WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday set the stage for its most important pronouncement on abortion in two decades, agreeing to hear a dispute over efforts by some conservative states to regulate the procedure.
The justices accepted an appeal from abortion-rights advocates who are challenging a Texas law that imposed new medical regulations that would in effect shut down three-fourths of the state’s clinics that perform abortions.
Under a 2-year-old law that has not been fully enforced, Texas clinics that perform abortions must meet the standards of an outpatient surgical center and have doctors who are granted admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.
At issue is whether these are reasonable regulations designed to protect the health of women or costly and unnecessary rules adopted to close down as many abortion facilities as possible.
In 1992, the high court said states may regulate abortion as long as they do not put an “undue burden” on women seeking to end a pregnancy. But since then, justices have not defined exactly what that means.
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