Pennsylvania Democrats have introduced legislation that would revoke the state’s “target restrictions on abortion providers” — often referred to by abortion advocates as “TRAP” laws — a move that would further endanger women in the state by removing common-sense safety measures.
The initiative is being spearheaded by State Representative Tarik Khan. In a recent op-ed, Khan decried the state’s protections for abortion clients passed in 2011, which, as he pointed out, require abortion facilities to meet code requirements similar to those imposed on ambulatory surgical centers. “These changes include obtaining contracts with hospitals, installing hospital-grade elevators, significantly expanding the size of procedure rooms, installing new flooring, and other costly upgrades,” he explained.
He went on to claim, “These changes are irrelevant to patient health, given that abortion providers are already well-regulated by the government.”
“These requirements can be, and really are, medically inappropriate in the context of an abortion procedure,” claimed Signe Espinoza, the Executive Director of Planned Parenthood PA. “These requirements forced abortion providers to shut their doors.”
READ: YIKES: Half of Pennsylvania abortion facilities failed health inspections last year
Though Khan and the abortion industry claim that laws protecting abortion seekers are a nuisance, the state recently released records showing that abortion complications have tripled in the last five years in Pennsylvania, along with the news that half of the state’s abortion businesses failed health inspections last year. Loosening restrictions would put these women further at risk.
The state’s laws protecting abortion clients were adopted in 2011 largely in response to abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s “House of Horrors” in Philadelphia. When FBI agents raided Gosnell’s facility, they found “47 aborted fetuses stored in clinic freezers, jars of tiny, severed feet, bloodstained furniture and dirty medical instruments.” Agents also reported “the disgusting conditions, the dazed patients, the discarded fetuses.” Gosnell was later convicted of murder in the deaths of three infants born alive during abortion procedures and involuntary manslaughter in the death of a woman who died during an abortion procedure.
Michael Geer, President and CEO of the PA Family Institute, decried the new legislation.
“The grand jury that released a report after the Kermit Gosnell investigation basically said that the abortion clinics in Pennsylvania were regulated, less regulated than nail salons, and that women were put at risk,” he said. “They think they should be free to do whatever they want to do, put women’s health at risk, put babies certainly at risk when they go into an abortion clinic.”
Abortion businesses constantly argue that abortion is health care — but now are balking at meeting minimum safety standards that any surgical facility in the state needs to face. Abortion is a dangerous procedure especially to the human being whose life is ended. And though the media never reports their stories, countless women have been injured — and even killed — inside abortion facilities.
