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| Chief Justice John Roberts. Voted with the liberals. |
Conservative Christian hopes of using the Trump-given conservative majority on SCOTUS to force their religious bigotry into law took another blow today when, by a majority of 5-4, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts voting with the liberals, SCOTUS struck down a restriction on abortion services in Louisiana.
Only a few days ago, SCUTUS enraged fundamentalist Christians by confirming that all Americans, of whatever sexuality, are entitled to the full protection of the law, so cannot be sacked on the grounds of their sexuality.
The Louisiana restriction was that doctors providing abortion services in the state had to have admitting privileges to a hospital within 30 miles of their practice. Since many hospitals have religious affiliations or are conservative-leaning, so do not allow abortions and are unlikely to give admission privileges to doctors who perform them, this had the (probably intended) effect of reducing the availability of abortion clinics in Louisiana. Only one doctor in the whole of Louisiana met this criterion!
SCOTUS ruled that this would place an undue burden on women by restricting the number of providers of abortion services in the state and so amounted to a denial of their legal rights.
A district court had originally ruled that the requirement was unconstitutional, but this decision was overturned by a 5th Circuit court on the grounds that it would not result in closure of abortion clinics. That decision was overturned by SCOTUS which noted that a similar restriction in Texas had been struck down in 2016.
What has infuriated conservative opinion is that Chief Justice John Roberts had disagreed with the 2016 ruling and was expected to stick with that opinion. However, he ruled that he was compelled to respect the 2016 decision and voted to strike down the Louisiana restriction.
These recent setbacks for the Talibangelical extreme right in American politics are likely now to make stuffing SCOTUS with more conservatives an election issue for Donald Trump. Meanwhile the attacks on Wade vs Roe are likely to continue as more and more Republican-controlled states introduce more restrictions on abortions, in attempts to provoke appeals to SCOTUS in the hope that the conservatives there will overturn Wade vs Roe and make abortions illegal again in the USA. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 59 restrictions were passed in 2019 along with bans in several states, including Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri and Ohio.
It won't have gone unnoticed that, although Trump's nominees, Gorsuch and Kavanagh dissented, one conservative tie-break vote was enough to win it for the liberals.
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