Looming abortion ruling could be "dangerous," says top attorney
As a Supreme Court decision on abortion rights is highly anticipated in the United States, few are as uniquely positioned to assess its impact as reproductive rights attorney Kathryn Kolbert, who argued the last major abortion case before the high court.
In that 1992 challenge, the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion survived, but the Supreme Court allowed for such state regulations as waiting periods.
The decision was written by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter, who have retired, and Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Kennedy is seen as pivotal in the current case which picks up, in a sense, where the earlier case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, left off.
This time, the court is deciding if Texas has created an undue burden for women by imposing stiff regulations on abortion clinics and doctors. Critics say the rules are a backdoor means to restrict access to abortion, known as TRAP laws.
More than half of Texas' clinics have closed, leaving fewer than 20, advocates say, to serve the state of 27 million people.
Hardest hit have been rural, poor women for whom distance and cost have put abortions out of reach, they say.
Supporters of the laws say they protect women's health, however. The regulations require clinics to upgrade to hospital standards and doctors performing abortions to have formal agreements to admit patients to local hospitals.
Kolbert, who heads the Athena Center for Leadership Studies at New York's Barnard College, talked with the Thomson Reuters Foundation about the Supreme Court and abortion rights.
She co-founded the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, which is representing Whole Women's Health, the chain of clinics challenging the Texas regulations.
THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION: It seems the issues being addressed in the Texas case come out of the Casey case, that the regulations are an undue burden.
KOLBERT: The main issue in the case is how the undue burden standard will be interpreted going forward.
The whole question comes down to Justice Kennedy and how he sees that standard, and he frankly is much more in the middle.
Does he come back to what he articulated in Casey, or is he pushed a little bit to the right with the influence of the other justices? For me, the biggest concern is Justice O'Connor, who he clearly listened to, is no longer on the court.
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