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John,
Catherine here, on the ground in Louisiana, where the Supreme Court announced Friday that they will hear a case that has the potential to be the most important Court ruling on abortion in a generation! For my perspective on this critical development check out my legal commentary on the case at SCOTUSblog.
Americans United for Life's Litigation Counsel, Rachel Morrison also explained the case back in January:
The Louisiana law at issue requires physicians who perform abortions to have active admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the facility where the physician performs the abortion. This law is similar to a Texas law that the Supreme Court found unconstitutional in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt in 2016. In that case, the Court found that there was sufficient evidence that Texas’ admitting privileges law caused the closure of about half of the abortion clinics in Texas, which created a substantial obstacle for women who wanted to get an abortion.
But the Court’s ruling in Hellerstedt does not mean that all admitting privileges laws are per se unconstitutional or that there is sufficient evidence that Louisiana’s law will lead to the closure of a large number of abortion clinics in Louisiana. Determining whether an abortion regulation is unconstitutional is a fact-intensive inquiry that requires state-specific evidence that the law causes a substantial obstacle.
A three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in favor of Louisiana’s law, explaining that there were “stark differences” between the facts and evidence in the Texas case and the facts and evidence in Louisiana’s case. Unlike in Texas, there was no evidence that any abortion clinic would close in Louisiana as the result of the law.
We have been in this fight, and we will stay in this fight. The Louisiana law before the Supreme Court is an Americans United for Life model bill. We worked to support its passage. We even submitted a friend of the Court brief to the Supreme Court in June encouraging them to hear the case and affirm that women deserve emergency care when abortions go terribly wrong. Now we know the Court was listening!
Emergency transfer laws are desperately necessary. Louisiana’s long and sordid history of dirty and dangerous abortion businesses being shuttered one by one to protect women from fly-by-night and Unsafe abortionists should tell the Court all it needs to know, both about the legal benefits of this law and the dubious right of abortionists to sue to overturn laws designed to protect their own patients.
This is a cause that MUST be won! But to ensure that we can continue to be 100% engaged on this paradigm-shifting case, just as we have been all along, I am asking for your help.
We are counting on you to support us in this critical mission and at this critical moment. A win in this case could lead to the long overdue overturn of Roe v. Wade.
There are 4 abortion mills left in Louisiana. And so I am asking you to donate $40: $10 for each clinic left in the state to send a message that the lives of their patients are more important then their profits earned from abortion.
Please give what you can...even a $10 donation will help us set the stage for the reversal of Roe v. Wade!
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