Linda Thorson: Is the Supreme Court Against Safe Abortion Clinics?
Protesters demonstrate in front of the U.S. Supreme Court as the court takes up a major abortion case in Washington, in this file photo taken March 2, 2016. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/Files
“This decision represents a great setback for woman’s health and safety. For that is what this case was about, not abortion. Women’s health and safety are a top priority for the thousands of women I represent at Concerned Women for America (CWA), and they fought hard to enact this basic commonsense legislation,” Penny Nance, CWA President and CEO.
On June 27, 2016, in a 5-3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas law that required abortion clinics to meet minimal building standards. Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt challenged a law requiring abortion clinics to meet the building standards of ambulatory surgery centers and required abortionists to maintain admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles.
Nance spoke at the steps of the Supreme Court on the day of the ruling:
This is a dark day for our children, and it is a dark day for their mothers! If you truly care about women, you want safety in our clinics … Let’s remember there are two victims of abortion. There is one dead, and one wounded, and my heart is broken today. So I ask you to join me in prayer for our country. May God please protect us and protect these dear children and their mothers, and I also call on you today to purpose in your heart that come November you will vote. This is not just about politics. It’s about life, and it’s about death.
The Texas law was passed to ensure that quality standards were in place at clinics that perform abortions. It was not about restricting services to women, rather it was a way to ensure quality standards were met. But laws regulating abortion are simply treated differently by the liberal justices at the Supreme Court! Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in dissent, “decision exemplifies the Court’s troubling tendency ‘to bend the rules when any effort to limit abortion, or even to speak in opposition to abortion, is at issue.’”
Speaking out after this disastrous ruling, Dr. Manny Alvarez, chairman of the department of obstetrics/gynecology and reproductive science at Hackensack University Medical Center, New Jersey said:
In health care, we expect to be required to serve our patients with the highest quality of services available. I really can’t understand how the Supreme Court Justices could say that having health care clinics registered with specific regulatory mandates that would ensure the highest quality of care, with registered accredited doctors, could not improve patient outcomes. Abortion is not, by any means, a quick or small procedure. The emotional and physical toll it takes on a patient should require proper quality care, especially in patients who present a complicated case.
CWA of North Dakota believes our government has an obligation to protect health interests of women receiving abortions. In 2013 we supported North Dakota state Sen. Spencer Berry’s MD (R-27) bill to enhance the health and safety of women having abortion. Dr. Berry said:
The women of North Dakota presenting themselves for abortion services should expect that: A. The physician providing the abortion services is qualified to perform that specific procedure and B. That that physician can provide the procedure safely. Recognizing these principles of sound medical practice, similar requirements for continuity of care in abortion practice have been adopted in 11 other states.
Sen Berry’s bill was passed in March of 2013 and later signed into law by the governor.
The audacity of the abortion industry to fight for the right to provide abortions in unsafe settings is an indication of their corruption! It is the industry that fights for sub-standard health care based on the lie that abortion is a good choice for woman and abortion doesn’t kill a child. Amazingly, Tammi Kromenaker, Clinic Administrator at the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, has already stated they are likely to challenge the 2013 Hospital Admittance law sponsored by Sen. Berry, MD. 5 They are clearly willing to risk women’s health in order to procure as many abortions as possible with the least cost.
This law was passed to protect women’s medical rights and health (period) even though they accuse lawmakers of passing it to shut their clinic down. Can we not agree that women deserve the highest quality care possible?
