Undoing the Undue Burden

When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners, faute de mieux, at great risk to their health and safety,” she concluded. “So long as this Court adheres to Roe v. Wade and [Casey], Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers laws like H.B. 2 that ‘do little or nothing for health, but rather strew impediments to abortion’ cannot survive judicial inspection.

That’s Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on today’s Supreme Court ruling that overturned a lower court’s upholding of Texas’ newest abortion restrictions. This WaPo infographic demonstrates how the ruling that these laws place an undue burden on women could change other states’ laws.

Regardless of your politics, I think most people can acknowledge that Texas state legislators don’t actually care about women’s health, and the true purpose of these laws was and remains completely unsubtle. A bunch of wholly unscientific white men making unevidenced claims about women’s health as a regulatory pretense is as disingenuous as it is politically expedient.

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