A Federal Judge Just Called Out the Big Lie Behind Texas’s Latest Abortion Restriction
Is this really a badly needed “Emperor wears no clothes” moment for the anti-choice movement, or is this judge just an oddity, soon to be forgotten?
Texas’s justification for an anti-abortion law enacted last year is “disingenuous,” according to Judge Lee Yeakel’s opinion striking parts of that law on Friday. Indeed, Judge Yeakel’s opinion dismantles the state’s avowed justification for the law, pointing out that it does little to protect women’s health and a great deal to restrict access to abortion. Whatever the strength of Yeakel’s argument, however, his decision is unlikely to stand for long, as it will be appealed to one of the most conservative courts in the country — and the Supreme Court has done little to constrain that court from restricting the right to choose.
For 22 years, the legal standard governing when a state may enact a law restricting abortions has been as clear as a milkshake. In its 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court held that states are free to regulate abortion so long as they do not impose an “undue burden” on the right to choose. “An undue burden exists,” the Court explained, “if its purpose or effect is to place a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.” The practical effect of this vague standard is that it delegated a great deal of discretion to lower court judges to decide which abortion restrictions they would permit and which ones they would strike down, as the Court’s undue burden standard offered them little firm guidance on how to decide abortion cases.
Meanwhile, in conservative states like Texas, Casey has become an invitation to probe just how far state lawmakers can go in restricting abortions before the courts say “no farther.”
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