Planned Parenthood and other women’s health activists are taking their fight against Texas’s new abortion restrictions to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The groups filed an emergency petition today to reinstate an Austin federal judge’s Oct. 28 ruling that the new limits were unconstitutional and shouldn’t be enforced. An appeals court had overturned the judge’s injunction, allowing the state to enforce the law as of Nov. 1.
“The evidence showed that, absent an injunction, the law would have an unprecedented and devastating effect on women’s abilities to obtain an abortion,” Janet Crepps, the activists’ attorney, said in the application to U.S. Supreme Court JusticeAntonin Scalia, who oversees emergency requests for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which includes Texas.
Scalia asked Texas to respond to the request by Nov. 12, according to a court clerk.
“In just the few short days since the injunction was lifted, over one-third of the facilities providing abortions in Texas have been forced to stop providing that care and others have been forced to drastically reduce the number of patients to whom they are able to provide care,” Crepps said.
Overcame Filibuster
Texas Governor Rick Perry, a Republican, signed sweeping new restrictions on abortion into law this year, in spite of a last-ditch effort by Democrats, led by State Senator Wendy Davis, to kill the law with a filibuster.
Lauren Bean, a spokeswoman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the activists’ filing.
Activists sued to block several of the new restrictions in federal court in Austin. After a three-day non-jury trial last month, U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel granted an injunction permanently preventing Texas from enforcing two measures, including a requirement that doctors have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles (48 kilometers) of the clinics where they perform abortions.
Planned Parenthood presented evidence at trial that many doctors who perform abortions lacked local hospital admitting privileges in Texas and would have to stop performing the procedure immediately. This would leave women in wide swaths of the second-largest state without ready access to the procedure, the clinics said.
Texas appealed Yeakel’s ruling the following day and won an emergency order from the New Orleans appellate court that overturned his decision. The appellate judges said the activists weren’t likely to succeed on appeal so Texas should be allowed to begin enforcing its new abortion restrictions right away.
Bloomberg has the full article
