As Texas Moves To Shut Down Abortion Clinics, A Similar Law Has Just Been Blocked In Alabama

[Tx4obama]

As Texas Moves To Shut Down Abortion Clinics, A Similar Law Has Just Been Blocked In Alabama

On Friday afternoon, a federal judge temporarily blocked a new law in Alabama that would have forced most of the health clinics in the state to stop providing abortion care. HB 57 was set to take effect on Monday, but Friday’s ruling delays that deadline until July 18.

Alabama’s law would impose burdensome regulations on the state’s last five abortion clinics. Clinic buildings will need to make unnecessary and expensive renovations to their facilities, like widening their doorways, and abortion doctors will need to obtain admitting privileges from local hospitals. These restrictions are the exact same type of laws that are forcing abortion clinics in other states to close their doors. And they’re the same measures that thousands of activists in Texas are currently protesting.

U.S. District Judge Myron H. Thompson temporarily blocked HB 57 to give the court more time to consider whether the new law should be allowed to stand. The federal judge pointed out that similar laws in other states have provided “evidence” of the “near impossibility” of complying with the stringent abortion restrictions. Thompson warned that Alabama’s new restrictions will have a “permanent destabilizing effect on the provision of abortions in this State, as clinics will have to constantly struggle under threat of closure or ceasing services to maintain a medical staff that is qualified under the law.”

-snip-

Full article here: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/07/01/2239261/alabama-abortion-restrictions-blocked/

[Ilsa]

1. My god, if the clinics had doors twice

as wide, the legislatures would have insisted on narrower doorways. They are fucking with abortion rights, that's all.