The Texas law restricting abortion was overturned as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court this morning, 5-3:

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
WHOLE WOMAN’S HEALTH ET AL. v. HELLERSTEDT,
COMMISSIONER, TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF STATE
HEALTH SERVICES, ET AL. [pdf]
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
No. 15–274. Argued March 2, 2016—Decided June 27, 2016

[….]

790 F. 3d 563 and 598, reversed and remanded.
BREYER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which KENNEDY, GINSBURG, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., joined. GINSBURG, J., filed a concurring opinion. THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion. ALITO, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and THOMAS, J., joined.

From Justice Breyer’s opinion:

“….We must here decide whether two provisions of Texas’ House Bill 2 violate the Federal Constitution as interpreted in Casey….We conclude that neither of these provisions offers medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens upon access that each imposes. Each places a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a previability abortion, each constitutes an undue burden on abortion access, Casey, supra, at 878 (plurality opinion), and each violates the Federal Constitution….”

“….The statement that legislatures, and not courts, must resolve questions of medical uncertainty is also inconsistent with this Court’s case law. Instead, the Court, when determining the constitutionality of laws regulating abortion procedures, has placed considerable weight upon evidence and argument presented in judicial proceedings….”

“….In our view, the record contains sufficient evidence that the admitting-privileges requirement led to the closure of half of Texas’ clinics, or thereabouts. Those closures meant fewer doctors, longer waiting times, and increased crowding. Record evidence also supports the finding that after the admitting-privileges provision went into effect, the “number of women of reproductive age living in a county . . . more than 150 miles from a provider increased from approximately 86,000 to 400,000 . . . and the number of women living in a county more than 200 miles from a provider from approximately 10,000 to 290,000.” 46 F. Supp. 3d, at 681. We recognize that increased driving distances do not always constitute an “undue burden.” See Casey, 505 U. S., at 885–887 (joint opinion of O’Connor, KENNEDY, and Souter, JJ.). But here, those increases are but one additional burden, which, when taken together with others that the closings brought about, and when viewed in light of the virtual absence of any health benefit, lead us to conclude that the record adequately supports the District Court’s “undue burden” conclusion. Cf. id., at 895 (opinion of the Court) (finding burden “undue” when requirement places “substantial obstacle to a woman’s choice” in “a large fraction of the cases in which” it “is relevant”)….”

“….More fundamentally, in the face of no threat to women’s health, Texas seeks to force women to travel long distances to get abortions in crammed-to-capacity superfacilities. Patients seeking these services are less likely to get the kind of individualized attention, serious conversation, and emotional support that doctors at less taxed facilities may have offered. Healthcare facilities and medical professionals are not fungible commodities. Surgical centers attempting to accommodate sudden, vastly increased demand, see 46 F. Supp. 3d, at 682, may find that quality of care declines. Another commonsense inference that the District Court made is that these effects would be harmful to, not supportive of, women’s health….”

On the sweeping severability provision in the Texas law:

“….That language, Texas argues, means that facial invalidation of parts of the statute is not an option; instead, it says, the severability clause mandates a more narrowly tailored judicial remedy. But the challenged provisions of H. B. 2 close most of the abortion facilities in Texas and place added stress on those facilities able to remain open. They vastly increase the obstacles confronting women seeking abortions in Texas without providing any benefit to women’s health capable of withstanding any meaningful scrutiny. The provisions are unconstitutional on their face: Including a severability provision in the law does not change that conclusion….”

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a righteous Supreme Court smack down of legislative game playing.

From Justice Ginberg’s concurrence:

“….When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners, faute de mieux, at great risk to their health and safety….”

From Justice Thomas’ dissent:

“….I remain fundamentally opposed to the Court’s abortion jurisprudence….”

Uh, we all knew that already.

Remember in November, it’s the Supreme Court, Stupid.

We’ve all heard the tragic stories about parents who just look away for one distracted second while disaster strikes their helpless toddler. There’s the kid who got into the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati zoo, or the children in Texas who drowned while their mother was occupied with her cell phone. When I think about the damage that is being done to our society by the latest evolution of our gun culture, I can sympathize with those parents.

I’m not a gun aficionado, but, for a long time, I felt that 2nd amendment questions about gun ownership weren’t my first priority when it came to political activism – at least not in a society where we have had to fight every day to defend the economic and social progress we made in the 20th century. Social Security, reproductive rights, civil rights for minorities – all came before guns.

Guns, after all, just didn’t seem like that big a deal. When I was a child and we were living in a rural area, my father owned an old shotgun that was kept, unloaded, in the back of a closet. It was only used once that I know of, to stop the suffering of a pet dog that had been too badly badly mauled by coyotes to survive. Later, when we moved to a small city, few, if any, of our urban neighbors had guns, or, if they did, they were securely locked away and nobody thought much about them. So who cared if a few nuts were hot and bothered by the 2nd Amendment? Like those distracted parents, I looked away.

When I looked back again the disastrous view took my breath away. There are more than 300 million guns in circulation – in a country of 300 million people – although only about a third subscribe to gun ownership. In 2015 there were 372 mass shootings (i.e., four or more individuals shot) , which killed 475 people and wounded 1,870. Overall, excluding suicide, 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, and 26,819 people were injured.

And make no mistake, this is an American phenomenon. In the U.S. 60% of all murders in 2015 were the result of gun violence, while only 31% of the murders in Canada, 18.2% in Australia, and just 10% in the UK were attributable to guns. I should add that Canada, Australia and the UK all have strict gun regulations.

Concomitant with America’s gun blood-bath is the rise of what Evan Osnos, a writer for The New Yorker, calls the rise of a “concealed-carry lifestyle,” a phenomenon that leaves me shaking in my (metaphorical) boots:

“Something really profound has changed in the way that we use guns,” Osnos tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “Concealed carry, as it’s known, is now legal in all 50 states.”

Osnos, who writes about the evolution of concealed carry in the current issue of The New Yorker, estimates that there are about 13 million people who are licensed to carry a concealed gun in the United States — more than 12 times the number of police officers and detectives in America.

He says that gun manufacturers market a “concealed-carry lifestyle,” which uses fear to sell guns.

“If you are somebody who is considering buying a gun, or you’ve become part of this phenomenon of carrying a gun in daily life, you are constantly being reminded of ways in which you could encounter a threat,” he says.

This means that anyone in my neighborhood could be packing at any time. Couple this fact with a Missouri law awaiting the Governor’s signature that would extend stand-your-ground, and any paranoid lout or half-drunk old geezer who is offended by the way I allegedly looked at him, by an overheard conversation, by the political signs in my front yard, or just about anything that strikes his or her fevered imagination as threatening, can be inspired to fire off a few rounds in my direction. The possibilities opened up by concealed carry and stand-your-ground laws do not make me feel safe. They make me instead think about getting out of Dodge.

In his New Yorker article, Osnos describes how, in the interest of increased sales, the NRA uses racially-tinged fear of crime and populist fears that “powerful Americans are seeking to disarm and endanger less privileged citizens” to whip up the paranoia that fuels gun fervor. And to support this union of fear and guns, the NRA regularly pays off pet politicians. Politicians like Missouri’s Senator Roy Blunt:

Since 1998, no current member of Congress has accepted more in campaign donations from the National Rifle Association than Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt. A new analysis this week from The Washington Post, and highlighted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, showed that Blunt has received $60,550 from the NRA.

Go ahead. Guess where Blunt has come down on all the recent efforts to keep military assault weapons out of the hands of civilians – including suspected terrorists.

To be fair, Blunt did vote for two GOP-sponsored amendments that pretended to keep suspected terrorists from buying guns while doing nothing or even, according to some calculations, making the gun situation worse. Nothing like pretend government. Maybe Missourians should all just pretend to vote for Blunt next November.