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Undue Burden

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5CA holds what should be obvious — Mississippi’s most recent anti-abortion statutes violate a woman’s reproductive rights:

Mississippi’s last abortion clinic won a major victory at the conservative 5th Circuit of Appeals, which said a law intended to make the state “abortion-free” and close the clinic was unconstitutional.

“Pre-viability, a woman has the constitutional right to end her pregnancy by abortion,” wrote E. Grady Jolly, a Reagan appointee, for the panel. The law requiring that abortion providers have admitting privileges to local hospitals, which Mississippi’s Jackson Women’s Health Organization had been unable to obtain, “effectively extinguishes that right within Mississippi’s borders.”

The judges’ hands were tied by the fact that a separate 5th Circuit panel had already said an identical law in Texas, where it has closed about half of the state’s abortion clinics, was constitutional even if it had no basis in medical necessity. Today’s ruling, which is on the preliminary injunction, says the law is only unconstitutional as it has been applied to the Jackson clinic, citing a principle that states can’t violate their citizen’s rights by claiming they can go out-of-state.

The admitting privileges law was scheduled to take effect in July 2012, but was blocked by a lower court, which said if the state got its way, the result would be “a patchwork system where constitutional rights are available in some states but not in others.”

Whether Anthony Kennedy is willing to ascribe any content to the “undue burden” standard, even in such an extreme case, is unclear.

Meanwhile, America’s most trusted news source has a sneak preview of Mississippi’s next legislative session.

 

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