Earlier this week a couple of stories appeared concerning
abortion—specifically concerning whether abortion clinics can be required to
meet the standards required of other ambulatory surgical centers. One story is
that Texas’s law is having another day in court. The other is that a judge
blocked such a law in Alabama.
Tuesday's Houston Chronicle front page |
I’m dealing with the news section of August 5th Houston Chronicle, front page above the
fold, and A-7, where theoretically you get news instead of opinion. But what we
get here is the news from the point of view of the “abortion-rights” side.
The Texas story’s first paragraph is:
Abortion providers returned to court Monday seeking to block
a provision of Texas’ stringent new
law that would require abortion facilities to comply with the standards of
ambulatory surgical centers, a restriction opponents said would force more
clinics out of business and leave hundreds of thousands of women without easy
access to the procedure.
Stringent is a
subjective term, not news. What the law actually did—in the wake of the Gosnell
horrors—was cause abortion clinics to meet the standards expected already of
other surgical centers. Why that is considered “stringent” is not mentioned. It
should be noted that just days after the Gosnell verdict, Texas employees at an
abortion clinic came forward with evidence of similar situations in Houston,
with babies being killed.
US Rep. John Culberson gave this reaction to the story:
On the heels of Kermit Gosnell’s conviction, I am deeply
saddened to learn about more atrocities committed against precious unborn
babies, this time in our own backyard. Douglas Karpen of Houston, TX, has been
accused of brutally murdering babies born after twenty weeks. He is innocent
until proven guilty, but the descriptions from his former employees are gut
wrenching and absolutely heartbreaking. Taking a baby from its mother’s womb
and terminating its life is murder. Throughout my years in public service I
have been committed to protecting the lives of the innocent, and as a Member of
Congress, I will work with my colleagues to ensure that we put an immediate end
to this practice in every corner of this nation. I will never stop fighting to
protect the lives of the most vulnerable.
So the Texas legislature’s law had two missions: prevent
abortions after 20 weeks, when it is now known the fetus feels pain (which also
prevents the botched abortion-live birth killings that have been reported); and
bring the clinics up to normally accepted health codes for the sake of women’s
health.
This is the law, you may recall, that won Wendy Davis (now candidate for Texas governor) notoriety for
filibustering, forcing a second special session to get a vote; it passed easily
once a vote was taken. Afterward Davis seemed unaware of the actual provisions
in the law, and seemed to think it was to outlaw all abortions. Maybe she just
seemed confused while revealing she simply can’t bear the thought of any
abortion ever being thwarted. Claiming that prevention of any abortion under
any circumstances is a "war on women" is hardly a basis for leading the strongest
state in the nation.
The providers testifying against the law weren’t led by people
actually affected by the Texas law, but the New York-based Center for
Reproductive Rights. Their lawyers spoke in front of US District Judge Lee
Yeakel, asking him to block implementation of the law’s provision, scheduled
for September 1st. Judge Yeakel ruled House Bill 2 unconstitutional
last year—his decision was overruled by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. So going before this judge again is likely to go as
before.
The pro-abortionists' main argument is that requiring abortion
doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles means that
the clinics have to close. They also claim that these regulatory burdens are “not
imposed on any other health care providers in Texas,” which is false on its
face. There are various simple procedures, like dental extraction, that are
done in doctor’s offices, but if they are procedures in which there’s a risk of
bleeding to death or other serious complications, they are already done in
surgical centers meeting the requirements, or in hospitals.
Let’s take a close look at the admitting privileges question. When
this came up last year, my question was, “Why don’t the doctors just go get
admitting privileges?” They were given ample additional time to do so. And
everything I read made it sound pretty standard. But here are the abortionists still
complaining that they can’t qualify.
So I looked it up. The main thing is providing credentials.
There’s some paperwork involved, but any practicing physician probably has his/her
diploma and licenses available. There are two levels of admitting privileges.
There are courtesy privileges, which
are simply that the doctor is allowed to occasionally use the hospital, to
perform rounds with patients and do procedures within his/her specialty on an
as needed basis—just in case a need ever arises. This level is relatively
simple to get, and would meet the law’s requirements.
The second type is full
admitting privileges. This may require that the doctor become a part of the
hospital staff, attend staff meetings, and provide a certain number of patients
to the hospital per year. Sometimes the doctor must belong to the same
insurance group as the hospital. This is admittedly harder to get, and might
not be possible for an abortionist to meet.
Here’s where I have a problem with the story—and with the
abortionists’ argument: the story says, quoting a coalition attorney: “Almost
half of the roughly 40 abortion facilities operating in Texas before the
passage of House Bill 2 already have closed because of doctors’ inability to obtain admitting privileges.”
It is not necessarily that doctors couldn’t obtain admitting privileges; it is that they didn’t. An online story I found,
describing what it takes to get
admitting privileges, quotes the CEO of the untruthfully named abortion
provider Whole Woman’s Health, talking about the process: "We’ve worked
with at least 25 hospitals around the state in the last six months trying to
get privileges on behalf of our physicians."
I see a couple of problems here. First, 25 hospitals isn’t
that many. As of 2012 there were 630 hospitals in
the state. There are 80 just in Harris
County, where Houston is located. Why work with only 25 hospitals? Why not apply
with all of them, or at least all that are within 30 miles of an abortion
clinic? And how do we know whether these 25 hospitals were the least likely to
accept the requests? Catholic hospitals, or other Christian supported
hospitals, or possibly hospitals related to specific insurance groups? After
all, these are people trying to provide evidence that the law is too
restrictive, not people actually trying to meet the requirements. It also
appears, from the descriptions, that only full admitting privileges were sought—possibly
so that they would be turned down, and then they could claim they couldn’t meet the requirements of the
law, giving them "evidence" for appeal.
Second, why is the abortion provider clinic organization,
rather than the physician, doing the applying? At some point the doctor has to
apply. And generally applications are available for download from a hospital
website, so the intermediary isn’t really necessary. Apparently we’re just
supposed to take it as fact that they’ve exerted every effort and failed,
because the law is too stringent?
On that note, if requiring that a doctor be credentialed and
not barred because of various malpractice complaints is too stringent, aren’t
we really undervaluing women’s health?
Another problem with the story is the numbers. The
pro-abortion coalition claims that there’s a particular shortage of clinics in
El Paso and generally in the southwestern portion of the state: “That would
leave some 900,000 women of reproductive
age in the Rio Grande Valley and West Texas living at least 150 miles from
a Texas abortion facility.”
They are counting all
women, not just the relative few who choose abortion as their birth control
method. Let me proclaim, loudly, that abortion clinics do not serve me. Nor any
woman in my family. Nor any woman I know at church. Possibly not any woman in
my circle of friends and acquaintances. They are vastly overestimating the
number of women they “serve” by killing their babies.
And they’re assuming the state should go to great lengths—even
to the point of dumbing down safety requirements that can affect women’s health—just
to encourage more clinics where there hasn’t been enough of a market thus far.
This is similar to the argument in the Alabama story (Houston Chronicle p. A7, Tuesday, August
5): “Judge blocks Alabama’s Abortion Law.” In that state, with a law similar to
Texas’s, the claim is that, because the abortion doctors live outside the
state, they wouldn’t be able to get admitting privileges. The state has just
five abortion clinics, and three have this challenge. The claim is, “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.”
First, as if I need to say it, violence is not the right
approach to persuading people not to commit abortions. And any such violence
should be prosecuted according to the law—as it has been; most perpetrators are
on death row, have been executed, or are serving life sentences. That said, I
haven’t heard of abortion clinic violence in a long time. So I did a Wikipedia search.
I found one case listed for Alabama,
in 1998. The story says “the South,” so I broadened the search. There are two
Florida cases, one in 1993, and one in 1994—with a follow-up bombing in 2012 at
the same clinic. One in Kansas in 2009.
There are some additional incidents of attempted murder, death
threats, and criminal mischief. I found one case of criminal mischief (breaking
in, threatening, damaging equipment) in Alabama, in 1984.
So, my question is, why, if the damage is aimed at the
clinics, does a doctor feel safe performing abortions in Alabama clinics, but not living
there? And since Alabama is only part of the South, why do those doctors feel
safe living across state lines but still nearby? The argument doesn’t hold
water. What abortion clinics are saying is that, in some places they find it
difficult to find doctors willing to enter into that profession—so they want
government to lower standards for women’s health to make it easier for them to
ply their grisly trade.
A similar problem is happening in Mississippi,
where the single abortion clinic
might close, and abortionists are asserting that each state should be required
to make sure it has at least one abortion clinic, regardless of nearby access
across state lines. They don't say why.
The subheading reveals bias |
One more complaint about the Chronicle piece on the Texas law: One of the subheads is “Other
Victories.” The paper is telling the story of the struggle of abortion
providers; it is on their side. You can get facts about the issue from the
story, but know that you might not be getting them all, because the reporter has
revealed a pro-abortion bias.
If you think there’s reasonableness on that side, you need
to read their protest signs: “Abortion on Demand & without Apology” and the absurdly irrelevant “Forced
motherhood is female enslavement.” That is not exactly “safe, legal, and rare”
message most pro-choice people would say they support. These religiously
pro-abortion activists are perfectly willing to risk women’s health, as long as
they press for what they want: to kill any baby up to birth, and even beyond.
It’s an ugly business.
On the other hand, the signs at the anti-abortion prayer
rally read, “Abortion harms women,” which it does. Not to mention women's babies.
People need to rethink that whole “war on
women” claim. Abortionists aren’t for
women; they’re for profit. And
they really resent being held to responsible standards if it could cost them money.
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