A woman enters Choice Clinic, formerly Whole Woman’s Health Clinic, Monday, June 27, 2016, in Austin, Texas. Abortion providers celebrating the U.S. Supreme Court striking down major Texas abortion restrictions Monday also begrudgingly acknowledged a daunting reality: The damage is done, and no time soon are women likely to see new clinics start replacing dozens that have folded since 2013. (AP)
Once again, Texas loses at the U.S. Supreme Court over abortion.
In 1973, Texas’ ban on abortion was overturned in the landmark Roe v. Wade case.
And Monday, the state’s restrictions on abortion clinics was struck down, deemed an “undue burden” to a woman’s right to an abortion.
While Americans’ deeply divided opinions about abortion have not changed much in the past 20 years, the debate still rages over a woman’s right to what she can and cannot do to her body versus the rights of the unborn.
Anthony Kennedy Restores a Liberal Supreme Court
Dana Milbank – The Washington Post
Justice Anthony Kennedy…siding with the liberal bloc, lent his name to Justice Stephen Breyer’s resounding defense of abortion rights in his 5-to-3 majority opinion. In doing so, Kennedy put an end to any thought of banning abortion in America anytime soon — even if a future Republican president names a conservative to fill the late Antonin Scalia’s seat….
He’s no King Solomon, but Kennedy, the perpetual swing vote, may be the dominant lawgiver of his day. Unlike Alito and Clarence Thomas (and, to a lesser extent, Chief Justice John Roberts), he recognizes the importance of public consensus on cultural issues, such as the growing acceptance of gay marriage. On abortion, which chronically divides Americans, Kennedy has avoided destabilizing change.
Abortion rights activists, from left, Ravina Daphtary of Philadelphia, Morgan Hopkins of Boston, and Alison Turkos of New York City, rejoice in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, June 27, 2016, as the justices struck down the strict Texas anti-abortion restriction law known as HB2. (AP)
I had to Drive 600 Miles for My $800 Abortion
Kathryn Holburn – Motto
I was born almost two decades after Roe v. Wade recognized the right to legal abortion in America. I always thought that meant my right to have an abortion was guaranteed, and no one could interfere with the decisions I made about my own body. Maybe that’s still true in the abstract, but in real-world places like Lubbock, Texas, nothing could be further from the truth.
I learned this the hard way two years ago, in the fall of 2014. I was working my way through college as a waitress when I learned I was pregnant. I knew I wasn’t ready to be a mother, and while my decision to have an abortion wasn’t an easy one, I knew it was the right choice for me.
As a result of HB2, the clinic in Lubbock closed. I was left choosing between bad and worse: Drive 600 miles west, round-trip to Albuquerque, or 600 miles east, round-trip to Dallas. The expense of travel, hotels and foregoing work shifts added hundreds of dollars onto the cost of a procedure. Either way, I was faced with a five-hour drive just to get the procedure. Even then, the remaining clinics were so overwhelmed by the closures that there were no guarantees I’d even be able to see a doctor in Dallas, where women have been forced to wait as long as 20 days just to get an initial appointment. I ended up driving to New Mexico.
The Pro-Life Movement Is Winning. It’ll Take More than One Supreme Court Ruling to Change That
Sarah Kliff – Vox
Sure, abortion rights advocates were justified in cheering the Supreme Court decision Monday striking down two Texas regulations: Those laws were among the most restrictive in the country and led to multiple clinic closures.
What went less discussed were the 286 other abortion restrictions that have passed since 2010. A quarter of all post-Roe abortion restrictions have passed in the last five years alone.
The Supreme Court decision didn’t touch them.
The Supreme Court’s Undue Burden on State Abortion Laws
The Editors – National Review
Reagan Barklage of St. Louis, center, and other anti-abortion activists demonstrate in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, June 27, 2016, as the justices struck down the strict Texas anti-abortion restriction law known as HB2. (AP)
Today’s Supreme Court decision striking down Texas’s H.B. 2 abortion law is the most important abortion-related decision in the last quarter-century. By arrogating to itself excessive authority to second-guess legislative efforts to regulate abortion, the Supreme Court has again taken up the role that Justice Byron White warned against in 1976: “the country’s ex officio medical board with powers to disapprove medical and operative practices and standards throughout the United States.”
The result of this decision is the replacement of relatively neutral judicial analysis on abortion-related questions with personal whim. It is now unmistakably clear that the modus operandi of the Court’s liberal majority is to first side with relatively unrestricted abortion and only then find a legal rationale for doing so. “Undue burden” is now little more than an all-purpose excuse for striking down laws the majority, for ideological reasons, doesn’t like.
Is the Supreme Court’s Abortion Decision a Victory for Kermit Gosnell?
John McCormack – The Weekly Standard
The Texas law, which would have established the same health and safety standards for abortion clinics as outpatient surgical centers and require a doctor on staff to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, was passed in the wake of the trial of Kermit Gosnell. And both the majority opinion written by Justice Breyer and a dissent written by Justice Alito addressed the case of Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist who was convicted of murder because he severed the spines of infants after they were born instead of legally dismembering those infants before they were born. Gosnell was also convicted of manslaughter over the death of a woman who died in his squalid clinic, which was likened to “a bad gas station restroom” by one law enforcement agent….