Resource: Casey and the Clinic Closings: When “Protecting Health” Obstructs Choice

They offer a fresh understanding of how the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence addresses laws that invoke not potential life, but women’s health as a reason to single out abortion for burdensome regulation that has the effect of closing clinics. The current wave of health-justified restrictions—including laws that require abortion providers to secure admitting privileges at nearby hospitals or to become the functional equivalents of hospitals themselves—is destroying the clinic infrastructure on which women depend in order to exercise their constitutional right to end a pregnancy.