EDITOR’S NOTE: Late last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reinstated provisions in the Texas law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges in nearby hospitals. An appeal to the lower court’s ruling is pending. The two opinion pieces, below, were written before the appeals court made its ruling.
Judge’s Ruling on Restrictions Ripe for Reversal
When the district court in Planned Parenthood v. Abbott concluded that Texas’ health and safety regulations of chemical abortions were not a “substantial obstacle” to a safe abortion, but still invalidated them, it failed to apply the relevant standard of review from the U.S. Supreme Court’s controlling decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, issued in 2007. And that was only one of several mistakes.
