The Texas Abortion Emergency - NYTimes.com Outside the chambers of federal appellate judges Priscilla Owen, Jennifer Elrod, and Catharina Haynes, virtually everyone understands that H.B. 2, the new Texas law that places various restrictions on a woman's ability to obtain an abortion, is not about protecting women's health - it's about stopping abortion. And yet on Friday, those three judges, who sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, ruled that the law could go into effect, since it was "not designed to strike at the right itself," and wasn't invalid simply because it "has the incidental effect of making it more difficult or more expensive to procure an abortion." That ruling led to the immediate closure of one-third of clinics in Texas where abortions are performed - several in rural areas that serve women without the means to travel hundreds of miles to another clinic. On Monday morning, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia allowed the charade to continue for at least another week when he declined to grant an emergency request by the law's challengers to stay the appeals court's ruling, and ordered the state to file a response by Nov. 12. Justice Scalia hears all emergency-stay applications out of the Fifth Circuit. The law requires, among other things, a doctor to have admitting privileges at a hospital no more than 30 miles from where he or she performs abortions. On Oct. 28, U.S. District judge Lee Yeakel ruled that this provision was "without a rational basis and places a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus." The state appealed immediately, and on Friday, the Fifth Circuit panel issued its stay of Judge Yeakel's ruling. But no matter what the panel says, the law is intended precisely to "strike at the right itself" - only dishonest politicians pretend otherwise. Making it harder for women to get an abortion is not an "incidental effect" of the law; it is its primary goal. Consider the words of Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell, who claimed during the trial before Judge Yeakel that the state has a vested interest in "protecting the life of the unborn child," and thus may impose "inconveniences on women seeking abortion in hopes that it may lead women considering abortion to consider childbirth instead." Like similar laws popping up all over the country, H.B. 2 is cloaked in the guise of protecting women's health only because anti-abortion activists know it's their best shot of surviving judicial scrutiny. This shouldn't be complicated. On one side is a law of dubious constitutionality passed by legislators who openly admit their desire to end all abortions. On the other side are real women whose constitutional right to have an abortion is being effectively blocked. The arguments of all sides have been on the table for months, which is why Texas was able to file its appeal within hours of the district court's ruling. Now the state has at least another week, while Texas women pay the price.