August 30, 2014      10:50 AM
In abortion ruling, Yeakel criticizes State’s witness coaching which undercuts Texas' future appeal
“That the State suggests that these seven or eight providers could meet the demand of the entire state stretches credulity,” Yeakel wrote.
US District Judge Lee Yeakel,
in a startling blow to the state’s efforts to uphold its new abortion law,
struck down two key provisions of the bill that would have all but guaranteed
closure of the majority of the state’s abortion clinics: hospital admitting
privileges for doctors and upgrades to ambulatory surgical centers for clinics.
What made
Yeakel’s judgment even more striking occurred in the
conclusions of his 21-page opinion. In a pre-trial memorandum, Yeakel instructed the two sides he was inclined to consider
a geographic-centric ruling: one that focused on an undue burden upon women
seeking abortions in the Rio Grande Valley and El
Paso.
That’s
how the three-part conclusion in his opinion starts: the ambulatory surgical
center requirement was an undue burden upon women and should be severed from
the Act; hospital admitting privileges, as applied to the plaintiffs, should be
enjoined from McAllen and El Paso abortion clinics; and an
ambulatory surgical center requirement, in practice, was unnecessary and an
undue burden for early abortions induced by medications.
Then, in
the final paragraph of his opinion, Yeakel noted the
two provisions, when taken together, “create a scheme that effects
the closing of almost all abortion clinics that were operating legally in the
fall of 2013.”
By Kimberly Reeves
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