The Assault on Womens Sexual and Reproductive Rights

[Kobi]

*****warning - graphic descriptions of violence*********



The GOP’s war on the most intimate aspects of women’s lives is undoubtedly real, but it is not being applied without discrimination.

Let’s be clear—the primary targets of the right wing’s rhetorical and legislative attacks are, and have always been, white women. The war on white women is really a push for more white babies. And, that push goes hand in hand with amped-up racial profiling, vigilante policing, mass incarceration, school closures, hoarding of resources from communities of color, and blatant disregard for violence directed at African Americans and their children, including the unborn.

More white people are dying than are being born, a trend that is projected to continue. Meanwhile, the birth rates for people of color remain stable or high, primarily for Latinos. The trick for the modern American situation is to prevent people from seeing that the war for more white babies and the war against people of color are related. But the two phenomena are inseparable.

What we are witnessing is not new, but rather a familiar pattern of desperate efforts to preserve white domination through strength in numbers. It is an historic fact that when radical demographic shifts take place in the United States they are accompanied by white supremacist fears of being outbred and crowded out by immigrants and people of color, and losing majority rule.

And so here we are again. America is undergoing yet another periodic age of white fear and cradle competition. As the white population marches toward a less than majority status, the constant fear of biological extinction has infected our political discourse, policy decisions, and everyday racial interactions, whether in the comments sections of news sites or in the streets.

For those who remain skeptical about the association between fears of white race suicide and emphasis upon women’s reproductive roles, consider the words of famous and respected persons such as Teddy Roosevelt, a champion of race purity who with little embarrassment called black Americans “a perfectly stupid race that can never rise.”

Responding to the falling white birth rate, in his 1906 state of the union address Roosevelt blasted elite native-born white women for shirking their national civic duty to be mothers of the nation by engaging in “willful sterility—the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race suicide.” In his eyes, a white woman who avoided having babies was a “criminal against the race” and “the object of contemptuous abhorrence by healthy people.”

Later, in a 1913 letter to the prominent eugenicist Charles B. Davenport he wrote: “Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind.... Some day we will realize that the prime duty, the inescapable duty of the good citizens of the right type is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world; and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.”

Roosevelt’s declarations came at a time when more women were pursuing education, seeking careers, voting rights, greater voice in public life, and control over their own fertility. All of these factors supposedly made women physically unfit to be good wives and mothers. Doctors of the era argued that the pursuit of higher education, participation in sports and professional life diverted too much blood to women’s brains from their reproductive organs.

Meanwhile, all this discourse was attendant by race riots, lynchings, unpunished rapes of black girls and women by white men, and other forms of genocidal violence. In 1918, in Valdosta, Georgia, an angry white mob hung an 8-months pregnant Mary Turner upside down by her ankles, doused her with gasoline and set her on fire. While still alive, a man in the mob split her swollen abdomen with a hog knife, and stomped the fetus to death before the rest of the mob riddled Turner’s body with bullets. That same year a mob of whites hung Maggie and Alma Howze from a bridge near Shutaba, Mississippi. Both had been raped by the same white man and were pregnant with his children at the time of their lynching.

Consider also Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood who believed that eugenics and birth control could prevent “biological and racial mistakes.” This contradictory historical figure saw no problem with seeking funding and support from the Ku Klux Klan. The eugenics movement was about encouraging the “fittest” to reproduce and directed toward eliminating undesirables. While thousands of black females, white “degenerates” and “ morons” were legally sterilized in the early 20th century, smut suppressors like Anthony Comstock led successful campaigns to make it illegal to send birth control literature through the mail.

Flash forward to the Obama era.

Since 2011, state legislatures across the country have introduced hundreds of provisions from “heartbeat bills” and fetal pain laws, to encouraging violence against abortion doctors and reducing women’s access to birth control and abortion services. Some right-wing politicians have even sought to redefine rape in a way that would force female victims to carry the fetus to term. Their twisted rationale is that an unborn child should not have to die because of a rapists’ crime.

Last April, Kansas Republican Gov. Sam Brownback signed a bill that bans sex-selection abortions, blocks federal tax breaks for abortion providers, forbids them from giving educational talks to students, and declares that life begins “at fertilization.”

What will we witness next—a new bill introduced, in a majority-white state of course, declaring that life begins when a man gets an erection? Will Republicans start citing Genesis 38:9 to criminalize men for masturbating and “spilling their seeds” to prevent conception? Okay, I’m being facetious here. But in fact, almost nothing is directed against controlling the sexual behaviors of men, including rapists, unless of course you are a black man accused of some sexual indiscretion with a white woman. But generally, the burden of sexual morality is placed on women.

Perhaps the worse political gaffe came from Indiana Republican Richard Mourdock, who said he opposed aborting pregnancies conceived in rape because “it is something that God intended to happen.” Are these politicians and their supporters so desperate to boost the population of white babies that they’ll even take those conceived through rape?

While Republicans and Democrats debate the war on women, they have remained conspicuously silent about the intensifying war on black adults and children. If you want a demonstration of the devaluing of black children even as white women of our time are forcibly pushed towards procreation, just do a quick Google search of police assaults against pregnant black women and you’ll see what I mean. There are news stories and graphic videos of visibly pregnant women being cursed at, punched, tasered, kicked, and body slammed to the ground by white police officers.

Though most of the babies were born uninjured, 17-year-old Kwamesha Sharp wasn’t so lucky. In June 2012, Sharp lost her unborn child when a Harvey, Illinois police officer slammed her to the ground and kept his knee pressed down on her abdomen for an extended period of time. According to court documents the arresting officer, Richard M. Jones, said he didn’t care that Sharp was pregnant. In a few of the other cases, the women were arrested and charged, and the officers’ superiors backed their actions.

A new video recently surfaced on social media showing a young black mom, who may have been drugged and raped, being strapped down to a chair inside a Warren, Michigan police station, where one officer kicked her and another chopped her hair off with a pair of scissors.

In addition to physical attacks, black mothers have been fined and jailed for “stealing” education for their children by enrolling them in safer suburban schools. Black parents have had to bury their children. Their names have made headlines: Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Kimani Gray, Darius Simmons, Jordan Davis, Renisha

McBride. Meanwhile, mass school closures in Chicago, Philadelphia and other urban districts across the country have disproportionately targeted and destabilized children in poor black and Latino communities.

The war on black children and teens is especially mean-spirited. A litany of examples makes me think of what civil rights doyen W.E.B. DuBois wrote in 1920: “there is no place for black children in this world.”

Former Idaho executive Joe Rickey Hundley made headlines last February when he slapped a crying toddler on a Delta flight headed from Minneapolis to Atlanta. Hundley told the adopted child’s white mother to “shut that nigger baby up.”

Last September, a white Texas man shot 8-year-old Donald Maiden Jr. in the face while he played tag with other children. In November, New Mexico police officers smashed out the windows and recklessly fired shots into the fleeing minivan containing Oriana Ferrell and her five children who range from age 6 to 18. The mother said she fled the scene during the wild traffic stop because she feared for her children’s safety.

Just last month, 16-year-old straight-A high-school student Darrin Manning was on his way to play a basketball game when he was stopped and frisked by a Philadelphia cop. During the search, a female officer squeezed his genitals so hard that she ruptured his testicles, rendering him sterile.

Today’s white supremacists aren’t necessarily as inflammatory in their language about race and sex. But a century ago, as now, they have never spoke about increasing the births of nonwhites, protecting the black unborn, or setting progressive economic and social policies to make the world a safe place for them to thrive once they are born. Remember when former education secretary Bill Bennett said that aborting every black infant in America would lower crime rates?

So here we are in 2014. The United States has already reached a tipping point in its ethnic and racial diversity. More than half of all babies born in this country are children of color. By 2018, the majority of all children nationwide are projected to belong to nonwhite groups.

These numbers, along with enduring white supremacist fears of dying out culturally and biologically, are the real reasons behind the GOP’s so-called “war on women,” and the continuing attacks on black adults and children. When we take a step back and widen the lens we are able to see how injustice, whether it is based on gender or race, grows from the same insidious root cause.


Stacey Patton is a senior enterprise reporter with The Chronicle of Higher Education and holds a Ph.D. in African American history from Rutgers University. She is also the author of That Mean Old Yesterday--A Memoir, and is the creator of www.sparethekids.com.
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http://www.forharriet.com/2014/02/wh...ite-women.html

[Kobi]

In a sharply divided Supreme Court, women led the charge Tuesday in aggressively questioning the challengers of the rule under Obamacare that for-profit employers' health plans cover contraceptives for female employees at no extra cost, which the suing business owners say violates their religious liberty.

The first salvo came from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who swiftly jumped in to question the challengers' lawyer if any employer can get an exemption from a general law that they claim a religious objection to.

"There are many people who have religious objections to vaccinations," she told Paul Clement, who was representing Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood, two businesses who sued for relief from the mandate on the basis of their owners' Christian beliefs.

Clement responded that each case would have to be looked at individually in terms of whether law satisfies the strict scrutiny requirements under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

The most forceful was Justice Elena Kagan, who repeatedly asked aggressive questions throughout the 90-minute argument about the legal dangers of exempting certain entities from laws on the basis of religion.

"There are quite a number of medical treatments that religious groups object to," she said, positing that a ruling against the Obama administration could empower business owners to seek exemptions from laws about sex discrimination, family leave and the minimum wage. "You'd see religious objectors come out of the woodwork," Kagan warned, arguing that it's problematic for judges to test the centrality of a belief to a religion or the sincerity of beliefs that are invoked in court.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also asked several deeply skeptical questions about the business owners' argument that the mandate runs afoul of RFRA.

But the outcome was difficult to predict as conservative-leaning justices appeared broadly sympathetic to the arguments put forth by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito all set their targets on the administration, with tough questions, and mostly softballs to the challengers' lawyer. Justice Clarence Thomas, the most conservative member, did not speak, as is customary for him.

Anthony Kennedy asked more skeptical questions to U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who was defending the law for the government, than to Clement. He appeared unconvinced that the birth control mandate satisfied strict scrutiny under RFRA, arguing that the government's reasoning could let it force businesses to pay for abortions. But he also wondered aloud if the right of employers trumped the right of female employees who were guaranteed contraceptive services under the Affordable Care Act.

Kagan also said a ruling against the mandate would directly harm women.

"Congress has made a judgment and Congress has given a statutory entitlement and that entitlement is to women and includes contraceptive coverage," she said. "And when the employer says, no, I don't want to give that, that woman is quite directly, quite tangibly harmed."

Outside the court, amid snow showers, women's health activists from Planned Parenthood and elsewhere held signs and chanted in support of the birth control rule.

The cases, which were consolidated, are Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius and Conestoga Wood v. Sebelius.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/supr...ol-challengers

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

[Medusa]

OMFG.

I'm SO FUCKING PISSED OFF.

So here is the article talking about about Mississippi Rennie Gibbs giving birth to a stillborn daughter and the medical examiner finding that the death was a "homicide" due to cocaine toxicity.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...omen-criminals

Today, this case came up in a discussion at work in a very casual space at lunch. Someone was pontificating about how this "crackhead" deserves to rot in jail for "killing her baby" and proceeded to go on and on about how it was her "responsibility as a Mother to bring this child into the world".

The person then went on a rant about how pregnant women should be charged with crimes when their child is born with "preventable medical issues".

I looked at her (yes, a fucking WOMAN was saying this shit) and said, "So, if I get pregnant and my child is born with a predisposition to diabetes then clearly I should be in jail for eating twinkies during my pregnancy."

She actually looked at me and said, "Well...yes!"

So basically, women are fucking incubators and there are actual real live fucking people in this world who want to charge women with fucking CRIMES for not being a good brood mare.

Talk about a fucking Margaret Atwood world.

Gross.

[deedarino]

Sometimes, I am truly afraid for the future.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014...rty-analogies/

Whenever the subject material of an abstinence-only lesson is reported in the media, Americans are typically shocked to hear what kids are hearing in their classes or at their school assemblies. In addition to withholding valuable information about preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, some of these courses also rely on harmful shame-based attitudes about human sexuality to impart negative messages to the 95 percent of Americans who have sex before marriage.
Here are five common analogies that abstinence-only curricula use to teach youth that becoming sexually active will make them worthless — and five good reasons that more states should enact comprehensive sex education requirements:

1. Dirty chocolate.
Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that a school district in Mississippi uses a Peppermint Patty in its sex ed classes. Allegedly, students are asked to unwrap the chocolate and pass it around to see how dirty it becomes after being touched by multiple people. A spokesperson from the school district says that while that lesson was part of a state-approved curriculum that passed three years ago, the “dirty chocolate” lesson is not currently being implemented. Nonetheless, there’s some evidence that this analogy isn’t unique to that particular district. Other internet commenters recall doing the same Peppermint Patty exercise in their own classes. Others did the “dirty chocolate” lesson with a Hershey Kiss.

2. Used tape.
Tape is another popular tool to demonstrate how sexually active teens become “unclean.” In these demonstrations, a piece of tape is affixed to a student’s arm, then removed, and repeated with several other students. This lesson is supposed to illustrate that, just like tape loses its ability to form a tight bond after coming into contact with multiple people, it’s hard to have an emotionally fulfilling relationship after having multiple sexual partners. Sometimes participants’ wrists are taped together to drive home the point further.

3. Chewed up gum.
Last year, a school district in Texas made headlines after some parents complained about a middle school curriculum that encouraged teachers to tell kids that having sex makes them like a used toothbrush or a chewed up piece of gum. Like the other examples on this list, that’s a popular analogy. Elizabeth Smart — the kidnapping and sexual assault victim who was held in captivity for nine months — famously pointed out emphasizing the importance of purity can make rape victims feel dirty and worthless, and described hearing the same lesson about chewed up gum when she was younger.

4. A cup of spit.
“Drink the spit” is an exercise that requires students to pass around a cup and spit in it. Then, students are asked if they would choose to drink that cup. The idea is the same as the chocolate or the tape lessons — having multiple sexual partners, and subsequently exchanging bodily fluids with multiple people, is undesirable. Sometimes the symbolism of this lesson gets pretty explicit. For instance, one variation involves pouring the cups of spit into an empty glass pitcher placed next to a pitcher of clean water. Students are asked to which pitcher they would like their “future husband” or “future wife” to come from.

5. A rose with no petals.
In this lesson, a teacher is instructed to “hold up a beautiful rose.” The rose is passed around the classroom, and each student is asked to remove a petal. Then, when nothing is left except for a thorny stem, the teacher explains that each petal symbolizes a sexual relationship, and this is what happens when people choose to give away the most personal part of themselves. “Ask: Of what value is the rose now?… The rose represents someone who participates in casual sex,” one curriculum instructs.
***
Abstinence-only programs have received over $1.75 billion in federal funding since the creation of the Title V State Abstinence Education Grant Program, which was first attached to a provision in the 1996 welfare reform bill and has been periodically renewed since then. After this funding ballooned under George W. Bush’s administration, President Barack Obama eliminated Title V when he first took office. But during the political fight over the health reform law, Republicans forced through an amendment to Obamacare that restored funding for abstinence programs.

Some lawmakers continue to fight to end abstinence-only programs for good. At the end of last year, Democrats in the House introduced the “Repealing Ineffective and Incomplete Abstinence-Only Program Funding Act of 2013,” a measure that the same group of lawmakers has repeatedly — and unsuccessfully — attempted to push through.

[Kobi]

The U.S. Supreme Court just made it harder for women to visit their doctor’s office in peace — but we won’t let them win.

Today the Court overturned a Massachusetts buffer zone law, which since 2007 had kept protestors away from the immediate entrances of women’s health centers. Today’s ruling means that staff and patients simply trying to get in for health care could now be met with signs, shouts, and sneers right in their faces.

“This decision shows a troubling level of disregard for American women, who should be able to make carefully considered, private medical decisions without running a gauntlet of harassing and threatening protesters.” —Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

The case, McCullen v. Coakley, challenged a 2007 law in Massachusetts that established a 35-foot zone around health centers in which no protests or demonstrations were permitted during operating hours.

In today’s decision, the Supreme Court said the Massachusetts law violates the First Amendment — mostly because it includes a public sidewalk. Shockingly, Court said that the protesters seek only “to engage in personal, caring, consensual conversations with women about various alternatives.”

Let’s Look at the Facts

The 2007 law aimed to strike a balance between patient safety and free speech while helping ensure that women could get medical care without the close-up intimidation and harassment of anti-abortion protestors who had caused chaos in the past.

Before An Act Relative to Public Safety passed in Massachusetts in 2007, protesters stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking the doorway of reproductive health centers. But that’s not all. The protesters obstructed and took pictures of cars trying to enter health center driveways; dressed up as police officers in order to obtain patients’ and staff members’ personal identifying information; screamed at patients and staff; and even touched their bodies.

After the 2007 law, there was a peaceful coexistence: Protesters still got out their message, but Massachusetts women had a few short seconds of calm before walking into our doors.

Did we mention that buffer zones are not unique to health centers? Funerals and polling places have had them for years. In fact, the Supreme Court itself has a buffer zone around its 252-by-98-foot marble plaza.

Buffer Zone Background

State and local buffer zone laws for reproductive health care centers in particular came about after an era of unprecedented violence against the facilities. In the 1980s, extremists who opposed abortion initiated an epidemic of firebombing, vandalism, burglary, death threats, and assault across the nation.

In response, Congress made it a federal crime to use force to intimidate or interfere with reproductive health care providers and patients — that’s the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE). That law is still in place. Moving beyond FACE, states and many municipalities across the country created buffer zone laws for women’s health centers.

Planned Parenthood patients and staff will continue to be protected through FACE, as well as from state and local patient protection statutes across the country. However, many of the state and local buffer zone laws operate differently from one another. Moreover, one state and nine localities have ordinances like the Massachusetts law (with a fixed-distance buffer zone) that are at risk if challenged.

What Planned Parenthood is Doing

In Massachusetts, Planned Parenthood will work with the governor, the attorney general’s office, and local law enforcement on new legal remedies to protect women’s ability to access health care with dignity and respect. Already, more than 100 people have signed up to train as clinic escorts to ensure that women can safely come in and out of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts health centers.

In recent years, we’ve seen some political leaders stand with a small yet vocal fringe dead-set on turning back the clock on legal abortion access in America — and now the Supreme Court has issued this decision. But Planned Parenthood and our supporters are fighting back. We are fighting to ensure that in spite of this ruling, the privacy and safety of every patient accessing health care and every staff member doing his or her job will be protected — no matter what.


- See more at: http://www.plannedparenthoodaction.o....2l4CqSW2.dpuf

[Kobi]

Tomorrow at 10 am, the Supreme Court will hand down its decision on the Hobby Lobby case — and it will be a big one. Here's what to expect.

https://www.facebook.com/PlannedPare...ion?fref=photo

[Allison W]

http://online.wsj.com/articles/supre...law-1404155510

Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby Ruling Ignites Debate Over Religious-Freedom Law
Decision Cites Two-Decades-Old Religious Freedom Restoration Act

By KRISTINA PETERSON
June 30, 2014 3:11 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—Monday's Supreme Courtdecision enabling some private companies to opt out of the federal health law's contraception coverage requirements ignited partisan dueling over not just the 2010 health-care law but over a 1993 religious-freedom law cited in the decision.

The high court's decision in the Hobby Lobby case refocused attention on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that passed Congress overwhelmingly in 1993, with the support of some lawmakers still serving in both the House and Senate. The statute requires federal laws to accommodate individuals' religious beliefs unless there is a compelling interest at stake that can't be attained through other means.

While Republicans on Monday triumphantly pointed to the law's role in the decision, Democrats said they hadn't anticipated the law would be so broadly expanded.

In the case, the owners of Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., an Oklahoma City arts-and-crafts chain owned by an evangelical Christian family, and other companies challenged the Affordable Care Act by saying their religions consider certain birth-control methods immoral and therefore they weren't obliged to help provide them under the religious-freedom law.

The Supreme Court's majority agreed, citing the religious-freedom law in its decision.

Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the lead Republican sponsor of the religious-freedom law when it passed the Senate in a 97-3 vote, said Monday's decision affirmed Congress' decision to pass the law in the first place.

"As the Supreme Court rightfully said today, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act could not have been clearer in saying religious liberty of all Americans must be equally protected and not unnecessarily burdened," Mr. Hatch said in a statement. "That's why RFRA passed Congress overwhelmingly more than 20 years ago."

The bill passed the House on a voice vote and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

But Democrats who had supported the law in 1993 said they hadn't intended for it to be used as a shield protecting for-profit employers from the health law's requirements. The 1993 law refers to "persons" and the Obama administration contended that the law doesn't include for-profit companies like Hobby Lobby.

"No matter how sincerely held a religious belief might be, for-profit employers—like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood—should not be allowed to wield their beliefs as a means of denying employees access to critical preventive health-care services," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.) who supported the law in 1993. At the time, lawmakers kept in place a principle that religion doesn't exempt for-profit businesses from complying with civil rights laws, for example, Mr. Nadler said.

The bill was introduced in March 1993 by Charles Schumer of New York, then in the House, now a member of the Senate's Democratic leadership. Mr. Schumer joined a group of 18 other Senate Democrats who filed an amicus brief supporting the Obama administration in the Hobby Lobby case. In the brief, the Democrats had urged the court to clarify that the religious-freedom law doesn't permit for-profit businesses to deny health coverage to their employees based on their owners' religious objections.

In a statement Monday, Mr. Schumer called the Supreme Court's decision "dead wrong," saying the law he introduced was intended to give individuals the ability "to exercise their religious beliefs without government interference." The law "was not intended to extend the same protection to for-profit corporations, whose very purpose is to profit from the open market," he said.

Republicans had filed their own briefs supporting the challengers and arguing that the health law's mandate violated the religious-freedom law.

The law in question was originally intended to nullify a decision from Justice Antonin Scalia in the early 1990s that denied religious exemptions from generally applicable laws. The dispute arose when Oregon denied unemployment benefits to adherents of a Native American religion who used peyote, a controlled substance, in their ceremonies.

—Jess Bravin, Beth Reinhard and Louise Radnofsky contributed to this article.

[Cin]

Since stealing the presidency for Bush caused a host of unforeseen difficulties for the Republicans, and ultimately for everyone, the GOP luckily discovered it really doesn't matter that much who is POTUS if they can control the House, the Senate, the Media, and the Supreme Court. Of course there is that pesky issue of nominating Supreme Court judges, that does make POTUS somewhat desirable. So we will see how that plays out for them this time around.

But until then, through gerrymandering, voter suppression and legislative tricks, the GOP has managed to gain control of the House and the Senate. The Supreme Court is systematically dismantling individual rights and freedoms, while protecting the personhood of corporations. Since corporations have the same rights as people, except corporate rights are more diligently protected, it is only a matter of time before the Corporate powers that be decide to exercise their 2nd amendment rights. But I digress. Here's a look at the next assault on a woman's right to choose.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...-abortion-case

The Supreme Court Just Agreed to Hear a Case that Could Destroy Roe v. Wade

On Friday, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear its first abortion case in nine years. At issue in Whole Woman's Health v. Cole is HB 2, an omnibus Texas abortion law that made national headlines in 2013 after Texas Sen. Wendy Davis spent 11-hours filibustering the bill that eventually passed anyway.

Since 1992, the court has ruled on three abortion cases, each time affirming further abortion restrictions. In 1992, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a divided court upheld the right to abortion, but left it to the states to set abortion restrictions, saying that these regulations can't put an "undue burden" on abortion access. This broad ruling opened the door for the hundreds of so-called Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers or TRAP laws that states have passed in recent years—onerous regulations placed on abortion providers, often purporting to protect women's health. In its last ruling in 2007, the court upheld a law outlawing dilation-and-extraction second-trimester abortions. If the court continues its pattern of voting against abortion rights and rules to allow Texas to move forward with several burdensome abortion restrictions, it will open the door for other states to do the same, dealing a serious blow to the right to legal abortion guaranteed by Roe v. Wade.

"The Court now has the opportunity to decide whether we will continue to allow elected officials to play politics with women's health," wrote Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, in a statement. "This case represents the greatest threat to women's reproductive freedom since the Supreme Court decided Roe vs. Wade over 40 years ago. Laws like the ones being challenged in Texas are designed to subvert the Constitution and end the right to a safe and legal abortion."

In this case, the justices are expected to focus on two of the Texas law's most onerous requirements: that abortions be performed in ambulatory surgical centers, hospital-like facilities that specialize in outpatient surgery, and the requirement that abortion providers obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Many medical professionals argue that these restrictions put unnecessary burdens on abortion providers: Building and maintaining an ASC is expensive, given the strict requirements regarding features like hallway width and ventilation. Nor do ASCs enhance the standard of care for abortion; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other medical groups have repeatedly noted that the procedure can be safely performed in a typical doctor's office. The admitting privileges' provision gives hospitals in conservative communities or with a religious affiliation the power to effectively stop abortions by denying the necessary admission privileges to doctors.

"The common-sense measures Texas has put in place elevate the standard of care and protect the health of Texas women," wrote Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a statement released following Friday's Supreme Court's announcement. "We look forward to demonstrating the validity of these important health and safety requirements in Court."

The number of abortion clinics in Texas has already been cut by more than half, as elements of HB 2, such as restrictions on medication abortion, a 20 week abortion ban, and the admitting privileges requirement, have gone into effect over the last two years. Before the law, there were 41 clinics in Texas. Today, there are 18. As my colleague Molly Redden reported in September, this has created large swathes of the state where women must travel hundreds of miles to get abortion care. If the Supreme Court upholds HB2 in full, including the ambulatory surgical center requirement, the number of abortion clinics in Texas could fall to ten.