Court rules Mississippi can't close last abortion clinic

A federal appeals court has ruled that Mississippi must allow its last abortion clinic to remain open after it was unable to comply with a new law passed with the intention of closing it down.

Politico reports the Jackson Women's Health Clinic was unable to gain admitting privileges to any of the area's seven local hospitals.

State law recently required all abortion clinics to gain admitting privileges to local hospitals if they wished to stay open. Admitting privileges are an agreement between a hospital and a local clinic to allow that clinic's patients access to a hospital should some unexpected complication arise.

Abortion rights advocates claim that the process of obtaining such rights is expensive, time consuming, and arbitrary.

Mississippi is not the only state to have enacted such measures, which are being challenged in court in Alabama, Kansas, and Wisconsin. Similar laws in Missouri, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah have already gone into effect.

Three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit made the ruling that kept the clinic open. In a 2-1 decision, the court ruled that the state of Mississippi could not rely on the other states to provide the rights guaranteed in the constitution, according to The New York Times.

The court did not strike down the law about admitting privileges, but it said it could not be used to close the state's last abortion clinic because it placed an "undue burden," on the exercise of constitutionally guaranteed rights. The state of Mississippi had argued that because women could travel outside the state to obtain an abortion, there was in fact no undue burden.

While ostensibly passed to improve women's safety during abortion procedures, laws for admitting privileges have been opposed by national medical groups like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.