Laws
passed in Texas and elsewhere in the name of increasing patient
safety are doing an effective job of shutting down abortion
clinics. As Reuters reports
Two more Texas abortion providers said they will shut down this
week, saying their doctors were unable to get admitting privileges
to nearby hospitals as required under new restrictions enacted by
the state last year….Whole Women’s Health will close two of its five clinics in the
state, shutting facilities in McAllen and Beaumont because they
cannot meet the new regulations, including one that a physician
have admitting privileges at an appropriately equipped hospital
within 30 miles.The reduction will cut the number of abortion providers in the
state to 19 from 32 before the restrictions went in place,
according to the group and state data.
Read
more here and here.
These sorts of regulations are likely to have a more lasting
effect on the number of abortion providers than bans on abortions
after
the first fetal heartbeat is detected (as Alabama is pursuing)
or
other laws that cut into the first-trimester zone first
articulated in Roe v. Wade. North Dakota, for
instance, has passed a ban on abortions that could limit the
procedure at six weeks after fertilization. That’s because the new
regulations don’t specifically attack abortion rights per se, but
instead focus on supposed medical risks for women.
While a large majority of Americans believe that abortion should
be legal in at least some situations –
only 20 percent say abortion should always be illegal,
according to the most recent poll on the issue – there is wide and
growing agreement that it should be more restricted.
From
a CNN poll:
According to the poll, 27% say that abortion should be legal in
all circumstances, 13% say it should be legal in most
circumstances, 38% say that it should be legal in few
circumstances, and 20% say abortion should always be illegal.
Whatever your perspective on abortion (an issue that divides
libertarians along with Americans of every other ideology),
however, it’s clear that abortions as performed in clinics is an
incredibly safe procedure for the women involved. The video above,
which Reason TV released in December, focuses on Virginia’s
experience with
new restrictions:
In
a reversal of conventional positions, SB 924 has political
conservatives arguing for increasing regulations on small
businesses and liberals arguing against them. The bill initially
passed the Democratic-controlled state senate in 2011 by a vote of
20-20 (Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a pro-life Republican cast the
tie-breaking vote). Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell eventually signed
it into law after numerous rounds of political
back-and-forth….Defenders of the new regulations say that they are simply
protecting the safety of women.“This is really necessary to ensure that woman are treated with
care consistent with their human dignity,” says Mallory Quigley of
the Susan B. Anthony List (SBL), a pro-life organization.
A woman who chooses to have an abortion, says Quigley, should be
able to do so without fearing for her health and safety.
While horrific cases of unclean and disgustingly run abortion
mills in Philadelphia, Houston, and elsewhere lend credence to the
safety issue, they are clearly outliers. In Virginia, for instance,
“since 1974 state data show only three deaths during legal
abortions. For first-trimester abortions, the complication rate
is 0.3
percent.”
Again, that isn’t an argument per se for or against abortion.
But everyone interested in good-faith arguments should acknowledge
that piling on regulations that do not demonstrably improve safety
are mistaken at best and disingenuous at worst.
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