The summer’s controversial Texas abortion law was slated to go into effect on Tuesday. Although a federal judge blocked two key provisions of the law on Monday, the Attorney General has already appealed the ruling.
U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel heard three days of testimony last week during the trial in Austin, the outcome of a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union.
One provision of the law required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of an abortion clinic. Judge Yeakel ruled that provision unconstitutional:
The admitting-privileges provision of House Bill 2 does not bear a rational relationship to the legitimate right of the state in preserving and promoting fetal life or a woman’s health and, in any event, places a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus and is thus an undue burden to her. (source)
According to AP, federal judges in Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi and Wisconsin have also “found problems with state laws prohibiting doctors from conducting abortions if they don’t have hospital admitting privileges.”
The Texas law had also limited the use of drugs that induce abortion. Judge Yeakel blocked those restrictions if a “physician who determines, in appropriate medical judgment, to perform a medication-abortion using the off-label protocol for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.”
A provision banning abortions at 20 weeks post-fertilization, four weeks earlier than prior law, went into effect on Tuesday.
According to the Austin Statesman, Judge Yeakel is a Republican and was nominated to the federal bench in 2003 by President George W. Bush.
Contrary to many headlines, Judge Yeakel did not rule the entire law unconstitutional. Full opinion, 26-page pdf.
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