In brief: Judge strikes down abortion law

Birmingham, Ala. – A new Alabama law restricting doctors who perform abortions would force several women’s clinics to shut down, placing unconstitutional restrictions on a woman’s right to obtain one, a federal judge ruled Monday.

Several doctors live outside the state and would be unable to gain the privileges to admit patients to local hospitals required by the law, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson wrote in a 172-page opinion and an accompanying order. Furthermore, it’s unlikely that local doctors would begin performing abortions because of a history of violence across the South that includes bombings, shootings and arsons against clinics, the judge said.

That would effectively force three of the state’s five abortion clinics to close, the judge wrote. Those clinics are in the state’s three largest cities.

“The resulting unavailability of abortion in these three cities would impose significant obstacles, burdens, and costs for women across Alabama,” he wrote.

Report slams NYC juvenile jails

New York – New York City’s juvenile jails are extremely violent and unsafe, the result of a deeply ingrained culture of violence in which guards routinely violate constitutional rights of teenage inmates and subject them to “rampant use of unnecessary and excessive force,” the federal government said in a scathing report released Monday.

The report, the result of a 2 1/2-year Justice Department investigation into violence at three Rikers Island juvenile jail facilities, recommended major reforms to almost every aspect of how young offenders are treated.

It identified problems that occurred between 2011 and 2013 on Rikers that also likely hold true for adult inmates, including poor staff training, inadequate investigations, an ineffective management structure and the overuse of solitary confinement, particularly for mentally ill inmates.

In past cases investigated by the Justice Department’s civil rights division, federal authorities work with local officials to reform the jails and reserve the right to sue if they feel reforms are not being done.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has promised to reform the nation’s second-largest jail system, with an average of 11,500 inmates held at any time.