Well this is some heartening news.
Less than 24 hours before new abortion regulations were set to take effect in Texas, U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel on Monday blocked implementation of one provision challenged by abortion providers and partially blocked a second provision, ruling that they could place an undue burden on women and are therefore unconstitutional.
In his opinion, Yeakel wrote that a provision of House Bill 2 that requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion facility “places a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus and is thus an undue burden to her.”
Yeah, considering most abortion doctors have to come in from out of state, no kidding it’s an undue burden on women. But that’s how the religious want it — rights for clumps of cells who could potentially become religious, and no rights for these clumps of cells’ incubators.
Nice that something that’s clearly unconstitutional is getting slapped down as such.
Update: Well never mind then. A conservative judge just reinstated the unconstitutional crap and now over a dozen facilities will have to close.
*vigorous applause*
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The ban on abortion from 20 weeks (down from, I think, 26 elsewhere/historically) is still in place, though.
All the other abortion restrictions are still in place, including the 20-week ban and (from a separate bill) mandatory ultrasounds. However, the hospital admitting requirement would have essentially closed one-third of the clinics in Texas tomorrow.
The other clinic-closing restriction – ambulatory surgical center requirements – will come into play (with attending lawsuits) in 2014.
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/09/27/texas-abortion-providers-challenge-omnibus-anti-abortion-bill-in-federal-court/
Agh, dammit. I was too optimistic about this movement then. Both of those are every bit as damaging.
The 20-week ban is absolutely horrifying to me, since many medically-necessary abortions are only determined so after that period. Never mind that an abortion is a woman’s right regardless of gestation time, since it’s her autonomy that’s being abrogated by the not-yet-viable fetus, this law will almost certainly kill women. It’s just a matter of time.
If the ASC requirements were backed with a funded effort to upgrade existing facilities, great. Of course, they’re not. And it’s not like every abortion requires surgery — most of them are done in pill form. Why do you need an ASC present, just to be given some pills!?
Presumably the 20-week ban does contain exceptions for protecting the life and health of the mother, since bans that did not include those exceptions have routinely been struck down as unconstitutional.
That being said the whole purpose of the law was to make abortion difficult if not impossible to obtain in the state of TX without technically running afoul of the constitution. Nice to see they have failed, at least in part.
“The 20-week ban is absolutely horrifying to me, since many medically-necessary abortions are only determined so after that period.”
Is your concern only with the “medically-necessary abortions” or are you against the ban against any abortion?
Also, I think there needs to be a definition of terms when it comes to abortion. I typically take that to mean the intentional dismemberment of a human person to terminate his/her life.
But if you have a pregnancy where the mothers life is at risk, such as the case in an ectopic pregnancy, then I would say the operation done on the tube is the mothers body and that the unintentional result of the baby potentially dying does not make on culpable. So intentions here are important.
Wow. So zero “abortions” are actually so by your definition, Daniel, because a “human person” does not include fetuses.
Do you have any evidence that fetuses are not human persons?
Well that was a short reprieve.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/us/most-of-law-on-abortion-is-reinstated-in-texas.html?_r=0
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thascius:
First off, not all abortion bans have those exceptions. If they pass they’d still get enforced as law unless and until someone mounts a legal challenge and has a judge *agree* that they’re unconstitutional.
Second, the Texas ban only contains weakened exceptions.
http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/07/16/media-ignore-why-women-need-access-to-abortion/194901
And third, just because such an exception gets written into the law, doesn’t mean it will be enforced reasonably or, well, ever. That worked so well for Savita Halappanavar, or for women who end up in Catholic hospitals here in the US.
Pardon, here’s a better cite for the Texas exception.
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/06/13/texas-consolidates-its-most-horrifying-anti-choice-bills-into-one-nightmare-piece-of-legislation/
So it’s not just ‘risk to a mother’s health’, it has to be severe ENOUGH risk of death or permanent damage, not just something she might survive or heal from; and again, as Savita’s case demonstrates, any level of risk can be interpreted as insufficient.
Analysis from RHR:
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/11/01/decision-reinstating-texas-anti-choice-law-heavy-on-judgment-light-on-reasoning/
thascius, about that exception for life and health of the woman: here’s the tiny figleaf of constitutionality that remains, with respect to medical abortions since those (and the admitting privileges bit) were all the injunction addressed. [brackets mine]
…and via Lynna in the Lounge:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/11/01/2876381/need-know-severely-conservative-judge-just-ruled-birth-control/