Justices won’t hear abortion challenge

If Arkansas law stands, it would become the seventh state to have only one abortion clinic

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a challenge to a restrictive Arkansas law that for now will end the use of medication abortions in the state and could close two of the state’s three abortion clinics.

The law requires doctors who provide medication abortions to have a contract with a second doctor who has hospital admitting privileges. Arkansas contends there can be complications with the procedure, while abortion rights advocates say the law’s objective is to make it more difficult for women to access the two-pill regimen that is used in the first nine weeks of pregnancy.

While Planned Parenthood said it would immediately notify patients that it can no longer offer the procedure in the state, the case is expected to return to a lower court.

“Arkansas is now shamefully responsible for being the first state to ban medication abortion,” Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America said in a statement.

“This dangerous law also immediately ends access to safe, legal abortion at all but one health center in the state,” Laguens said.

A medication abortion involves a woman taking mifepristone, which makes it difficult for a fetus to attach in the uterus, and misoprostol, which causes expulsion, similar to a miscarriage.

In 2014, medication abortions accounted for 45 percent of abortions nationally in the first nine weeks, abortion providers said in a brief to the court.

Arkansas said 14 percent of the state’s abortion patients used the procedure.

The state has three abortion clinics, and two of those offer only medication abortions. So the law could leave one clinic, in Little Rock, to serve the entire state — and it would offer only surgical abortions.

Planned Parenthood said it would ask a lower court to again halt the law until a judge can hold a trial to show how many women could be affected by it.

Arkansas contends the law is needed because there are more complications with medication abortions than surgical ones. It said the organization has not made good-faith efforts to find doctors willing to fulfill the law’s requirement, and that it had not shown that a large portion of women seeking abortions would be affected.

The Supreme Court did not say why it declined to accept the challenge, as is customary.

If the Arkansas law stands, it would become the seventh state to have only one abortion clinic.