Adopting stringent regulations on abortion clinics and doctors that are said to be about protecting women’s health has been one of the anti-abortion movement’s most successful efforts, imposing large expenses on some clinics, forcing others to close and making it harder for women in some regions to obtain abortions. Republicans like Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who deplored Monday’s ruling, argued that they were requiring clinics to “be held to the same standards as other medical facilities.”

Now, the court has ruled that any such requirements must be based on convincing medical evidence that the rules are solving a real health issue to be weighed by a court, not by ideologically driven legislators — and that the benefits must outweigh the burdens imposed on women’s constitutional right to an abortion.

Anti-abortion groups expressed anger at Monday’s decision, insisting that abortion care is rife with unreported medical risks and malpractice, and vowed to press on. Americans United for Life, which has been a principal architect of the legislative strategy of putting requirements on clinics in the name of protecting women’s health, said it would continue to fight “to protect women from a dangerous and greedy abortion industry.”

“I’m confident that the states will move ahead to fill the public health vacuum that the Supreme Court has created,” said Clarke Forsythe, the acting president of Americans United for Life. “This decision does not foreclose more narrowly tailored regulations,” he said, promising that new ones will be developed state by state.

Since the Supreme Court has long held that women have a constitutional right to an abortion, anti-abortion groups over the past decade have turned to the states to pass hundreds of laws designed to discourage abortions, such as waiting periods, mandated fetal sonograms and parental consent requirements.