Supreme Court Reduces LA Abortion Access

The Supreme Court delivered a blow to the anti-abortion movement on Monday June 29, 2020, striking down a Louisiana law that could have left only one abortion provider in the state. The court ruled 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the court's liberal justices. June Medical Services v. Russo concerned a Louisiana law that required doctors providing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Enforcing the admitting-privileges requirement would drastically reduce the number and geographic distribution of abortion providers, making it impossible for many women to obtain a safe, legal abortion in the State and imposing substantial obstacles on those who could. The chief justice, who wrote a concurring opinion separately from his four more liberal colleagues, said he joined the majority in June Medical out of respect for precedent. "The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons," he wrote. "Therefore, Louisiana's law cannot stand under our precedents." Roberts dissented in the Texas case, Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, which was decided in 2016. The ruling is a narrow win for abortion rights groups, which argue that the Louisiana law and others like it are not medically necessary and are intended to close clinics, not protect women's health. Opponents of the Louisiana law, which was enacted in 2014, said that restricting which doctors may perform abortions is not only medically unnecessary, it puts an undue burden on women's right to access the procedure. Many abortion providers cannot easily obtain hospital admitting privileges, doctors have explained, because of the excessive

paperwork required and because of resistance from hospitals that don't want to

appear as though they're taking sides on the issue. A 2018 study by the

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that 95% of

women who have abortions in the U.S. receive them in clinics or offices, and

that such facilities were perfectly equipped to handle such a procedure. The law's supporters relied on arguments that abortion is a dangerous, high-risk procedure, even though the procedure has a lower rate of hospitalizations than a wisdom tooth removal. The Louisiana one was justified as based on concerns for the health of women rather than moral objections to abortions