by Elizabeth Campbell
A common sense bill promoting the safety of women getting abortions was just overturned by a misguided Supreme Court. Yesterday, Texas House Bill 2 from 2013 was ruled unconstitutional even though the bill only lays out regulations that protect women instead of harming them.
Under the bill, abortion clinics are required to obtain admitting permission to a hospital within thirty miles of the clinic, 24 hours before the procedure. The bill also requires abortion clinics to be held to the same standards as surgical clinics. The extremely troubling part of the ruling is the court’s issue with these two parts of the bill, designed to protect women in case of a medical emergency
Pro-choice activists say these are unreasonable regulations, and the court ruled that they saw no substantial medical benefits from these provisions. These activists claim that this is a violation of a woman’s reproductive rights, even though the provisions were put into place to protect women and insure their safety in case of complications. The striking down of this law is hurting women.
Surgical abortions have been known to cause infection, sepsis, endometritis, cervical lacerations, pelvic inflammatory disease, and uterine, bladder, or bowl perforations. Some surgical abortions are incomplete or the woman can retain tissue.
The risks of abortion are not just limited to the surgical abortions, however. A chemical abortion can cause severe pain, cramping, nausea, and diarrhea, and a hemorrhage, infection, or rupture of undiagnosed ectopic.
Since 1972 there have been over 350 identified deaths from legal abortions, which could be related to anesthesia, infection, hemorrhage, ruptured ectopic pregnancy or embolism.
With all of these side effects and possible complications, one would think that common sense requirements from abortion clinics would be something pro-choice people who supposedly care about women would agree to. Instead, they would rather have easier access to abortion.
Pro-choice groups cry out that banning abortion would just lead to back alley, coat-hanger abortions in Mexico, or some other absurd notions. With this kind of argument, one would think that Texas House Bill 2 would be something they support, seeing that it was enacted to provide a safer environment for women to get abortions — which is what they plead for when they are arguing to keep abortion legal. Unfortunately, they seem to only be concerned with allowing women to get abortions instead of making a safer environment for them.
This is an obvious case of double standards when it comes to regulating medical facilities, health care, and the pro-choice argument. This bill required all surgical facilities to be held to the same standard, including abortion clinics, and should not have been challenged to begin with. This is not feminism that cares about women. Promoting the unjust end of a life is not healthy for women, and doing so in a facility that doesn’t have the same standards as most medical facilities is potentially more damaging. We shouldn’t be promoting abortion to begin with. And if there are facilities preforming them, they need to adhere to universal, state based, medical standards.
Elizabeth Campbell is a CBLPI summer intern.