New York Times Editorial on Alabama Admitting Privileges Law Ruling

The New York Times editorial:  A Judge Rules for Alabama Women on Abortion:

In large parts of the country, women’s access to safe and legal abortion care is increasingly coming to depend on the willingness of judges to rigorously examine and reject new (and medically unnecessary) restrictions imposed by Republican legislatures.

In just that sort of searching review, a federal judge last week struck down as unconstitutional an Alabama law requiring doctors at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. The requirement — advertised, falsely, as necessary to protect women’s health — is one of the main strategies being deployed nationally by opponents of abortion rights to shrink the already inadequate number of abortion providers. . . .

__________________________________

See my analysis of Judge Thompson's opinion here.  I also argued for the need for closer scrutiny of states' fact-based justifications for abortion restrictions in this short essay for the Harvard Law Review Forum.

-CEB