A federal appeals court has ruled in favor Tennessee's 48-hour waiting period for an abortion, overturning a lower-court ruling that it was unconstitutional.
The ruling by the majority opinion, written by U.S. 6th Circuit Judge Amul Thapar, determined the Bristol Regional Women's Center and the Memphis Center for Reproductive Health representatives did not provide evidence the waiting period was a "substantial obstacle" for women seeking an abortion, The Hill reported.
Additionally, the law did not impact a "large fraction" of women seeking abortions, particularly with respect to the argument that the two-day waiting period might put a procedure past the legal deadline for aborting a fetus via a pill, according to the majority opinion. In lieu of a pill abortion, a surgical abortion would have been still available.
The opinion also pointed to statistics showing the enacted law did not stop women from obtaining abortions "in large numbers," as the total of abortions in the years before and after the law went into effect remained roughly the same.
"It is one thing to predict that the sky will fall tomorrow; it's quite another thing to maintain that the sky fell five years ago for women seeking abortions when the numbers tell us otherwise," the court wrote, according to The Hill.
The 2015 law requires doctors to give a woman seeking an abortion information about the risks and then wait two days before conducting the abortion. Failing to abide by the waiting period is a class E felony, but it is waived if the doctor proves the woman's health was in danger, according to the law.
The sole dissent was written by U.S. Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Karen Nelson Moore, who argued the law imposed "severe logistical, financial, medical, and psychological burdens" on women.
Academic literature denounced that argument as stereotyping women as "irrational or overly emotional," according to Tennessee GOP Attorney General Herbert Slatery.
"A law passed by our representative lawmakers and signed by the governor five years ago — yes, five years ago — is constitutional," Slatery told The Associated Press, calling the ruling "gratifying." "It has been on the books a long time. The court concluded that, during this time, the 48-hour waiting period has not been a substantial obstacle to getting an abortion in Tennessee."
An abortion activist group called the ruling "demeaning" to women.
"With this law, politicians are purporting they know better than patients when it comes to making personal decisions about their healthcare," Center for Reproductive Rights CEO Nancy Northup told AP. "It's demeaning and medically unnecessary."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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