MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH
SUPREMES OVERTURN TEXAS PRO-LIFE LAW
Court strikes medical-safety plan, revives abortion industry in state
Bob Unruh
The U.S. Supreme Court, in an opinion written by abortion advocate Justice Stephen Breyer, on Monday ruled that Texas cannot require abortion businesses to meet certain health and safety standards.
The decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt struck down a state law adopted in 2013 that simply required abortion businesses to meet the standards for “ambulatory surgical centers” and ensure that abortionists have “admitting privileges” to nearby hospitals to respond to emergencies.
“Neither of these provisions offers medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens upon access that each imposes,” wrote Breyer, who was joined by swing-voter Anthony Kennedy and liberal justices Ruth Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in a 5-3 decision.
The ruling on Monday said the law would prevent some women from having access to abortions and created too much of a burden for others.
The law had left only about eight abortion businesses running in a state where there had been as many as 40 in recent years.
The law had been upheld by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said “the state truly intends that women only receive an abortion in facilities that can provide the highest quality of care and safety – the stated legitimate purpose of H.B. 2.”
The 5th Circuit said the abortion industry failed in “the burden of proving that H.B. 2 was enacted with an improper purpose.”
“They failed to proffer competent evidence contradicting the legislature’s statement of a legitimate purpose for H.B. 2.”
The lower court found the state’s law legitimate and enforceable because it was reasonably “related to (or designed to further) a legitimate state interest.”
But the Supreme Court had moved in swiftly, barring the ruling from the 5th Circuit from taking effect, and in its opinion Monday, it affirmed its dedication to the abortion industry.
The high court said the 5th Circuit was wrong when it said a state law is constitutional if “it does not have the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus; and … it is reasonably related to (or designed to further) a legitimate state interest.'”
The 5th Circuit further had said the district court, which had sided with abortionists, should not have used its own “judgment,” because the legislature already had “conducted its ‘undue burden inquiry,’ in part because ‘medical uncertainty underlying a statute is for resolution by legislatures, not the courts.'”
Breyer said that’s wrong, because Supreme Court precedent “requires that courts consider the burdens a law imposes on abortion.”
He said it is the courts, not legislatures, that “must resolve questions of medical uncertainty.”
Breyer bemoaned the fact that “eight abortion clinics closed in the months leading up to the [admitting privileges] requirement’s effect date,” and he added that “11 more closed on the day the admitting-privileges requirement took effect.”
The closures, in a number of cases, were because the abortion industry was “unable to find local physicians in those communities with privileges who are willing to provide abortions.”
Breyer noted the “size of those communities and the hostility that abortion providers face.”
He wrote that testimony said “abortions are so safe … providers were unlikely to have any patients to admit.”
Regarding the requirement that abortionists meet state-standardize requirements for surgical centers, which, for example, required the presence of registered nurses on duty, Breyer said those demands do not “benefit patients.”
Breyer admitted there were five deaths in Texas abortions in recent years, not counting the unborn babies who were intended to die.
But he said the mortality rate for colonoscopies is 10 times higher than an abortion.
Ginsburg claimed that childbirth is “far more dangerous to patients” but said those procedures are “not subject to ambulatory-surgical-center or hospital admitting-privileges requirements.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, however, in his dissent, pointed out that the majority was following its “tendency ‘to bend the rules when any effort to limit abortion, or even to speak in opposition to abortion, is at issue.'”
The majority, in its support for the abortion industry, disregarded “compelling evidence that Texas’ law imposes no unconstitutional burden,” he said.
“But the court employs a different approach to rights that it favors,” he wrote. “This case shows why the court never should have bent the rules for favored rights in the first place. Our law is now so riddled with special exceptions for special rights that our decisions deliver neither predictability nor the promise of a judiciary bound by the rule of law.”
Justice Samuel Alita said the majority was so “determined to strike down two provisions of a new Texas abortion statute … the court simply disregards basic rules that apply in all other cases.”
The case was brought not by anyone whose rights may have been impacted – the women who might seek abortions – but by third parties, such as the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/06/supremes-strike-medical-safety-plan-revives-abortion-industry/#7h0IheSpVrpej42c.99My comments: The Supremely Evil Court continues its Murderous ways in this decision. They are ignorant of the Reality that Abortion makes the U.S. a Pagan Nation, destined to be Destroyed by God Almighty as were All the Pagan Nations that preceded her. The Court was Faithful to its Religion of godless, Socialist, Secular Humanism.
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