Even as we wait for U.S. Supreme Court decisions in two cases set to come down this month that could have massive impacts on abortion access, I fear that a court decision out of Texas and a new law passed in Louisiana foreshadow how the Court might rule. The cases pending before the U.S. Supreme Court involve whether federal law requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortions in cases when a woman’s health—not only her life—is threatened supersedes state abortion bans, and whether the FDA acted properly in its decision to ease regulations making it easier to dispense abortion pills without in-person visits.
The Texas Supreme Court ruling stems from the Zurawski v. Texas case filed last year by the Center for Reproductive Rights, on behalf of two doctors and 20 Texas women with pregnancy complications denied abortion care as a result of the state’s near-total ban on abortion, including some who almost died. The plaintiffs argued the ambiguous language in the law had resulted in “pervasive fear and uncertainty among doctors as to when they can provide legal abortions.” Doctors face up to 99 years in prison and at least $100,000 in fines and loss of their medical license for violating the abortion bans.
On Friday, the court ruled that the state’s abortion bans are clear in providing an exception for abortions in cases where in the physician’s “reasonable medical judgment” an abortion is necessary. Moreover, the court rejected the argument that abortions should be allowed in pregnancies when the fetus would not survive after birth.
The court’s decision is shocking in its cruelty and callousness toward women facing critical medical complications and carrying fetuses with lethal conditions. But I guess none of us are surprised by the outcome in a court stacked with reactionary justices.
“This outrageous ruling clearly demonstrates that Texas’s ‘medical exceptions’ to its extreme abortion bans just don’t work,” said Molly Duane, senior staff attorney at the Center. “This ruling means that pregnant Texans will continue to suffer because they can’t access the medical care they desperately need.”
“This ruling utterly fails to provide the clarity Texas doctors need for when they can provide abortion care to patients with serious pregnancy complications without risking being sent to prison. To add insult to injury, the opinion erases the women we represent as though their pain and experiences didn’t exist or matter,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center.
What’s more, we are witnessing a new line of attack against abortion pills, or mifepristone, a proven, safe method of medication abortion that is used in over half of abortions performed in the U.S. today. In Louisiana last week, Gov. Jeff Landry signed a bill that will reclassify mifepristone, along with misoprostol (another abortion medication) as controlled substances. The mere possession of abortion pills without a prescription in the state could result in up to five years in prison.
“Abortion opponents … know they will lose on the merits if they’re honest,” wrote Jill Fillipovic of the situation in Louisiana. “And so they lie. Which is exactly how we get bills that suggest abortion pills are addictive, and threaten to jail women who haven’t had abortions, but who simply possess extremely safe and common medicines.”
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