“The case, which is also the most significant the court has seen since Roe v. Wade, will determine the constitutionality of Texas’s notorious omnibus anti-abortion bill HB2, which was passed in 2013 despite Texas Senator Wendy Davis’s famous 11-hour filibuster against it. Hanging in the balance is not just abortion access in Texas, which has already decreased dramatically since Governor Rick Perry passed the bill, but reproductive rights across the country. If the court upholds HB2, it will set a dangerous precedent for other states to restrict access to necessary reproductive health care.

“We were hearing reports that [some of] the judges, particularly the female justices, were really commenting on and referencing the extreme [nature] of the [HB2] measures,” Beth Lynk, the state policy press officer for Planned Parenthood, told Broadly. 

Indeed, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were particularly aggressive in questioning HB2’s validity. At one point, Sotomayor replied, “I’m sorry, what?” when the lawyer representing Whole Women’s Health confirmed that a woman who could have once taken the abortion pill safely and legally at home “now… has to travel 200 miles or pay for a hotel” in order to satisfy HB2’s requirement that she take the pills - which are ingested hours apart - in an abortion facility. (Of which there are now only 19 in Texas; if HB2 is upheld that number could drop to ten or fewer.) While Justice Kennedy questioned whether it was really possible to say that HB2 had caused the closure of so many of Texas’s abortion clinics, Kagan commented that the situation in Texas was “almost like the perfect controlled experiment as to the effect of the law, isn’t it? It’s like you put the law into effect, 12 clinics closed. You take the law out of effect, they reopen,” suggesting that HB2 has indeed put “undue burden” on abortion access.

When I asked Hernandez if she had seen the transcript from today’s arguments, she replied that she hadn’t yet, but people inside had told her, “RBG just killed it.”

Read the full piece and the transcript here

OTTAWA—Health Minister Jane Philpott said the federal government will explore how to improve access to abortion services nationwide, but the details remain a mystery.

“Our government firmly supports a woman’s right to choose, and believes that safe and legal abortions should be available to any woman who needs it,” Philpott said in a statement emailed to the Star that had originally been issued in response to a question from CBC News about access to abortion services.

“We know that abortion services remain patchy in parts of the country, and that rural women in particular face barriers to access. Our government will examine ways to better equalize access for all Canadian women,” said Philpott, a family physician who became federal health minister earlier this month.

The Supreme Court of Canada struck down the provision of the Criminal Code regarding abortion in 1988, but differing provincial regulations, funding levels and even the individual choices of physicians means access to abortion services has always been uneven across the country.

Wait times and coverage vary widely between and even within provinces, with only one in six hospitals offering surgical abortions and access most difficult for women living in rural communities — including First Nations reserves — who may have to travel long distances to get an abortion.

Prince Edward Island does not provide any abortion services at all, although it does cover the cost of the procedure for provincial residents who obtain an abortion at a hospital in Moncton, N.B., where no referral is needed, or in Halifax, where women need to be referred by a P.E.I. doctor.

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