We got a bit of good news re abortion from SCOTUS yesterday and I think that calls for a thread. #TeamLegal

SCOTUS announced they were sending Planned Parenthood v. Abbott back to the Fifth Circuit to be dismissed. The case involved whether the state of Texas can ban abortion during the Covid-19 pandemic.

As @AngryBlackLady explained back in April, the state’s arguments for doing this are “hot garbage” to say the least. https://rewirenewsgroup.com/ablc/2020/04/01/texas-legal-arguments-for-banning-abortion-during-covid-19-are-hot-garbage/

Basically, Governor Abbott tried to declare abortion care, non-essential health care so Texas could shutter clinics and call it a Covid-19 regulation. But we know better. And their arguments for doing so were as absurd as you would expect.

They argued that abortions would overwhelm the healthcare system. In reality, you know what would actually do that? Banning abortion. Not only do we not know how Covid-19 affects pregnant people, we know abortion is safer than pregnancy and childbirth. Try again, Texas.

The state also said that abortion providers would deplete PPE but abortion care doesn’t require extensive PPE, and relatively few clinic staff are even present for a surgical abortion. Next!

They also argued that abortion clinics would spread Covid-19. This one grinds our gears for a number of reasons: first of all, Abbott had lots of ways to keep Texans safe, like lockdowns! But instead the best his little pea brain could come up with was abortion bans. Funny that.

More than that though: even *if* abortion is risky as far as spreading Covid-19 is concerned – (it's not) – it’s Abbott’s fault. Abortion restrictions in the state make access a nightmare, sending patients into clinics multiple times and increasing their risk for exposure.

A federal judge in Texas initially ruled that the ban was “too broad” but the Fifth Circuit disagreed, and put it back in place. Which. Typical.

Advocates appealed to SCOTUS and Abbott loosened those restrictions some, which meant abortions could continue while the court fight dragged on. But instead of telling the Court the fight was over because abortions were happening Abbott did something else.

He asked the Court to effectively rule that Texas could, hypothetically speaking, ban abortion—or other fundamental rights—in response to a public health crisis. That brings us to what happened yesterday at the Supreme Court.

SCOTUS announced that they wouldn’t hear the case and instead sent it back to the Fifth Circuit with instructions to dismiss the case entirely.

First things first. This is good news for abortion rights advocates because it means the Court didn’t rule that states could just suspend rights.

But because this is about abortion, there are LAYERS.

The decision comes after a last minute filing by Abbott, calling on the Court to consider the Jacobson test (as laid out in Jacobson v. Massachusetts), which is just legalese for a rule that determines when the state can suspend fundamental services in a public health crisis.

The filing was so last minute that Planned Parenthood even filed a letter with SCOTUS demanding they be allowed to file a response brief before a decision was made. But this wasn’t enough to save Abbott’s ass.

Basically, the state presented the Jacobson test to the Court and said “we wanna apply this to abortion and the Fifth Circuit said in its order maybe we can.” SCOTUS was like, “nope we’re not even entertaining this, go back to the Fifth Circuit so they can tell you to buzz off.”

With a Court packed with Trump appointees, it’s kind of hard to believe it, but this is a win for abortion advocates. And while we’re still waiting on SCOTUS to decide if they’ll hear any other abortion cases, we’ll take our wins where we can get them.