The pro-abortion crowd is cheering over a Texas judge’s decision to strike down part of Texas HB 2 – specifically, the requirement that abortionists have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. But they’re also bemoaning the fact that the rest of the bill will go into effect as planned, requiring clinics to meet safety standards, banning telemed abortions, and restricting abortions after 20 weeks unless the mother’s life is at risk.
The majority of Texans, including women, supported this bill. They were in favor of it. But the way pro-aborts carry on about these very commonsense restrictions, you’d think women were being attacked by an evil pregnancy fairy, magically striking one unwitting women after another, and then handing her a coat hanger and telling her to deal with it. Abortion is still legal in Texas, and the only clinics that would be forced to close would be clinics who couldn’t meet safety standards – like, say, ensuring that their equipment is licensed, up to date, and operational.
Why, pray tell, would pro-aborts want to keep clinics like those open? Could it be because they value abortion over the safety of women? And more importantly, what restrictions would abortion advocates support?
Kermit Gosnell has become an albatross around the neck of the abortion lobby, and time and time again, pro-aborts insist that he was an outlier, that abortion is overwhelmingly safe, and that these butcher shops don’t really exist outside Gosnell himself. Everyone wants abortion to be legal so it can be safe, they say. But as Pro Life Action League points out, even in the Gosnell case, pro-aborts looked the other way…and are now complaining about regulations put in place to prevent another Gosnell from setting up shop.
You may recall that when abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s infamous “House of Horrors” in West Philadelphia was raided by the DEA in 2010, it hadn’t been inspected in 17 years. Clearly, if there was a state that needed to get its act together and step up its oversight of abortion clinics, it was Pennsylvania.
And once the macabre findings from Gosnell’s charnel house were made public, lawmakers in Pennsylvania did enact legislation that ensures, among other things, that state inspectors will visit abortion clinics regularly.
It’s telling, then, that the very first state that NAF cites on its page bemoaning TRAP laws is none other than Pennsylvania. (And as an aside, it’s also worth noting that the Gosnell Grand Jury scolded NAF for knowing about the horrifying conditions within Gosnell’s facility in late 2009 but neglecting to contact authorities).
And don’t think that Pennsylvania is alone, either. Time after time, abortion clinics will be found to be operating under disgusting and dangerous conditions. State lawmakers will step in to force clinics to be held to the same standards as, say, tattoo parlors, and abortion activists lose their minds. In Virginia, stricter regulations were passed after every clinic inspected was found to have deficiencies. There were over 80 citations found among the nine clinics. In one clinic, an employee admitted that they didn’t know which instruments were dirty or clean before using them; in another, a freezer was found with blood and “conception material” spilled and frozen all over the bottom. There were many more problems found, but those are just two examples. Obviously, stricter regulations and more frequent inspections were needed.
That’s just Virginia, though. There are examples like this all over the country, even among the celebrated, “compassionate” late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart. Carhart has killed two patients; given false contact information to patients who experienced an emergency; and been caught illegally dumping biohazardous waste, drugs, and patient records, and he has complaints that go back over 20 years. And Texas was found to have its own Kermit Gosnell as well.
There is example after example of abortion clinics operating under less than safe conditions. Yet abortion advocates always fight against any regulations that may possibly close a clinic. It never fails. So the question is, are there any regulations that a pro-abort would support? Are there any standards that they believe clinics should be held to, or are abortionists above the medical standards that the rest of the medical industry are held to?
There’s a lot of talk about making sure women aren’t forced into dangerous back-alley abortions, but it seems that’s exactly what pro-aborts want to do. The back-alley butchers just don’t have to hide in the alley anymore. They can set up shop right in the open now, and it’s all thanks to the efforts of the abortion lobby.
