Texas Doctors Ask SCOTUS to Stem Tide of Abortion Restrictions
Texas abortion providers on Thursday called on the nation’s highest court to answer questions that have plagued legal challenges to restrictions on abortion care for decades: What constitutes an “undue burden” on people who seek abortion, and to what extent can states rely on claims about protecting health and safety in order to regulate the procedure?
“The state of Texas, as it was during Roe v. Wade, is at the heart of the battle,” said Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), which is representing a group of independent Texas abortion providers in their ongoing legal challenge to House Bill 2, the state’s highly restrictive anti-abortion law.
“It is going to have an enormous impact, not just for Texas, but for women across the nation,” if the Supreme Court does not rule in abortion providers’ favor, said Northup. “Copycat laws around the nation will proliferate.”
Texas abortion providers’ writ of certiorari follows that court’s June ruling temporarily blocking major pieces of Texas’ abortion law. Lawyers for CRR told reporters that SCOTUS could take up the Texas abortion case as early as mid-October, though the court has no obligation to grant review in the case at all.
Read more: http://www.texasobserver.org/texas-doctors-ask-scotus-to-stem-tide-of-abortion-restrictions/
