States' abortion limits erode right to choose: Our view Deluge of restrictions places a burden on women.

The Editorial Board | USA Today

A constitutional right that's almost impossible to exercise isn't much of a right at all. Yet the right to an abortion — guaranteed 42 years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court — has been saddled with so many onerous strictures in so many states that for millions of women, it has become almost meaningless.

Nowhere is that more evident than in Texas, where abortion foes, in the guise of making abortion safer, have passed laws that forced half of the state's clinics to shut down. In 2012, Texas had 41 abortion providers; today, there are fewer than 20.

And if the Supreme Court hadn't granted a temporary reprieve in June, more would have closed, leaving the nation's second largest state with fewer than 10 clinics to handle abortions, which at last count numbered about 64,000 a year.

Since 2010, abortion opponents have passed more than 280 restrictive laws, mostly in the South and across the middle of the country. More restrictions are on the way, as legislatures return to work this fall. Virtually all of them substitute government mandates for a woman's freedom to choose.

In Ohio, opponents are pushing a measure that would bar doctors from performing an abortion sought to avoid having a baby with Down syndrome. North Dakota already has a similar law.

Michigan may consider a measure, similar to laws in Kansas and Oklahoma, that would ban the most common procedure for abortions done in the second trimester, which are legal under Supreme Court rulings.

This deluge, on top of existing rules, has made abortions harder to get in many states and almost impossible in some. Four states — Mississippi, North and South Dakotas and Wyoming — are each down to a single clinic.

While about half the states mandate a waiting period, usually 24 hours, between counseling and an abortion, three — Missouri, South Dakota and Utah — require a wait of 72 hours, and women must show up in person both times. If clinics are far away, that translates to at least two days off work.

For women of means, this might be an inconvenience. Some could get an abortion from a private doctor, a small percentage of whom provide them. For low-income women, though, finding transportation, traveling a long distance or taking time off work is a substantial burden.

How much of a burden will be the central issue when one of the legal challenges arrives at the Supreme Court. Last week, the Center for Reproductive Rights asked the justices to consider the Texas restrictions and overturn them.

Women in some parts of Texas must travel hundreds of miles round-trip to exercise their rights, thanks to the law requiring that all clinics meet hospital-like standards for surgery centers and that all providers affiliate with hospitals. Both requirements might sound reasonable, but a federal judge found the building standards so tangential "to patient safety ... as to be nearly arbitrary." And two major medical groups say obtaining hospital privileges adds "no medical benefit" for patients, who could be harmed by having less access to safe abortions.

In 1992, the Supreme Court opened the door to some state restrictions on abortion — including the sensible requirement of parental consent — as long as restrictions did not place an "undue burden" on a woman's rights.

Abortion opponents, unable to overturn Roe v. Wade, have used that opening to chip away at abortion rights with increasingly burdensome regulations. While some federal courts have rejected extreme laws, too many judges have let opponents get away with them.

"Undue burden" might be hard to define. But the justices ought to know it when they see it, as Justice Potter Stewart famously said of pornography. Women should not have to wait days, listen to forced lectures, drive hundreds of miles or do battle in court repeatedly to access a right guaranteed long ago by the highest court in the land.

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