Eminent scientists and public intellectuals are backing the Center for Inquiry (CFI) in a brief to the Supreme Court criticizing the state of Texas’s onerous restrictions on abortion providers. CFI’s brief argues that the alleged expert scientific testimony used to justify the restrictions is flawed pseudoscience and the Court cannot constitutionally rely on it.
In Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole , plaintiffs argue that restrictions on abortion providers passed in Texas in 2013 impose an undue burden on women’s constitutionally protected right to end a pregnancy. Since only a few clinics are able to meet the law’s strictures, it will result in mass clinic closures and sharply restricted access to abortion services in the state.
The CFI brief argues that Texas’s claim that the regulations protect women’s health is contrary to the science and facts. As it explains, Vincent Rue, a long-discredited anti-abortion partisan with no relevant medical credentials, coordinated the testimony in support of the state’s claim. Yet in every case in which Rue has coordinated testimony to defend regulations requiring abortion doctors to have hospital admitting privileges—such as those at the heart of this case—the evidence presented has been discounted by the trial court.