"We don't read today's decision as foreclosing all clinic regulations and admitting privilege requirements," said Clarke Forsythe, the senior legal counsel for Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group that fuels the movement with model legislation, speaking at the nonpartisan National Constitution Center on Monday night.
Admitting privilege requirements have been challenged in courts in at least six states in recent years.
Now there are only eight abortion providers, all of which meet both ASC and admitting privilege requirements and meet all of the four provisions in HB2".
From completely unnecessary admitting privilege requirements for abortion clinics to mandatory ultrasounds meant to shame women considering whether to access abortion care, Wisconsin has joined the troubling national trend of enacting laws based on junk science under the false guise of protecting women's health.
In the hearings, the owners explained why many clinics could not meet the admitting-privilege requirement and described the hardships patients would face, especially in sparsely populated West Texas, if clinics closed.
Of the admitting-privilege requirement, Justice Breyer's opinion points out "that, when directly asked at oral argument whether Texas knew of a single instance in which the new requirement would have helped even one woman obtain better treatment, Texas admitted that there was no evidence in the record of such a case".
The admitting-privileges requirement in Texas cut the number of abortion providers by half.
After that, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a new lawsuit challenging parts of the Texas abortion law, including the admitting privileges requirement.
On the day the admitting privileges requirement took effect, in November 2013, the number of Texas abortion clinics plummeted from 41 to 22. Today, there are 18.
The law had proved difficult and expensive for clinics, and nearly 20 have closed since the admitting-privileges requirement was allowed to go into effect.
