A victory in pushing back assaults on women’s rights

Militant/Ellen Brickley

Since 2010, enemies of a woman’s right to choose have increasingly focused on legislation requiring that abortions be treated differently from other out-patient surgical procedures. These assaults have been cynically packaged as “protections” of women’s health.

On June 27, 2016, a major victory was registered pushing back “health” regulations restricting women’s access to abortion. The US Supreme Court struck down provisions of a 2013 Texas law that had already resulted in closing half the state’s forty abortion clinics, and if fully implemented could have reduced facilities to ten or fewer. Those consequences fell especially hard on women from the working class and from families on farms and in rural towns.

The court rejected the heart of the Texas legislation, which had (1) required any doctor performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, and (2) demanded that family planning and prenatal clinics providing abortions meet hospital standards. Such requirements are not imposed on clinics handling more medically dangerous procedures, including colonoscopies, tonsillectomies, and dental surgery.

This victory for women’s rights opens the way to fight to block similar
anti-working-class legislation in Alabama, Mississippi, Wisconsin, and
other states.