UPDATE::Will Roberts Court Take Up Case Against Nation's Most Radical Anti-Choice Law?

A coalition of women’s health-care providers, on behalf of Texas abortion providers, are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the legality of the nation’s most radical set of anti-choice policies.

“This case will determine whether Texas can force more than 75 percent of the State’s abortion clinics to close,” opens the brief filed with the Roberts Court late Tuesday night.

The brief asks the Roberts Court to review a June 2015 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which upheld portions of HB 2 that advocates say would close more than 75 percent of abortion clinics in Texas and cut off access to safe and legal abortions for millions of Texans.
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Advocates argue in their filing that if the Roberts Court fails to step in, only ten clinics will remain open in the state, down from 41 prior to HB 2’s enactment and a net reduction of more than 75 percent of the abortion facilities in the state in a two-year period. Should this happen, advocates say, “every woman in Texas would have to live under a legal regime that fails to respect her equal citizenship status and would force her to grapple with unnecessary and substantial obstacles as a condition of exercising her protected liberty.”

Will Roberts Court Take Up Case Against Nation's Most Radical Anti-Choice Law?

See also: Abortion Providers Ask Supreme Court to Take Up HB 2Providers want ASC and admit privileges rules gone 

Providers contend the 5th Circuit’s decision is in “direct and acknowledged” conflict with decisions from the 7th and 9th Circuit Courts, as well as the Iowa Supreme Court, which hold that courts, “must examine the extent to which laws regulating abortion actually further a valid state interest in assessing whether the burdens they impose on abortion access are undue.” While the 5th Circuit applied a narrow approach (and didn’t seriously factor in barriers women face), the 7th and 9th Circuit courts used a so-called balancing test for undue burden that weighs the obstacles for women against the state's purported health interest, creating a divergence in Circuit court rulings.

Abortion providers argue the ruling “flouted longstanding [Supreme Court] precedent” by defying standards set by seminal 1992 abortion-rights case, Casey v Planned Parenthood. The 5th’s inability to find that the “abrupt closure” of more than three-fourths of Texas abortion clinics would create substantial obstacles to abortion access, “makes a mockery of the standard articulated in Casey,” they write. Such “blatant defiance” of the Court’s precedents calls for review.

Providers also call into question the law’s ability to uphold Fourteenth Amendment guarantees as it, “fails to respect [a woman's] equal citizenship status and would force her to grapple with unnecessary and substantial obstacles as a condition of exercising her protected liberty.” Review from the nation’s highest court is needed to avert “profound and irreparable harm” to Texas women, they conclude.