An Historic Attempt To Kill Roe v. Wade May Backfire Spectacularly On The Anti-Choice Right
An Historic Attempt To Kill Roe v. Wade May Backfire Spectacularly On The Anti-Choice Right
by Ian Millhiser Feb 23, 2016 9:29 am
was supposed to be an epic battle over the fate of Roe v. Wade.
Next week, the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, a challenge to Texas’s ambitious anti-abortion law HB2. If this law is upheld — a very real possibility in a conservative Supreme Court — Roe v. Wade would have most likely remained alive in name only. States would gain sweeping new power to shut down abortion clinics, so long as they dressed up the laws they enacted to end access to abortion as health regulations.
Except that opponents of abortion no longer have the fifth vote they need to gut Roe. Justice Antonin Scalia’s death means that Roe shall live at least another year. Whether it survives past next year, however, could very well be decided by whoever gets to fill Scalia’s seat.
The Masterminds
HB2 is the brainchild of the sophisticated anti-abortion group Americans United for Life (AUL). The law imposes expensive architectural and other requirements on abortion clinics, as well as often-difficult-to-obtain credentialing requirements on abortion providers. If the Supreme Court allows the law to take full effect, at least 32 of the 40 abortion clinics that existed in Texas before it was enacted are expected to shut down.
More:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/02/23/3751979/an-historic-attempt-to-kill-roe-v-wade-may-backfire-spectacularly-on-the-anti-choice-right/