The US Supreme Court (the ‘Court’) by a majority of 5-3 found that Texan law placed an undue burden on women exercising their right under the US Constitution to end a pregnancy as established in the court’s landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade.
The majority of the Court found that Texas had failed to demonstrate a medical justification for the restrictions contained in the law and that it placed an undue burden on women seeking to access an abortion. Referring to its earlier judgment in Planned Parenthood v. Casey the majority confirmed that States’ legislature retain the right to restrict abortion to protect women’s health as long as it didn’t create an ‘undue burden’ for women seeking an abortion. An undue burden is said to exist if its purpose or effect is to place substantial obstacles in the path of a woman seeking an abortion.
The majority took the opportunity in this decision to clarify the law on this point and stated that where restrictive laws exists; rather than deferring to that State’s legislature, the relevant court should in fact scrutinize the medical evidence behind burdensome abortion restrictions.
The case was taken by Whole Woman’s Health who sought to challenge the constitutionality of the House Bill 2 (HB 2). HB 2 placed a number of restrictions on the manner in which abortion clinics could operate, resulting in the closure of a number of clinics in Texas. There were two principal provisions of HB 2 which were at issue. The first which required that doctors had to have local admitting privileges at nearby hospital.
The Court assessed the benefit of the “admitting privileges requirement,” and agreed with the initial District Court finding that the health benefits put forward in favour of the provision are not substantiated. Prior to the enactment of HB 2 abortion in Texas was extremely safe with particularly low levels of serious complications. Rather the majority of the Court found instead that the provision resulted in reduced accessibility and closure of abortion clinics. The Court then examined the ‘surgical-centre requirement’ in HB 2. The Court referenced the District court’s findings that this requirement did not bring about the benefits purported, and that risks are not “appreciably lowered for patients who undergo abortions at ambulatory surgical centres as compared to nonsurgical-center facilities.” Thus the provision created a substantial obstacle to women seeking an abortion and did not bring about conjunctive benefits.
The dissenting judges argued that the ruling circumvents ordinary res judicata rules, defies rules on the severability of unconstitutional aspects of statutes and also demonstrates the court applying different standards to different constitutional rights, with specific regard to third party standing.
For further commentary on this judgment click here and here.
For a copy of the judgment click here.