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The Supreme Court Just Delivered a Major Abortion Rights Victory
Louisiana abortion rights defenders cheer the surprising defeat of their state’s admitting privileges law
The U.S. Supreme Court just delivered a major victory to abortion rights defenders in Louisiana and beyond, ruling 5–4 against the state’s controversial law requiring that abortion providers have admitting privileges at hospitals — an impossibility for many clinics — or shut down.
The legislation at the heart of the case was Louisiana’s Act 620, which passed in 2014 and was blocked by the courts before it could go into effect. If the measure sounds familiar, it’s because a nearly identical law in Texas was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt just four years ago on the basis it placed an undue burden on patients seeking abortion care.
The June Medical Services v. Russo ruling was the first major abortion rights case of the Trump era, giving pro-abortion rights advocates some hope that perhaps the court’s conservative majority wouldn’t mean the effective end of Roe v. Wade, which made abortion services legal in all 50 states in 1973. A ruling upholding the Louisiana law would have carved out large geographic districts — possibly even entire states — where abortion…
