US Supreme Court strikes down regulations on Texas abortion clinics

A young pro-life supporter stands outside the U.S. Supreme Court June 26 during protests in Washington.(CNS/Jim Lo Scalzo, EPA)


The case, Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, challenged a 2013 state law, H.B. 2, placing the requirements on the state's abortion clinics. Opponents of the law claimed the requirements were aimed at closing abortion clinics. But the state and many pro-life advocates maintained that the law protected women's health.


Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote the opinion, said the restrictions on the clinics "provide few if any health benefits for women, pose a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions and constitute an 'undue burden' on their constitutional right to do so."

"The court has rejected a common-sense law protecting women from abortion facilities that put profits above patient safety," said Deirdre McQuade, assistant director for pro-life communications at the USCCB's Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities.


She said the Texas law "simply required abortion facilities to meet the same health and safety standards as other ambulatory surgical centers."

McQuade, in a statement issued after the ruling, also said: "Abortion claims the lives of unborn children, and too often endangers their mothers as well. This ruling contradicts the consensus among medical groups that such measures protect women's lives."


Thomas wrote that the court's decision "simultaneously transformed judicially created rights like the right to abortion into preferred constitutional rights, while disfavoring many of the rights actually enumerated in the Constitution." He added that the Constitution "renounces the notion that some constitutional rights are more equal than others. ... A law either infringes a constitutional right, or not; there is no room for the judiciary to invent tolerable degrees of encroachment."


In essence, the court said a state may enact abortion regulations that do not pose an "undue burden'' on pregnant women.


According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports legal abortion, 25 states have laws or policies that regulate abortion providers and clinics that perform surgical abortions that it claims "go beyond what is necessary to ensure patients' safety."




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