Texas healthcare providers take abortion fight to the Supreme Court
Texas healthcare providers are taking the fight to protect abortion access to the Supreme Court.
A coalition of reproductive healthcare providers on Monday jointly filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court to reinstate an injunction blocking a provision of the state’s sweeping new abortion law requiring doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.
Despite a lower federal court ruling striking down the provision as unconstitutional, the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals accepted the claim — thoroughly debunked by medical experts and other courts — that the provision advances medical safety and allowed the provision to go into effect. The court acknowledged that the provision “may increase the cost of accessing an abortion provider and decrease the number of physicians available to perform abortions,” but said that this was an “incidental effect” of the provision.
“Right now, women in vast swaths of Texas are being turned away at clinic doors because of a bogus law that attempts to do underhandedly what states cannot do directly — block women from accessing abortion services,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “We now look to the Supreme Court to protect women’s access to these essential health care services while we fight this critical court battle.”
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/04/texas_healthcare_providers_take_abortion_fight_to_the_supreme_court/
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