HERNDON, Va. -- Stung by the recent Supreme Court decision that overturned Texas abortion clinic restrictions, leaders of the country's largest anti-abortion group are redoubling their efforts for restrictions on abortion that they claim will prevent fetal pain and that they think can fare well in the public eye and, they hope, in the courts.
The National Right to Life Committee's leaders said they remained confident in their strategy of undermining Roe v. Wade one step at a time, with their main focus less on rules for clinic safety of the kind that were just overturned and more on what they call the "humanity of the unborn child," based on assumptions about fetal development that many scientists dispute.
"Our people have had setbacks before, but they're going to keep on fighting," Carol Tobias, the president of the group, declared at the organization's annual meeting that was held in Herndon from Thursday through Saturday -- a combination of pep talks, tactical training and sharing of legislative strategies.
"The pro-life movement is optimistic and excited about the future," Tobias told hundreds of delegates from across the country. In public meetings, the Supreme Court decision, in which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that abortion laws like the ones in Texas "cannot survive judicial inspection," received only passing mention.
States have passed more than 300 anti-abortion measures since 2011, from mandatory ultrasounds to rules for burial of fetal remains. While the Supreme Court ruling could change the terms, it is already clear that legislation to restrict abortions will continue in many states in the year ahead. But National Right to Life and its affiliates will give the highest priority to two measures in particular, the leaders said at the meeting.
One is to promote state and federal bans on abortion at 20 weeks after conception, based on the claim that the fetus can feel pain at that point. The second is to outlaw the most common method of second-trimester abortion, a form of dilation and evacuation, on the grounds that it is brutal and cruel.
The Supreme Court decision on June 27, ruling that stringent clinic and physician regulations in Texas were unconstitutional, was hailed by abortion-rights advocates.
The Texas regulations required doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals, and required clinics to meet the physical and staffing requirements of surgery centers -- measures, the state argued, that protected women's health. But the court ruled that the state had failed to show significant benefits for women's health and safety, and placed such onerous burdens on clinics that many would have to shut down.
And so, the court held, in a 5-3 decision, that the state had placed an illegal "undue burden" on women's basic right to abortion up to the point that the fetus is viable outside the womb.
The ruling, Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, has already led courts to block similar clinic and physician rules in other states and is expected to figure in lawsuits over other restrictions, such as bans on remote prescribing of pills for medicine-induced abortions, or three-day waiting periods that abortion-rights advocates say cause hardship for poor women who must travel to reach a clinic.
But how broadly the ruling will apply to abortion laws that do not involve claims about clinic safety or women's health will emerge from lower court decisions over a period of years, legal experts say.
"The Supreme Court case was focused on the health of the mother, but we take a different approach," said Mary Spaulding Balch, the director of state legislation for National Right to Life, noting that clinic safety regulations had mainly been promoted by other groups. "Our legislation focuses on the humanity of the unborn child."
Promoted by National Right to Life and other groups, 20-week bans based on the fetal pain theory have been adopted by 15 states and are under consideration in several more. It was telling, Balch said, that when abortion-rights groups challenged the Texas clinic laws, they did not include the state's 20-week ban, which was adopted at the same time and remains in effect.
Legal experts for abortion rights say the laws are a violation of existing Supreme Court rulings that women have a right to an abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb, which is often about 22 weeks after conception. They say they are waiting for the right occasion to bring a court challenge to these bans, which affect less than 2 percent of women who have abortions, and that fending off the regulations that closed down clinics was a higher priority.
But Balch said anti-abortion groups welcomed the chance to test the bans before the Supreme Court, possibly leading it to change the existing dividing line for abortion rights based on fetal viability.
A Section on 07/10/2016