Jackson Free Press

This morning, Judge Myron H. Thompson, a senior United States District Court judge for middle Alabama, ruled that Alabama's Women's Health and Safety Act is unconstitutional under the premise that the act would place an "undue burden" on women's access to abortions in the state of Alabama. The act would have required doctors performing abortions to gain admitting privileges at local hospitals.

Most clinics in Alabama, however, hire travelling doctors who cannot gain such privileges. Planned Parenthood Southeast and Reproductive Health Services, plaintiffs in the court case, asserted that the act possessed no warranted, medical foundation. The American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology oppose these requirements.

"The evidence compellingly demonstrates that the requirement would have the striking result of closing three of Alabama's five abortion clinics, clinics which perform only early abortions, long before viability," Thompson wrote in his ruling.

Thompson's ruling on Alabama's Women's Health and Safety Act allows the three clinics to remain open, in turn, allowing women across Alabama access to their services as well as the ability to exercise their reproductive rights.

Thompson was born in Tuskegee, Ala., in 1947 and graduated salutatorian of Tuskegee Institute High School in 1965. He received a bachelor's degree in political science from Yale University in 1969 and then earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1972. That same year, Thompson became the first African American assistant attorney general for the state of Alabama, serving until 1974. Thompson worked in a private law firm, handling many cases regarding civil and First Amendment rights, until he was appointed to the U.S. District Court.

President Jimmy Carter nominated Thompson in 1980, making him the second African American to serve on the United States District Court. Thompson served as chief judge from 1991 to 1998.