Although election talk had
people thinking most important court issues in the U.S. would not be settled
until a new president chosen, the Supreme Court wasn’t willing to wait.
It has voted 5-3 to overturn
a Texas anti-abortion ruling. Media and abortion rights’ activists are saying
it ends the argument on abortion for ever.
Many states like Texas had
been scrapping away at abortion rights guaranteed in Roe v Wade in 1973. It
essentially held that interfering with a woman’s right to an abortion would
interfere with her right to privacy.
Because Texas and other
states couldn’t take away the basic right, they sought to make it more
difficult.
It used a common trick. State
law restrict abortions to top of the line hospitals with the kind of equipment
needed to perform major surgery.
That left a state like Texas,
with a population of 27 million, with only 19 abortion facilities and ten of
them were scheduled to close, the Daily Beast reported.
Supreme Court Justice Stephen
Breyer wrote that this “places a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman
seeking a previability abortion.”
Many medical experts had
testified that the vast majority of abortions did not require trauma 1 level
care.
The headline in the Beast
said: “Supreme Court’s Texas Decision is the Greatest Victory for Abortion
Rights Since Roe v. Wade.”
In the first case the court
held that the right of privacy in the 14th Amendment guaranteed
women the right an abortion.
The Washington Post said the
latest ruling was made because the Texas law was using “unnecessary health regulations that have the
purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an
abortion.”
Stephanie Schriock, president of the pro abortion
group EMILY’s List, called the decision “a victory for women everywhere,
reaffirming out right to make our own reproductive health care decisions no
matter where we live.”
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