Because “neither of these provisions offers medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens upon access that each imposes,” Justice Breyer wrote, both violate the Constitution by placing “a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a previability abortion.”

The admitting-privileges requirement has no bearing on the level of care that a woman receives, and Texas could not provide any evidence that it does. Likewise, the strict surgical standards are unrelated to the actual risk of complications stemming from a legal abortion, which is among the safest medical procedures. Texas does not, for instance, impose such standards on many riskier procedures, including colonoscopies, tonsillectomies and liposuction.

If there were any lingering doubt that the point of Texas’ law was to make safe and legal abortions nearly impossible to obtain, it was dispelled by the declarations of top state officials. The former governor Rick Perry, in pushing for the law, said it was one step toward an “ideal world” where there was no abortion. Immediately after the State Senate passed its version of the law, known as SB5, David Dewhurst, the lieutenant governor at the time, posted a map on Twitter showing the expected closure of most abortion clinics across the state. “We fought to pass SB5 through the Senate last night, and this is why!” he wrote.

Both men knew what they were talking about: More than half of the state’s roughly 40 abortion clinics, unable to meet the admitting-privileges requirement, closed — 11 on the day the law was enacted. Had the justices upheld the entire law, as few as seven clinics would have remained, all in major metropolitan areas. Hundreds of thousands of women living in the vast rural stretches of Texas have already been forced to travel great distances to exercise their constitutional right. This actually increased the health risks of abortion, since women in this position are more likely to choose illegal and unsafe methods to end their pregnancies.