On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear a landmark abortion case, the first since Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the court. A favorable ruling could begin to chip away at expansive abortion rights, which actually harm the health of women and their unborn children.
The case, June Medical Services LLC v. Russo, concerns a commonsense Louisiana law that mandated that abortion providers had to maintain hospital admitting privileges at nearby facilities. This protected all parties involved but especially the health and safety of the women wanting an abortion.
If this case sounds familiar, it’s because it is. The law under scrutiny is quite similar to the Texas law the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in 2016 after hearing Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.
There are a few ways the Supreme Court could handle this case. It could throw it out because the abortion clinics don’t have third-party standing because of the clear conflict of interest. Many briefs filed in this case mentioned the third-party standing doctrine and asked the court to reject the suit because it’s from a conflicted party.
The Supreme Court could also try to make a distinction between the Louisiana case from the Texas law. The reason Louisiana adopted such a law was that the state had documented multiple health and safety issues. The state had already shown the law hardly affected women’s access to abortion adversely at all, thus mitigating the concept that the law placed an “undue burden” on women seeking abortions.
The Supreme Court could also simply view it as identical to the Texas law and find it unconstitutional.
Finally, the justices could throw out the precedent set in Whole Woman’s Health and revisit the long-standing abortion precedent Planned Parenthood v. Casey. But that seems unlikely, although this route would more substantially challenge the “undue burden” standard precedent establishes for testing the constitutionality of abortion regulations.
One of the most fascinating aspects of this case is the way abortion advocates are presenting it. They are already worried about it even though the Supreme Court hasn’t heard arguments yet. Activists are framing this case as one that could ban abortion in Louisiana or “gut reproductive rights.”
Neither the Louisiana nor the Texas law did, and would do, any such thing. The laws simply required doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital in case anything were to go wrong. Why wouldn’t “progressives” who claim to be “feminist” want women receiving abortions to receive the best medical care possible?
To liberals, nothing is more sacrosanct than abortion, and anyone who disagrees should be excoriated. Whenever abortion is on the Supreme Court’s docket, the Left becomes hyperfocused and terrified that a sliver of its “rights” will be rolled back by the trifecta of supposed misogynists, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas, to the judicial ether, never to be recovered.
All of this noise aside, abortion providers should not be able to say they’re supportive of women’s rights but then take shortcuts on women’s safety when they obtain an abortion. It’s grotesque and it’s wrong. Let’s hope the Supreme Court uses this case to rule against abortion provides and protect women’s health over profits.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
