A Huge Abortion Win in Texas

[theHandpuppet]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/09/abortion_ruling_in_texas_judge_lee_yeakel_strikes_down_restrictive_clinic.html
Slate
A Huge Abortion Win in Texas
But will it last?
By Emily Bazelon

Late Friday, after many of us checked out for the long weekend, a judge in Texas blocked the state from shutting down most of its abortion clinics. Judge Lee Yeakel struck down the state’s “brutally effective system of abortion regulation,” as he put it, saying it was not likely to improve women’s health, would impact poor women the most, and “would operate for a significant number of women in Texas just as drastically as a complete ban on abortion.” The judge was clear and convincing on these essential points. But his ruling, as well as another one over the weekend that’s keeping clinics open in Louisiana, may well be in danger on appeal.

Texas passed the collection of abortion restrictions in House Bill 2 a year ago, weeks after the famous filibuster by Wendy Davis (the state senator who is now running for governor) in her pink tennis shoes. The law has four parts. Two provisions that have already gone into effect ban abortion after 20 weeks and ban doctors from doing medical abortions by telemedicine. A third requires abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. That one, which went into effect in March, was a big factor in reducing the number of clinics in Texas from 44 to 19 in the last three years. The fourth and final provision of the 2013 law, which would have gone into effect Monday, required all clinics to be outfitted as ambulatory surgical centers.

That means clinics have to come up with the money—between $1 million and $1.5 million each, Yeakel said—to widen hallways so patients can be carried out on stretchers, and provide large and expensively equipped recovery rooms. The surgical center requirements (like the ones about admitting privileges) are an example of far-reaching regulations that are enacted in the name of protecting women’s health and result in shutting down clinics. In refusing to go for the state’s justifications, Yeakel, who is a George W. Bush appointee, is sticking to his guns, to use a Texas metaphor. He tried to block the rule about admitting privileges last fall, only to be overruled by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. Now he is back at it, this time blocking the required retrofitting. (Yeakel also stopped the admitting privileges requirement from applying to two clinics, one in the border city of McAllen, and the other in western El Paso.)

At trial, lawyers for Texas argued that requiring clinics to ramp up to surgical center status would make patients safer. It sounds reasonable enough, and states usually have lots of leeway to regulate the practice of medicine. But Yeakel found that the “severity of the burden” to women seeking abortions “is not balanced by the weight of the interests underlying them.” .... MORE at link provided above.

[AuntPatsy]

1. I hope the appeals fall flat, amazing to me that this fight against women seems to rage

Harder when are pugs are not in the whitehouse.... So telling