some parts of the state, which is almost as large as Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina combined, would have been left with essentially no access to abortion.
“We are encouraged by the Supreme Court’s decision to temporarily block implementation of stringent and medically unnecessary regulations on abortion clinics in Texas,” said Rebecca Robertson, legal & policy director of the ACLU of Texas. "While claiming to be motivated by a concern for women’s health when it enacted these rules, the Texas legislature ignored the medical community’s overwhelming consensus that increased restrictions don't make women safer. We hope the Court will put a stop once and for all to the systematic assault on abortion access in Texas.”
“We are pleased that the Court blocked the law so that women in Texas can breathe a temporary sigh of relief knowing that, for now, quality health care providers will be allowed to remain open,” said Jennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project. “But this is only the first step. We now need the Court to clarify that medical evidence matters and that the Constitution doesn’t allow states to rely on sham justifications to for shutting down clinics and prohibiting abortion.”
Major medical groups, including the Texas Medical Association and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, oppose the requirements, which dictate the size of closets to even the color of paint on the wall, because they have little to do with patient health.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the Texas law, treated the opinion of the major medical groups and the medical evidence as irrelevant to the question of whether the state could rely on health-related justifications as reasons for closing the clinic. It stated that it is enough that “any conceivable rationale exists for an enactment” and that the “state is not required to prove that the objective of the law would be fulfilled” in order for a court to find it constitutional. In an earlier opinion challenging other provisions in the bill, the court explained that “rational speculation unsupported by evidence or empirical data” that a law might improve women’s health, even in the face of substantial medical evidence to the contrary, is enough to uphold abortion restrictions that would shut down the majority of clinics in the state.
Because of earlier restrictions passed by the state, abortion was already very difficult for many Texas women to access, with some women having to drive more than 200 miles to get an abortion. A previous decision had already forced about half of the clinics in the state to close, dropping the number from 44 in 2011 to 24 in March. That number will now drop to nine.
This law is one of hundreds of restrictions that have been introduced by state legislatures with the goal of restricting access to abortion. In the first quarter of 2015 alone, more than 330 abortion restrictions were introduced in 43 states. These restrictions have severely blocked access across the South.
New polling shows that most Americans identify as pro-choice and that seven in 10 Americans want a woman who has decided to have an abortion to be able to get it without additional burdens.
