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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Mississippi's abortion restrictions will likely be the first outside Texas to be affected by Monday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning requirements that abortion doctors have hospital admitting privileges, the leader of the Center for Reproductive Rights said.
The legal nonprofit's president and CEO, Nancy Northup, said her group hasn't had time yet to analyze how it will apply the ruling in the many cases it is litigating, but she said the impact "is going to be huge."
Mississippi's law has already been found unconstitutional by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, because it would close the state's only abortion clinic. That ruling would stand if the justices turn away Mississippi's final appeal.
"It's very disappointing," state Rep. Sam Mims, R-McComb, who sponsored Mississippi's law, said in a phone interview. "It seems like these five justices are more concerned about access to abortion than health care to the women."
The 5th Circuit, which covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, also is considering a federal judge's interim ruling that Louisiana's admitting privileges regulation is unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge John deGravelles has not yet made a final ruling on Louisiana's entire abortion law, but even some supporters all but acknowledged defeat.
"While this ruling doesn't automatically invalidate Louisiana's admitting privilege law, today's decision does not predict a favorable forecast for its future," Deanna Wallace, legislative director for Louisiana Right to Life, said in a news release.
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards both said the measures were designed to protect women. Mississippi Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves said the 5-3 opinion written by Justice Stephen Breyer "endangers the lives of women and their unborn children in Mississippi and all across America."
Breyer cited trial testimony that abortions are so safe that doctors who perform it cannot get admitting privileges, which are based partly on numbers of hospital admissions. The El Paso clinic performed 17,000 abortions over 10 years, and none required emergency room treatment, much less hospital admission, a witness testified.
Court orders have blocked Mississippi and Louisiana from enforcing the laws until there's a final ruling. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry wasn't about to give up, asserting that the Supreme Court ruling was heavily based on facts in Texas, and that Louisiana's law is different.
"My office and I will be carefully reviewing the impact of the opinion, if any, on the Louisiana's admitting privileges law; however, we remain committed to enforcing our state's pro-life and pro-woman laws," his statement said.
But Stephanie Toti, senior attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said that for the first time in more than 20 years, the high court has clarified what it means for a regulation to have an undue burden on the right to abortion, and "that applies to all restrictions across the board."
This "sweeping and decisive" ruling will be "a powerful tool in the fight against these other restrictions" in other states, she said.
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