BREAKING: Supreme Court strikes down Louisiana abortion law.
Sarah Silbiger/Getty ImagesThe case, June Medical Services v. Russo, was a challenge to a Louisiana law that required abortion providers have admitting privileges with a nearby hospital -- an agreement between a doctor and a hospital that allows a patient to go that hospital if they need urgent care.
Abortion providers argued this was an unnecessary requirement unrelated to health outcomes that only served to prevent them from being able to provide abortion care. Admitting privileges can be difficult for abortion providers to obtain as hospitals do not want to be associated with them due to the stigma and as abortion is a statistically safe procedure, requiring extremely limited numbers of patients to have to go to hospitals for care.
That case set what was supposed to be a precedent that laws like Texas' that"'do little or nothing for health, but rather strew impediments to abortion' cannot survive judicial inspection," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in a concurring opinion, referencing a lower court case.However, in 2018, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals surprised court watchers by reversing a decision on the Louisiana law that struck it down based on the 2016 Supreme Court case.
Since 2016, the Supreme Court's makeup has changed. Justice Anthony Kennedy represented the swing vote on abortion in the 2016 case, then siding with the liberal-leaning justices. Following Kennedy's retirement in 2018 and the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, their replacements -- Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh -- are seen as more conservative.
While Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that declared abortion a protected right, included an individual patient challenging the law, every major abortion case since then has been presented by providers and clinics like Whole Woman's Health, Planned Parenthood or June Medical Services.
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