July 14, 2011

In three new rulings, federal judges in different states have acted to block immediate enforcement of measures that restrict abortion rights and women’s access to affordable contraception, lifesaving cancer screenings, and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. These rulings are important victories for women’s health and reproductive rights. On June 24, Judge Tanya Pratt of the Federal District Court in Indianapolis issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of a new Indiana law banning the use of Medicaid funds at Planned Parenthood clinics, which provide essential health services to low-income women. The mean-spirited law is part of a Republican-led national campaign to end public financing for Planned Parenthood. The Obama administration promptly told Indiana, and other states weighing similar legislation, that the measure violated federal law by imposing impermissible restrictions on the freedom of Medicaid beneficiaries to choose health care providers. Judge Pratt agreed with that assessment in her decision. In another ruling six days later, a federal trial judge in South Dakota issued a preliminary injunction blocking, on constitutional grounds, a deeply intrusive state law requiring women to wait at least 72 hours after an initial doctor’s visit before terminating a pregnancy — the longest waiting period in the nation. This law also requires that women seeking abortions endure counseling at so-called pregnancy help centers run by antiabortion activists with the aim of discouraging abortions. “Forcing a woman to divulge to a stranger at a pregnancy help center the fact that she has chosen to undergo an abortion humiliates and degrades her as a human being,” Judge Karen Schreier wrote in her decision. On July 1, Judge Carlos Murguia, a federal district judge in Kansas, blocked immediate enforcement of a new Kansas licensing law and health department regulations imposing extensive, medically unnecessary requirements on the state’s three remaining abortion providers — like mandating 50 square feet of storage space for janitorial supplies — with the obvious goal of shutting them down. While these rulings are preliminary, each is a determination that enforcing the law would cause irreparable harm and that the plaintiffs are likely to prevail at trial. They do not, however, address other threats to women’s health. Those include the slashing of state support for family-planning services by governors like Chris Christie of New Jersey, and attacks from Congress like the bill Republicans pushed through the House in May that would use the nation’s tax system as a weapon to end abortion insurance coverage in the private market, as discussed in the June 2 post. Still, these rulings serve to at least temporarily block the extreme anti-abortion, anti-family-planning movement accelerating in the states and in Washington.