A reproductive rights group filed a federal challenge on Tuesday of a Louisiana licensing law it blames for more than a thousand burdensome anti-abortion regulations, The Associated Press reports.
Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, says Louisiana requires a vaginal exam whether or not a woman’s doctor thinks it’s necessary. Rules also enable state officials to review the medical records of every woman who has an abortion.
The rules also make doctors “provide their patients with misleading or false information about abortion, such as the bogus claim that abortion causes breast cancer,” Northup says. The Center for Reproductive Rights has already won court victories against abortion laws in Texas and Louisiana.
The Louisiana Department of Health referred a query about the new lawsuit to the Attorney General’s Office, which said it can’t comment on specifics. State lawyers are evaluating the 56-page lawsuit, but their emailed statement says “our office is confident the laws are constitutional.”
The center filed its federal lawsuit in Baton Rouge, on the first anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down a Texas requirement that abortion providers have hospital admitting privileges. The justices ruled 5-3 that abortion regulations are unconstitutional if evidence shows their burdens outweigh their benefits.
“Legal abortion is extremely safe. It does not require a multitude of specifically targeted regulations—governing buildings, medical personnel, recordkeeping, testing, counseling, and everything in between—to make it safer,” the lawsuit says. Such laws are burdensome and superfluous, since abortion clinics must already meet all standards for clinics, hospitals and doctors’ offices, it says.
The main focus of the lawsuit is a 2001 Louisiana licensing law that has been the basis for most of the more than 1,000 regulations imposed on abortion providers in the state, says David Brown, an attorney for the group.
