News
Texas Abortion Battle to Reach Supreme Court
This June, Texas State Senator Wendy Davis took the nation by storm. Sporting her now-infamous pink running shoes, she began a filibuster to stop Senate Bill 5. Senate Bill 5 would have severely restricted the rights of abortion providers in Texas. Opponents of the bill argued that the bill’s passage would lead to the vast majority of abortion providers closing down. Davis spoke for about 12 hours against the bill, all while following Texas’s extremely strict filibuster rules. In the end her filibuster was successful, sort of. Senate Bill 5 did not pass that night, but then Governor Rick Perry called a special Senate session in which the legislation passed without a hitch.
The idea of the bill arguably makes some sense. The stated purpose was to help reduce health risks for women undergoing abortion procedures. Any attempt to help women receive safe healthcare is laudable. Unfortunately, that is not what the bill actually did. It mandated that any doctors providing abortions at any point during a woman’s pregnancy be required to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic. However, there is very little evidence to suggest that this actually mitigates any medical risks from abortions.
To begin, abortions are relatively safe medical procedures. As Dr. Douglas Laube, a board-certified and respected OBGYN in Wisconsin testified during a similar debate in his state, “the risk of death associated with childbirth is 14 times higher than that associated with abortion. The risk of death related to abortion overall is less than 0.7 deaths per 100,000 procedures. Less than 0.3% of women experiencing a complication from an abortion require hospitalization.” Hospitalization after an abortion procedure is exceedingly rare. Further, a doctor’s admitting privileges at a given hospital does not affect the patient’s care once she arrives. If a woman experiences a complication during an abortion, her doctor’s lack of admitting privileges does not preclude the medical care she will receive at the hospital.
The effects were almost immediate—abortion providers across the state began closing or suspending services because of these stringent new rules. Women who already had appointments scheduled are being turned away, leaving many with no further options. These abortion providers, led by Planned Parenthood, are fighting back.
The law was struck down as unconstitutional earlier this fall, but last week the Fifth Federal Court of Appeals reinstated most of the provisions of the abortion law. Now the fight will move to the highest court in the land. These women’s rights groups and abortion providers have filed a request for an emergency injunction to hold up the lower court’s ruling until the issue can be firmly resolved.
Abortion is an issue that has been in the periphery of the Supreme Court for years. Precedents such as Roe and Doe have dictated the constitutionality of abortion regulations for years. However it seems to be common knowledge that a law challenging abortion, or on the flip side, abortion regulations will end up in front of the Supreme Court at some point. How the Court decides this Texas abortion regulations case may be able to provide some foreshadowing of how this conservative court will decide in the future.
—
Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.
Featured image courtesy of [ann harkness via Flickr]
Comments