Supreme Court will wade back into abortion debate

[jpak]

Source: USA Today

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Friday to re-enter the national debate over abortion.

The justices will decide whether tough new restrictions placed on abortion clinics and doctors in Texas constitute an "undue burden" on women seeking legal abortions and should be struck down.

The restrictions — forcing doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and requiring clinics to meet standards for outpatient surgery centers — threaten to leave the state with only 10 clinics clustered in four population centers and along the Mexican border. A similar law in Mississippi threatens to close that state's lone abortion clinic.

Whatever the justices decide next spring will help clarify the court's 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, when a deeply divided court upheld the right to abortion while letting states impose restrictions that do not block women from obtaining services.

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Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/11/13/supreme-court-abortion-clinics-restrictions/75238212/

[lark]

1. The answer,

a big "DUH". The only issue is how much do these jerks want to appease the RW fundamentalists?

[Judi Lynn]

2. U.S. top court to decide major abortion case for first time since 2007

U.S. top court to decide major abortion case for first time since 2007
Reuters
By Lawrence Hurley
6 hours ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court took up a major new abortion case on Friday, agreeing to hear a challenge by abortion providers to parts of a restrictive, Republican-backed Texas law that they contend are aimed at shutting clinics that offer the procedure.

The case focuses in part on a provision that has not yet gone into effect requiring clinics to have costly hospital-grade facilities. A separate section of the 2013 law that requires abortion clinic physicians to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles (50 km) is also at issue but has gone into effect in most parts of Texas.

The last time the nine justices of the Supreme Court decided a major abortion-related issue was in 2007 when they ruled 5-4 to uphold a federal law banning a late-term abortion procedure.

Backers of the Texas law asserted that the provisions being challenged before the Supreme Court were necessary to protect the health of women.

More:
http://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-decide-major-abortion-case-first-time-192250990.html#