The Obama administration did not fully embrace the clinic challengers' position, however.
U.S.
President Barack Obama delivers remarks at the African Union in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia July 28, 2015.
The Obama
administration on Monday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a
Texas abortion law that has shuttered nearly half the clinics in the
state, saying the Republican-backed regulations would harm rather than
protect women's health.
Intervening in
the Supreme Court's first abortion case since 2007, the administration
said the new Texas rules for clinics and physicians who perform
abortions are far more restrictive than other regulations upheld by the
justices over the years.
If allowed to take full effect, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli
wrote, the law would close many more of the state's clinics and force
hundreds of thousands of Texas women to travel great distances if they
seek to terminate pregnancies.
"Those
requirements are unnecessary to protect - indeed, would harm - women's
health, and they would result in closure of three quarters of the
abortion clinics in the state," Verrilli wrote.
The
administration's "friend of the court" brief siding with the clinics
challenging the law comes in one of the most politically charged
disputes this presidential election year.
The case
does not test the fundamental right to abortion established by the
court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, but could impact women's access to
abortion services nationwide. Depending on how the justices rule, they
could encourage, or dissuade, other states to impose regulations.
In
the past, Republican administrations have sided with states trying to
restrict abortions while Democrats have joined physicians and clinics
opposed to the regulations.
The Obama administration did not fully embrace the clinic challengers' position, however.
The
clinics that sued Texas, represented by the New York-based Center for
Reproductive Rights (CRR), say judges trying to determine whether a
regulation unconstitutionally burdens a woman's right to abortion should
look at legislators' purpose or motives.
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