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Court to Texas: Abortion Law Serves No Valid Purpose

Brigitte Amiri,
Deputy Director,
老澳门开奖结果 Reproductive Freedom Project
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October 28, 2013

In a crucial victory for Texas women and families, a federal district court held unconstitutional a law requiring physicians who provide abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. The Texas court based its decision on evidence showing that the law would not protect women in any way, and would have a devastating effect on women in the state. Indeed, the court expressly found that the law has 鈥渘o rational relationship to improved patient care鈥 and serves no 鈥渧alid purpose.鈥 That is why leading medical experts, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Texas Hospital Association, all opposed the law.

The importance of today鈥檚 ruling cannot be overstated. Without it, more than one in three health centers in Texas would have closed. Women who already are struggling to pay rent and put food on the table for their families would have had to travel hundreds of miles to obtain abortion care. Luckily, the court鈥檚 decision protects those women.

But, unfortunately, the fight is far from over. Less than an hour after the decision, the state of Texas had already filed its appeal.

The 老澳门开奖结果 is challenging similar laws in Alabama and Wisconsin where these laws threaten to shut down at least half the women鈥檚 health centers in each state. Comparable laws are being challenged in North Dakota and Mississippi, where they threaten to shut down the sole providers in each state.

The courts are recognizing that these laws are nothing but backdoor attempts to shut down women鈥檚 health centers and outlaw abortions. It鈥檚 long past time for politicians to stop interfering with a woman鈥檚 personal decision-making and to leave the medical decisions to a woman and her doctor.

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