A white-haired male judge born in the 1930’s just penned an opinion that women undergoing surgery do not deserve to have that surgery performed by a doctor with admitting privileges at a hospital and at an ambulatory surgical center. Pro-abortion women across the country embraced Justice Breyer’s opinion. They should not. And if the surgery at issue wasn’t abortion, they wouldn’t have done so. These women would have expected more from the judiciary, and judiciary would have given them more. The state regulations that protected health and safety would have been upheld, and rightfully so.
When it comes to abortion, however, the political agenda and its deceitful narrative overpower truth and legitimate concerns. The agenda requires abortion on demand no matter what the real consequences are for women. The judicially imposed political agenda here required that abortionists preform their surgical extermination procedure without admitting privileges at a hospital and in subpar facilities. This is no victory for women.
In the law, when the judiciary examines abortion regulations, cue the famous line from Macbeth: “Fair is foul and foul is fair.” There should be no question that undergoing surgery at the hands of a doctor to whom no hospital will grant admitting privileges is foul. There is no question that undergoing surgery in a facility that is not a surgical center is foul. But enter the word abortion, and the judiciary’s insidious political agenda demands both must be done. The reasoning? The abortion industry would have to spend too much money and would be too inconvenienced to come into compliance with Texas’ health and safety regulations.
So, Texas’ law that would “‘screen out’ untrained or incompetent abortion providers” and “reduce health risks for abortion patients,” was struck down as a substantial burden on a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. But wasn’t this really the abortion industry’s burden of complying with the state’s health and safety standards? Or, as Justice Thomas so accurately states in his dissent, the Court struck down these standards “at the behest of abortion providers.”
The abortion industry’s bully pulpit and unwillingness to comply with the state’s health and safety standards won the day. The Supreme Court essentially reasoned that since the abortion industry did not want to comply with Texas standards, their non-compliance would make abortion more difficult to seek out; therefore, a substantial burden existed. Abortion’s focus could not include quality of health and safety, but should remain cheap and easy in the interest of so called “women’s rights.” The opinion echoes one message: women do not deserve better.
This is nothing new. In the Supreme Court, the abortion agenda trumps safety, trumps the legislature’s findings in enacting laws, trumps fully realized consent, trumps parental rights, trumps ordinary constitutional protections, and trumps traditional free speech analysis. The abortion agenda’s power over constitutionally protected liberties comes at no surprise, as abortion trumps life itself.
Since Roe v. Wade in 1973, some lawyers, wearing black robes at the Supreme Court, continue to think they are the arbiters of when life begins. Ignored is the inherent value of the life of the unborn child. Science reveals that the child’s full genetic makeup and uniqueness is present at the time of conception. Science reveals the child’s heart beating as early as three weeks into development, and the child moves independently in the womb around seven weeks. Science reveals the child experiences pain during the second trimester and becomes sentient while in the womb. Science reveals that abortion ends the life of the unborn child. Yet, the Supreme Court, as it did when it upheld slavery, holds that some human life is not worthy of governmental protection.
Moreover, the Court’s opinion reveals the minimal protections the Supreme Court cares to grant women obtaining abortion. The question everyone should be asking: why is the Court so interested in keeping the abortion industry’s safety standards so low?
In my years of work, I have met many post-abortive women and men, but I have never met anyone who truly wanted to kill his or her child. I have only met people who state they once bought into the abortion agenda’s propaganda and are now shrouded in its regretful truth.
Most people do not want to devote any amount of meaningful time thinking about the realities of abortion and what the goal of abortion truly is—the killing of a child. The post-abortive women and men I know are seeking mercy with the later obtained realization that they ended the life of another human being, their child. These scars bear consequences. I even have a friend who attempted suicide years after abortion. These are people who were sold on the abortion industry’s message of being “pro-woman”, compassionate, and good.
The industry targets young girls by claiming to make women more independent, by endorsing a shallow thought process of pregnancy not grounded in science or morality, and by promoting itself with catchy phrases and appealing colors like hot pink. The abortion agenda seeks to fool people at a young age by selling pleasantries, however empty, because their messaging is easier to think about than the reality of what happens at the abortion clinic behind closed doors. Texas’ law sought to make that surgical procedure safer; the abortion industry’s agenda was stronger. But no matter what a 77-year-old man in a black robe rules, abortion’s cost will never actually be cheap or its consequences easy.
Erin Mersino is Senior Counsel for Law and Policy at the Great Lakes Justice Center.
