Summary Of Whole Woman's Health V Hellerstedt

The case Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt is about two provisions in a bill passed by the Texas Legislature. The first provision in House Bill 2 (H.B. 2) was requiring that physicians who perform abortions have admitting privileges at a hospital no more than 30 miles from the clinic. The second provision was that abortion clinics in Texas must have facilities comparable to an ambulatory surgical center (Oyez). Multiple abortion clinics in the state first brought the case to the District Court hoping to get it blocked before it went into effect. The clinics argued that the bill did not improve women’s health and instead made it harder for women in the state of Texas to get abortions, which is a violation of the Constitution. They said that
Most of those on the side of Whole Woman’s Health were groups in favor of pro-choice and those in the legal field. One amicus brief was filed by 163 members of Congress. They discuss how this House Bill 2 is a violation of the Constitution and therefore should be struck down. In the brief, it says, “The lack of credible evidence that such requirements serve any governmental interest and the undue burden imposed on women seeking to exercise their constitutional rights, including increases in costs, delays and health risks to women, demonstrates H.B. 2’s pretextual nature. Amici are also deeply mindful of the importance of protecting women’s health care access and constitutional rights, while ensuring against the unnecessary political interference with a woman’s right to seek lawful medical care. Amici recognize that H.B. 2 and other laws like it serve to disempower the poorest and most vulnerable women. Accordingly, like all legislation that contravenes bedrock principles of the Constitution, this Court must invalidate H.B. 2 and hold that it is unconstitutional” (Women’s1). The groups who files amicus briefs in favor of Texas was pro-life and religious organizations. One was filed by the governors of Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Nebraska, and South Dakota. They argued that the provisions in the bill are there to protect women from clinics with poor safety records. The
In the majority, there was Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. The minority was Roberts, Thomas, and Alito. Justice Stephen G. Breyer delivered the opinion for the majority. In it, it states that the medical benefits of the provisions do not outweigh the burden it places on women seeking abortions, which are a constitutional right (Oyez). Justice Ginsburg wrote a concurring opinion in which she stated, “that modern abortions are so safe relative to other medical procedures, including childbirth itself, that any law that made accessing abortions more difficult in the name of safety could not pass judicial review” (Oyez). Two separate dissents were written by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito, Jr. In Thomas’s, he argues that the case never should have made it to the Supreme Court in general because the only abortion cases they should hear are those filed by women actually seeking an abortion . He also goes at those in the majority and states that, “the majority opinion misconstrued the undue burden test as requiring courts to apply a standard of review similar to strict scrutiny in assessing laws that regulate abortions, despite the fact that there was no precedential support for that level of scrutiny in these cases” (Oyez). In Alito’s dissent, he argues that the parties in this case should not have been allowed to sue for procedural reasons and that the petitioner never actually