Reaction to Supreme Court Ruling on Louisiana Abortion Law

A high-profile abortion law is being struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court once again.

Back in 2016, the nation's highest court invalidated a Texas law that was similar to this Louisiana measure that would have place restrictions on doctors who offer abortion services.

“It vindicates what we’ve said all along, which is that this is the identical law that was found unconstitutional against Texas,” says Center for Reproductive Rights CEO Nancy Northup to Louisiana Radio Network, whose business filed suit to keep the Louisiana law from going into effect.

The Louisiana measure was authored by now Monroe Senator Katrina Jackson, who expressed her disappointment to Louisiana Radio Network:

“They ruled against women’s health care, they ruled against qualified physicians being required and with that I’m deeply saddened.”

U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor, echoed that sentiment:

“Women who use a clinic without hospital admitting privileges are in danger of complications and death should the procedure go badly. The Supreme Court ensured this danger remains.”

Cassidy's fellow Louisiana U.S. Senator, John Kennedy, called the ruling "extremely troubling" in "strik(ing) down a Louisiana law that fundamentally protects women" and says "the abortion industry insists that baseline standards of medical care don’t apply to them" in a video released on his Facebook page:

Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport has been at the forefront of the abortion debate. During the coronvirus pandemic, Louisiana Right to Life pointed out that women coming from across the Louisiana-Texas border were doing so to take advantage of their being open for abortion services while hospitals in Texas were ordered to cancel "non-essential" surgeries while Gov. John Bel Edwards were allowing abortion clinics to stay open.

The now-shuttered Louisiana law would have closed Hope Medical and the Baton Rouge Delta Clinic. Director of the Hope Medical Group Kathaleen Pittman says the law would have hurt low-income pregnant women.

“These are women who can’t take a few days off from a job that pays minimum wage, because they are just one pay check from total despair.”

Speaking of Governor Edwards, he released this statement:

“Throughout my career and life as a pro-life Catholic, I have advocated for the protection, dignity and sanctity of life and will continue to do so. While I voted for the law in question and am disappointed, I respect the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision and trust that Louisiana and our nation will continue to move forward.”

And Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry summed up disappointment in today's ruling by calling out the Supreme Court and Chief Justice John Roberts and says he "continues a pattern of inconsistent and groundless decisions."

“Today, the Supreme Court continued its heartbreaking line of decisions that places ‘access’ to abortion above the health and safety of women and girls.

By putting precedent over patients, Justice Roberts gave his vote to a decision that ignored the overwhelming bipartisan support of Act 620 and the extensive record of Louisiana abortion providers’ history of medical malpractice, disciplinary actions, and violations of health and safety standards.

It is deeply disappointing that the Chief Justice continues a pattern of inconsistent and groundless decisions. In his misguided effort to convince the public that the Supreme Court is not political, Justice Roberts shows how political it actually is. Just four years ago, he joined the dissenters in Hellerstedt, which struck down Texas’s law; today, the Chief Justice openly acknowledges that case was wrong but then applies it anyway. He picks and choses from a stare decisis “buffet” to avoid admitting his Court is fallible. This is not justice – this is judge-made law at its worst.

Continuing to perpetuate judge-made rules that have no constitutional basis is bad for our country. It is this egregiously wrong practice that maintained decisions like Plessy, Dred Scott, and Korematsu for so long. And it reveals how far removed the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence has become from the rules that apply to all other litigants. We are past due for a course correction.

When laws are passed with nearly unanimous bipartisan support by the elected representatives of a state and with undisputed proof of dangerous conditions and substandard abortion providers, but they cannot survive judicial review – something is drastically wrong with the Court’s case law on this subject.

I will continue to pray for all women and girls who will be exposed to the incompetent abortionists that put profits over people; and I will keep doing all that I legally can to protect the unborn, their mothers, and all Louisiana women.”