Over the long weekend, federal district judges in both Texas and
Louisiana moved to halt
new abortion clinic restrictions from taking effect. In
both instances the laws were slated to become active on Monday,
September 1.
Louisiana’s requirement, signed into law in June, requires all
abortion-clinic doctors to have admitting privileges at local
hospitals. On Sunday, U.S. District Judge John deGravelles
granted doctors a temporary reprieve from repercussions
for continuing to practice while they seek these privileges, a
process that can take several months.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel
threw out a Texas provision which would have forced 12 of the
state’s 19 abortion clinics to close. The provision is part of a
broader abortion law which also requires clinic doctors to have
admitting privileges at local hospitals. That part of the law was
upheld by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this
year.
But in general TRAP
(“targeted regulation of abortion providers”) laws haven’t
fared so well in the Southern states lately. In early August,
a federal district judge ordered
Alabama legislators to reconsider a requirement
that abortion-clinic doctors have hospital admitting
privileges. And in July, the notroriously-conservative 5th Circuit
court
ruled that Mississippi’s admitting-privileges law—which
would have forced the state’s one remaining abortion clinic to
close—was unconstitutional.
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