Abortion Case Summary

the Ninth Circuit considered the promotion of health in the undue burden clause by stating that the bigger the burden was, the stronger the law’s justification for women’s health must be. The Seventh Circuit used the same approach in Planned Parenthood v. Wisconsin, Inc. v. Van Hollen (2013) when they stated that the burden created by a law must be justified by a state’s interest in promoting health as well as by medical evidence backing the necessity of the law. Hellerstedt claims that Fifth Circuit was right in not considering the state’s interest and how it balances with the regulations of HB 2 (Shimabukuro 2016). Utilizing the balance between states’ interest and severity of the regulation is what the Supreme Court has to do to protect Casey’s intentions of preserving Roe. The court that decided Casey intended to balance the states’ interest of protecting mothers and viable fetuses with a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion (Shapiro 1995). By allowing a court to make a decision without considering if a state has a valid interest/justification behind the regulation, this violates a woman’s right to have an abortion and sets the precedent that states do not need valid reasoning to impose stringent regulations on abortion providers and centers.
Hellerstedt is the most important abortion case of this decade. The decision the Supreme Court makes will forever change how abortion is regulated and women’s access to abortion. One-sixth of all women in Texas, well over one million, being affected by a law is indefinitely a significant number. The implications of HB 2 create a multitude of unnecessary barriers women must go through in order to fulfill their constitutional rights. A bill that has the potential to close ¾ of the abortion clinics in the nation’s second largest state is a monumental blow to women’s rights. In a state that had been safely practicing abortion for over forty years, the harsh requirements of HB 2 are completely