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Substantial Obstacles after June Medical Services: ACOG v. FDA

By Rachel Rebouché

In June Medical Services v. Russo, the Supreme Court held that a Louisiana law requiring that physicians obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital was unconstitutional. Had the law taken effect, all but one provider would have lost the ability to deliver abortion care in the state. Despite the result, a number of commentators have expressed concern about the future of abortion rights. The source of their concerns is the Chief Justice’s application of the undue burden test—the standard for judging the constitutionality of an abortion restriction—established in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Justice Breyer, who wrote the judgment of the Court in June Medical Services, balanced the benefits and burdens conferred by the law, finding that the statute offered no benefit for people’s health and created significant burdens on the delivery of abortion. The admitting-privileges requirement does not protect patients’ safety because complications from abortion are rare and thus rarely will a patient need admission to a hospital. Moreover, admitting privileges, which the district court found each provider had pursued in good faith, do not determine a physician’s competency or credentials.

Although Chief Justice Roberts’s concurrence provided the fifth vote to strike down the law, Roberts wrote separately to emphasize that whether the Louisiana law had any identifiable benefit for patients was immaterial. The Court need only address what burdens the law imposed—if a law establishes “significant obstacles” to abortion. Roberts’s concurrence clearly departs from Breyer’s approach of weighing the law’s benefits against its burdens. Breyer’s formulation would render a law unconstitutional if it had no health benefits but erected a minimal obstacle to abortion care. Roberts’s approach would not: a law only fails the undue burden test—no matter how unsuccessful legislation is in achieving its purported goals—if the restriction renders abortion access substantially more difficult.

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abortion protest outside supreme court.

Upholding Precedent While Rewriting It in June Medical Services v. Russo

By Mary Ziegler

Before the Supreme Court’s decision in June Medical Services v. Russo, many wondered if the Supreme Court’s new conservative majority would begin to do away with precedents, starting with the 2016 decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. But Chief Justice John Roberts voted with his liberal colleagues that Louisiana’s admitting privileges law could not “stand under our precedents.” And yet he felt curiously free to rewrite the very same precedents he claimed to respect.

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Abortion rights protest following the Supreme Court decision for Whole Women's Health in 2016

Reflections on the Transnational Significance of June Medical

By Fiona de Londras

By any ordinary standard of comparativism, one might suggest that the abortion jurisprudence of the United States is so particular to its own circumstances that it ought to be considered sui generis.

But U.S. Supreme Court abortion law decisions always attract international attention, not only because of the (perhaps peculiarly) combative nature of U.S. abortion law, but also because the United States is something of a bellwether for abortion law reform.

This is, in truth, rather undesirable. U.S. abortion law is shaped by the idiosyncrasies of at least three power struggles playing out in particular ways in the American politico-legal landscape: contestations between anti-abortion and pro-choice politics and activism, constitutionalist struggles between judicial and legislative decision-makers, and constitutional tensions between states and federal authority.

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Fairview Heights, IL—Jan 5, 2020; Sign on medical clinic announces Planned Parenthood branch is now open, the southern Illinois clinic was built to serve St Louis after Missouri restricted abortions.

Preventing Access to Abortion is Prima Facie an “Undue Burden”

By Louise P. King

As an obstetrician/gynecologist, lawyer, and bioethicist, when I read Supreme Court rulings on reproductive rights, I am struck by how little the Court understands the restrictive and burdensome nature of our medical system for women.

The latest decision on reproductive rights, June Medical Services LLC v Russo, does not bolster my confidence in the Court. The decision was narrowly won. While Chief Justice John Roberts’ concurrence gives deference to precedent, it and the dissent suggest that a slightly different statutory requirement — equally and unnecessarily restrictive of access to needed care — could, in the future, be upheld.

This is a problem given that the U.S. health care system is already rife with and primed for gender-based inequities.

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protest sign at supreme court

The Narrow Victory of June Medical Might Pave the Way for Future Abortion Restrictions

By David S. Cohen

June Medical v. Russo was a victory for Louisiana’s three independent abortion clinics and the thousands of people in the state they can now continue to serve. But, going forward, Chief Justice Roberts’ concurring opinion could pave the way for federal courts to bless a host of abortion restrictions that would make access to care more difficult.

To understand what might happen based on the Chief’s opinion, it’s instructive to look at Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In that case, the Court announced the undue burden test, a test that in theory could have had bite. Per the decision, “An undue burden exists, and therefore a provision of law is invalid, if its purpose or effect is to place a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.”

However, in Casey itself, the Court applied the standard and upheld almost all of the restrictions before it — a parental interference requirement, an abortion-only extreme informed consent process, and a 24-hour mandatory delay. The only provision the Court struck down under the undue burden test was the requirement that a married woman notify her husband before having an abortion.

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Globe.

Questioning the Comparative Relevance of US Abortion Jurisprudence

By Payal Shah

In the U.S., June Medical Services L.L.C. v. Russo is a critical decision to stall regression on abortion rights. From a global perspective, however, June Medical, along with the Court’s contemporaneous decision upholding the U.S. government’s Anti-Prostitution Loyalty Oath (APLO) in Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International, reflect another truth—the growing idiosyncrasy, insufficiency, and impropriety of comparative reference to U.S. abortion jurisprudence.

U.S. abortion jurisprudence has been cited by courts across the world in recognizing reproductive rights. This is in part because the U.S. was among the first countries to state that a women’s right to decide whether to continue a pregnancy is a protected constitutional right.

However, in the almost 50 years since Roe, the U.S. constitutional framework on abortion has not evolved in a comprehensive manner; instead has been shaped reactively, in response to laws passed by anti-abortion legislatures. Yet, constitutional courts continue to “ritualistically” employ Roe as the “hallmark of progressive law.”

The June Medical and Alliance for Open Society decisions ultimately maintain the national status quo on abortion rights—including the possibility of reversal of Roe v. Wade— and also facilitate the silencing of sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR) movements abroad. In doing so, these decisions call into question the contemporary comparative relevance of U.S. abortion jurisprudence.

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WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 21, 2019: A crowd of women hold signs supporting reproductive justice at the #StopTheBans rally in DC.

A Radical Reorientation for U.S. Abortion Rights

By Joanna Erdman

There is something inappropriate, even uncomfortable, about Chief Justice John G. Robert’s love letter to precedent in June Medical Services, LLC v. Russo.

On June 29, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court held unconstitutional a Louisiana law that required doctors who perform abortions in the state to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. If the law went into effect, a single provider, or, at most, two, would remain in the state. The vote was 5 to 4. Roberts cast the fifth vote, but he did so in a separate opinion compelled by precedent.  The Louisiana law and its burdens on the right to abortion were nearly identical to those in Whole Woman’s Health, and therefore “Louisiana’s law cannot stand under our precedents” – even a precedent that he believes is wrongly decided.

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Washington, DC, USA -- March 4, 2020. Wide angle photo of a throng of protesters at an abortion rights rally in front of the Supreme Court.

June Medical v. Russo Reflects Ongoing Struggle with Black Women’s Constitutional Equality

By Michele Goodwin

The Supreme Court’s June Medical v. Russo case was more than just another cog in the wheel of the intensifying battle against the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.

Though, on its face, the case was about access to abortion, just beneath the surface, the law at issue represented a continuation of Louisiana’s historic resistance to sex and race equality. Read More

“That I Don’t Know”: The Uncertain Futures of Our Bodies in America

By Wendy S. Salkin

I. Our Bodies, Our Body Politic

On March 30, at a town hall meeting in Green Bay, Wisconsin, an audience member asked then-presidential-hopeful Donald J. Trump: “[W]hat is your stance on women’s rights and their right to choose in their own reproductive health?” What followed was a lengthy back-and-forth with Chris Matthews. Here is an excerpt from that event:

MATTHEWS: Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no as a principle?
TRUMP: The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment.
MATTHEWS: For the woman.
TRUMP: Yeah, there has to be some form.
MATTHEWS: Ten cents? Ten years? What?
TRUMP: I don’t know. That I don’t know. That I don’t know.

Much has been made of the fact that President-Elect Trump claimed that women who undergo abortion procedures should face “some sort of punishment.” Considerably less has been made of the fact that our President-Elect, in a moment of epistemic humility, expressed that he did not know what he would do, though he believed something had to be done. (He later revised his position, suggesting that the performer of the abortion rather than the woman undergoing the abortion would “be held legally responsible.”)

I am worried about the futures of our bodies, as, I think, are many. That a Trump Presidency makes many feel fear is not a novel contribution. Nor will I be able to speak to the very many, and varied, ways our bodies may be compromised in and by The New America—be it through removal from the country (see especially the proposed “End Illegal Immigration Act”), removal from society (see especially the proposed “Restoring Community Safety Act”), or some other means (see especially the proposed “Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act”).

But, I am like President-Elect Trump in this way: Like him, “I don’t know.” I don’t know what to say about what will happen to our bodies or to our body politic. So instead, today, I will take this opportunity to point to one aspect of the changing face of access to reproductive technologies that has already become a battleground in the fight over women’s bodies and will, I suspect, take center stage in the debate over the right and the ability to choose in coming years. Read More

10 Observations About the Supreme Court Argument in Whole Woman’s Health

Supreme Court
Flickr Creative Commons—Andrew Raff

By Gregory M. Lipper

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, a constitutional challenge to a pair of Texas restrictions on abortion providers. The first provision requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges from a hospital no more than 30 miles from their clinic; for a variety of reasons, these privileges are very difficult for abortion providers to obtain. The second provision requires abortion clinics to meet the rigorous—and often prohibitively expensive—requirements governing ambulatory surgical centers (this was referred to as the ASC law). If allowed to take effect, these requirements would cause 3/4 of Texas abortion clinics to close and leave just 10 clinics to serve over 5 million women.

The requirements were struck down by the district court, reinstated by the Fifth Circuit, and temporarily blocked by the Supreme Court, which is now hearing the merits of the challenge.

Based on my review of the transcript, here are ten observations about the argument:

1. Justice Ginsburg opened the argument with a procedural curveball.

With the law’s challengers going first, most people presumably expected the argument to start with sharp questioning from, say, Justice Alito. Instead, the Center for Reproductive Rights’s Stephanie Toti got just two sentences out before she was interrupted by Justice Ginsburg. The former civil-procedure professor wanted to know about claim preclusion: in particular, whether the challenges, in this case, to the admitting-privileges requirement were foreclosed by the plaintiffs’ unsuccesful facial challenge, in an earlier case, to those same requirements. This and other procedural inquiries dominated Toti’s argument.

2. All roads lead to the record.

Several of the conservative Justices interrogated Toti about the proof that the law’s requirements would cause clinics to close. Toti provided some infromation about how laws would affect clinics, but also repeatedly alluded to more detailed information that she would supply during her rebuttal. This approach may have prolonged the questioning on this point:

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