User:DrSoper/Types of abortion restrictions in the United States

Supporters of Texas House Bill 2 (H.B. 2), which included requirements for abortion clinics to meet ambulatory surgical center regulations and for abortion clinic doctors to have hospital admitting privileges, said the bill improved health care for women and babies. Opponents of the bill said it created unnecessary regulations for the purpose of reducing access to abortions. At the time of the bill's signing into law in 2013, five of the state's forty-two abortion clinics met the law's requirements. Courts had blocked enforcement of similar laws in some other states, pending lawsuits challenging their constitutionality. A federal district judge determined this law to be unconstitutional, finding that the admitting privileges requirement placed an undue burden on a person seeking to have an abortion; however, this decision was reversed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, resulting in the immediate closure of all but seven abortion clinics in the state, all of these in urban areas. In March 2016, this case, now known as Whole Women's Health v Hellerstedt was heard by the Supreme Court. Over eighty amicus curiae briefs were filed with the Court.The case decided on June 27, 2016 and was reversed and remanded, 5-3, in an opinion by Justice Breyer. In summary, the Supreme Court ruled that Texas cannot place restrictions on the delivery of abortion services that create an undue burden for women seeking an abortion.

In March 2020, the Supreme Court heard June Medical Services LLC v Russo which examined if Louisiana’s law requiring physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital conflicts with the Supreme Court’s binding precedent in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. A decision on this case is expected in summer 2020.

Following the passage of a 2013 Wisconsin law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, three Catholic hospital systems in the state intended to deny admitting privileges to abortion providers. Wisconsin's attorney general said this intent violated the Church Amendment of 1973, which prohibits hospitals receiving federal funds from discriminating against a doctor on the basis of whether the doctor provides abortions.

In Maryland, according to The New York Times, something "rare in this era of polarized abortion politics" occurred when laws that significantly tightened the licensing and inspection of abortion clinics were supported by those on both sides of the abortion issue.