The Washington Post on abortion restriction's "formidible" foe

WaPo editorial on Senator Wendy Davis fillibuster of a Texas bill protecting children in the third trimester, with my commentary:

Wendy Davis is a formidible foe of abortion restrictions

By Editorial Board, Published: June 28

IN A moment made for Twitter, Texas Sen. Wendy Davis stood for more than 13 hours and filibustered an abortion-restricting bill into the wee hours of Tuesday night. Ms. Davis’s physical feat and her remarkable personal story captured the country’s attention — but her victory looks shaky. The state legislature is convening for another special session Monday at which the bill — which restricts abortion by creating unnecessary regulations — is expected to be reintroduced.

The bill didn't come to a vote because of Davis' filibuster and because of an abortion mob who disrupted the legislature until the session closed.

The legislation Ms. Davis is fighting resembles abortion-restricting bills that other state legislatures (including Virginia’s) have enacted. In addition to banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, the Texas bill would require abortion clinics to meet the same standards as surgery centers, like those in hospital wings.

Surgery centers are not "hospital wings". Surgery centers are free-standing buildings in which many types of less-than-major surgery are performed. They are meant for same-day surgery procedures.

All states regulate surgery centers. The regulations are quite specific, including building layout, equipment and personnel that must be up to standards for patient safety. Even my outpatient center, where we see patients but don't do surgery, is heavily regulated. There are hundreds of standards we must meet.

Doctors who perform abortions would have to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, which may require them to live near one and/or meet a quota of hospital admissions per year. 

Obviously doctors who perform abortions should have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. Sometimes things go wrong, or patients become ill, and a doctor who performs the abortion needs to have privileges at a nearby hospital so he/she may participate in the patient's care.

The case that such standards are needed to protect the health of abortion patients, as the Republican sponsors of the legislation claim, is weak.

The case is strong. I wouldn't consider doing any outpatient surgical procedure if I didn't have the ability to admit the patient to a nearby hospital and provide care in case something went wrong. If I do a procedure, and there is a complication, I would not abandon my patient.

The real point is to force most abortion clinics out of business.

If adhering to basic standards of public health and medical ethics is too onerous for an abortion clinic, it should go out of business.

Doctors have responsibilities to patients that exceed those of business transactions.

The proposed Texas requirements would be so costly to meet as to cause the closure of all but a handful of clinics.

Abortion clinics are extraordinarily lucrative. George Tiller performed 60,000 abortions in his "career". Fees run from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars, depending on the age of the child. Assuming an average of $1000 per baby, Tiller made $60,000,000 in his 30-year career. That's $2,000,000 per abortionist per year. Overhead is very low compared to most outpatient surgical centers.

Compliance with basic health and safety regulations is unlikely to drive abortion mills out of business.

I wish it would.

They offer no real safety protections to women seeking abortions, and they would cost women access to important health-care services such as contraceptive care, cancer screenings and other routine tests. 

Obviously health and safety regulations provide "safety protections" to women. That's the whole point. It's unclear who the WaPo editors would claim that meeting basic health and safety requirements would interfere with contraception, cancer screenings, etc. Health and safety regulations are in fact a part of the process of providing cancer screening, providing basic checkups, etc.

Gosnell's clinic is what happens when abortionists are not held to standard health and safety practices.

Unfortunately, Texas is not an outlier but part of a pack of states imposing suchspurious regulations. Bills containing expensive facility requirements have been passed in Alabama, Virginia, Indiana, Michigan, Kansas, Pennsylvania and Utah. Bills requiring hospital admitting privileges were passed in Alabama, North Dakota, Mississippi and Tennessee; similar legislation is expected in Ohio and Wisconsin.

Good!

In all these states, women who are unable to access services other than abortion that these clinics offer, and in some cases safe abortions, find themselves in circumstances in which their health is at risk — the very problem these laws claim to minimize. 

The solution to providing health care to the poor is not to lower the standards for health care to the poor.

Again, Gosnell.

In Virginia, the final version of regulations issued by the Virginia Board of Health pursuant to a 2011 law requires abortion clinics to have public hallways at least 5 feet wide procedure rooms at least 120 or 150 square feet and heating and ventilation systems that meet certain specifications.

Hallways and operating rooms have to be wide enough to allow resuscitation equipment and personal to enter and work if there is an emergency. Try getting a stretcher and resuscitation equipment and personnel down a three-fool wide hallway into a tiny room in which a woman who is bleeding to death from a botched abortion.

There are reasons for the rules.

The expense of meeting those requirements is prohibitive, a fact illustrated when Norfolk’s Hillcrest Clinic closed in April because it was unable to pay some $500,000 in renovation and other compliance costs. 

If two abortionists are employed at Hillcrest Clinic, the net income to the practice is $4,000,000 dollars per year. $500,000 was necessary to make the clinic safe for women. You decide is that is onerous.

Admittedly, the closed clinic is now safer for all involved.

Today, abortion is a constitutional right.

All "constitutional rights", even fake ones, have limits. Routine health and safety regulations are obviously reasonable, even necessary, limits. If you don't understand, google "Gosnell".

Until that no longer is the case, it is deceitful for lawmakers to circumvent the rule of law with unjustified provisions.

"Circumvent the law?" Lawmakers were passing a law, requiring abortion mills to meet basic health and safety standards.

On the other hand, filibustering to prevent legislators from voting is close to circumventing the law, and disrupting the voting process by assembling a mob in the gallery to shout down the process is most certainly violating the law.

No doubt Ms. Davis will make that point when the debate resumes in Austin; sadly, the odds that her fortitude and common sense will prevail again don’t look good.

Thank God her chances for success don't look good.

On reflection, two things come to mind.

First, the Washington Post is correct when they observe that Davis is a formidable foe of abortion restrictions. Her brand of hateful abortion-mongering is a real problem in our country, and poses a deadly threat to the lives of millions of innocent children and to the health of millions of women. How people like Davis can demand the "right" to kill third trimester babies, without restriction and without minimal health and safety standards for the mothers, is beyond comprehension. That they do this in the wake of the Gosnell atrocities is beyond shame. This stuff is deep evil.

Second, America's elite newspapers ought to spell-check their editorials. It's a formidable help. One can't help but wonder if the fellow who posted the WaPo editorial may have been less than enamored of this hateful editorial, and provyded his own commentairy, wryly.