The measure would have required doctors who provide abortions to have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles of a clinic

 WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Louisiana's tough restriction on abortions violates the Constitution, a surprising victory for abortion rights advocates from an increasingly conservative court.

The 5-4 decision, in which Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the court's four more liberal justices, struck down a law passed by the Louisiana Legislature in 2014 that required any doctor offering abortion services to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. Its enforcement had been blocked by a protracted legal battle.

Two Louisiana doctors and a medical clinic sued to get the law overturned. They said it would leave only one doctor at a single clinic to provide services for nearly 10,000 women who seek abortions in the state each year.

The challengers said the requirement was identical to a Texas law the Supreme Court struck down in 2016. With the vote of then-Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court ruled that Texas imposed an obstacle on women seeking access to abortion services without providing any medical benefits. Kennedy was succeeded by the more conservative Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by President Donald Trump, who was among the four dissenters Monday.

Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote the Texas decision, also wrote Monday's ruling. The law poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions and offers no significant health benefits "and therefore imposes an undue burden on a woman's constitutional right to choose to have an abortion."

Roberts said he thought the court was wrong to strike down the Texas law, but he voted with the majority because that was the binding precedent. 

"The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Loui

The Center for Reproductive Rights said the burdens on access to abortions in Louisiana would have been even more restrictive than those in Texas, where about half of the state's abortion clinics were forced to close. It also said the law was unnecessary, because only a small fraction of women experience medical problems after abortions, and when they do, they seek treatment at hospitals near where they live, not ones near the medical clinic.

"As Republicans continue their assault nationally on Roe v. Wade, they are also fighting on a state by state basis," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement. "Louisiana's draconian abortion ban was a clear and intentional violation of the Constitution, explicitly designed to permanently destroy women's reproductive freedoms and dismantle their right to make their own decisions about their health, bodies and timing and size of their families."

Louisiana had defended the law, arguing that the requirement to have an association with a nearby hospital would provide a check on a doctor's credentials. But opponents said a hospital's decision about whether to grant admitting privileges had little to do with a doctor's competence and more to do with whether the doctor would admit a sufficient number of patients.

siana's law cannot stand under our precedents."

"A ban against luring mothers from their dens with doughnuts and other treats will be lifted."

"Trump administration makes it easier for hunters to kill bear cubs and wolf pups in Alaska" (WaPo).

With a final rule published Tuesday in the Federal Register, the Trump administration is ending a five-year-old ban on the practices, which also include shooting swimming caribou from a boat and targeting animals from airplanes and snowmobiles. It will take effect in 30 days. State officials primarily composed of hunters in Alaska argued that the October 2015 regulations ordered by the Obama administration infringed on traditional native hunting practices and were more restrictive than what is permitted on state land....

Native... doughnuts... I need more context here.

ADDED: Speaking of ethnicity and doughnuts:

Now, for something very nice pic.twitter.com/FWpz2as4bs

— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) June 9, 2020

"My father had been interested in art since boyhood, when he drew images related to his Ojibwe culture."

"After leaving Pipestone boarding school in Minnesota in 1942, he joined the Navy and was assigned to San Diego, where he worked alongside animation artists from MGM and Walt Disney producing brochures and films for the war effort. In 1946, he established himself as one of the first modernists in American Indian fine art. After I was born in 1946, my family moved from Red Lake, Minn., to Minneapolis, where my father broke racial barriers by establishing himself as an American Indian commercial artist in an art world dominated by white executives and artists.... By often working with Native American imagery, he maintained a connection to his identity.... With the redesign [of the Land o' Lakes butter packaging], my father made Mia’s Native American connections more specific. He changed the beadwork designs on her dress by adding floral motifs that are common in Ojibwe art. He added two points of wooded shoreline to the lake that had often been depicted in the image’s background. It was a place any Red Lake tribal citizen would recognize as the Narrows, where Lower Red Lake and Upper Red Lake meet.... Mia simply didn’t fit the parameters of a stereotype...."

From "My Native American father drew the Land O’Lakes maiden. She was never a stereotype" (WaPo).

"Man Who Killed and Ate the Spirit Raccoon," "Spirit Horses on Horse Hill," "Flying Skull," "Big Beaver," "Girl Whose Lover Went to War"...

... "Rattlesnake Myth," "Wakanda Loses Lake," "Wakanda Annoyed by Rabbit," "Thunderbird Roost," and "Girl Who Married a Sky Man" — Native American myths named on this map of Lake Mendota, drawn in 1948 by a student of a University of Wisconsin professor, to go with his booklet "Lake Mendota Indian Legends."

I first saw the map at "Daily diversion: See how Madison's lakes changed changed since 19th century, in photos" (Wisconsin State Journal).

And here's the booklet!

Lake Mendota was called Wonk-sheck-ho-mik-la — "the lake where the Indian lies."



"Manitou" = a spirit.

Lake Mendota this morning at dawn...