The Obama administration on Monday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a Texas abortion law that would force more than half of the state's abortion clinics to shut down. The administration said the Republican-backed regulations would eliminate access to the procedure for large numbers of women across the state. The law is said to harm rather than protect women's health.
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in March on a 2013 Texas law that imposed new requirements for abortion clinics. The law requires abortion clinics to meet the same building standards as ambulatory surgical centers, and doctors who perform abortion to admit privileges at a hospital within 30 miles, according to NRL News. The two regulations would force the closure of more than 75 percent of facilities that perform abortions in the state and prevent new ones from opening.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verilli wrote in a "friend of the court" brief that the Texas regulations for clinics and doctors who perform abortions are far more restrictive than other regulations upheld by the justices over the years. He wrote the regulations undermine the very government purpose they purport to advance.
Verilli wrote that the Texas abortion law would close many more of the state's clinics and force hundreds of thousands of Texas women to travel great distances if they seek to terminate pregnancies.
He added that the regulations are unnecessary to protect - indeed, would harm - women's health, and they would result in closure of three quarters of the abortion clinics in the state.
The women's healthcare providers challenged the Texas regulations and a federal district judge found they unjustifiably interfered with a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy. But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans reversed that decision.
According to Verilli, the 5th Circuit had misapplied precedents governing abortion restrictions by failing to examine whether the challenged regulation imposes an "undue burden" on the right to abortion.
His "friend of the court" brief siding with the clinics challenging the law comes in one of the most politically charged disputes this presidential election year, according to Reuters.
Democrat administrations have joined with the healthcare clinics oppose to the regulations, while Republicans have sided with the state to enforce the law.
Briefs from Texas officials and their supporters to defend the regulations are due in the coming weeks. The state officials argued in previous filings that the law protects the health of a woman seeking an abortion.
