Common ground: a thing that seems rarer and rarer these days. Everything seems so divisive. But for a minute, back in 2014, we found it on a modest proposal that protects the lives of the women we love who sometimes chose the trauma of abortion.
On that fateful day, a bill was passed in the Louisiana Legislature by overwhelming bipartisan majorities. The bill was drafted by a woman attorney, authored by a Democrat woman legislator, and passed overwhelmingly by both parties on behalf of Louisiana women injured in abortion clinics.
However, this law, the Unsafe Abortion Protection Act, authored by state Sen. Katrina Jackson, D-Monroe, was just struck down 5-4 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
There was common ground at the Capitol because the law was common-sense. The law’s goal was to close a loophole that subjected women seeking abortion to substandard medical care. All other outpatient surgical center doctors must have admitting privileges, but not abortion facilities.
The Supreme Court showed this country that they will continue to carve out exceptions for abortion and that the abortion industry will be allowed to continue to put patients over profits.
The elected representatives of Louisiana came together to protect the health and safety of women. Yet, five judges usurped the will of the people in order to give the abortion industry protected status that any other industry could dream of.
It is a sad day for the women who think they are walking into medical clinics subject to ordinary medical standards. It’s a sad day that the Supreme Court continues to embrace an abortion distortion mentality that exempts this industry from the laws that apply to everything else.
The fact that the Court barely mentioned the standing issue was also a disappointment. While claiming to represent women, the abortion industry filed suit to fight against a safeguard for those very women. This conflict of interest should have barred the Court from even reaching the merits.
During committee testimony in 2014, Louisiana women shared powerful testimonies of how their health was threatened because the doctors did not provide continuity of care. One woman, after serious complications surfaced, was told to “Get up and get out!”
Doctors also testified about how difficult it is to provide care for a patient who shows up at the ER with complications from another doctor’s surgery. These doctors shared how they had to treat abortion-injured women who arrived in the emergency room suffering from hemorrhaging, a punctured uterus, torn cervix, infection or incomplete abortion.
Doctors who provide abortions should not be held to a lower standard of care than any other doctor. If anything, the history of clinic violations at Louisiana abortion clinics proves that this law is necessary.
The Supreme Court has ensured that women will continue to be harmed by these substandard clinics. In 2019, a young Louisiana woman went in to get an abortion, but she left with major medical complications causing a complete hysterectomy. What does the court want to say to her? She is who this law was written for; she was the one who would have been protected. Today’s decision failed her and the women who come after her.
Even though the Supreme Court overturned this law, we will never stop working for the health and safety of women and children. We will continue to fight for laws that give women in unplanned pregnancies real support. And the abortion industry will continue to put profits over their patients.
Angie Thomas is an attorney and associate director of Louisiana Right to Life and also serves as an attorney with National Institute of Family and Life Advocates. She was previously the CEO of a life-affirming medical and counseling clinic dedicated to women in unplanned pregnancies.
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July 08, 2020 at 09:12PM
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Court decision: When common ground loses, women lose - The Advocate
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