Editorial: Stop underhanded attempts to obstruct abortion access
Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the Aug. 5, 2014, Los Angeles Times.
Several states have enacted laws in recent years that require doctors who perform abortions at clinics to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. These laws, masquerading as measures to protect the health of women, are nothing more than underhanded attempts to obstruct access to abortion services. In every state where such a law has been passed, it would result in the closure of at least some abortion clinics, making it substantially more difficult for women to get the reproductive healthcare to which they are constitutionally entitled.
A federal appeals court panel late last month blocked Mississippi’s version of the law from going into effect, noting that it would close the only abortion clinic in the state, in violation of the Constitution. The doctors at the clinic had tried and failed to get admitting privileges at the seven hospitals in the area; at five of the seven they were denied because the hospitals refuse privileges to any doctor who performs abortions, presumably to avoid controversy or for religious reasons.
lRelated Will a federal judge strike down a restrictive Alabama abortion law?
This week, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled that an Alabama law requiring admitting privileges was unconstitutional and would force three of the state’s five abortion clinics to close. If this law doesn’t create an undue burden on women, Thompson wrote, then “no regulation, short of those imposing an outright prohibition on abortion, would.” A similar law in Wisconsin — which has not gone into effect pending a court decision — would close the busiest of the state’s four clinics, overburdening the remaining three, which already have waiting lists. In Texas, a federal appeals court ruling upholding the admitting privileges requirement has shut about half the abortion clinics in the state, according to a team of researchers based at the University of Texas; more than 1 million women of childbearing age now live more than 100 miles from the nearest abortion clinic.
Agree completely with this article. Abortion has been around for thousands of years with or without laws. This really is a control issue and who or what actually has control over a “Woman’s” body; Women or Governments.
I agree, rock4-If men had to bear children abortion would be available at your neighborhood convenience store. Right next to the beer.
Abortion is merely legal killing. Doesn’t matter how one spins it. The fetus is alive and it’s heart is beating. With very few exceptions, abortion is the wrong choice! I feel the underhanded attempts to make abortion acceptable should be stopped!
Mr. Blumenthal:
And I wish it was your gender that would be the one that gets pregnant, carries and delivers a baby, and then nurtures and cares for it.
Spouse – 4-mer-usmc
Spouse-4-mer-usmc
I’m female, and I feel exactly the same way that Mr. Blumenthal does. Gender has nothing to do with the fact that killing a baby is murder. Especially heinous to murder a baby because it’s “inconvenient”.
Dogula:
Well I’m female and I don’t feel the same way that you or Mr. Blumenthal do. I think this should be the choice of the individual and not the government. After all, doesn’t the government stick their noses in enough matters that aren’t their business?
Spouse – 4-mer-usmc
Government is currently using MY money to pay for murdering babies. Planned Parenthood uses tax dollars for abortions. That makes it MY business.
Do you think that’s right?
More misinformation. Planned Parenthood does nothing of the kind.
http://www.factcheck.org/2011/04/planned-parenthood/
Federal dollars are not used to fund abortions so there goes your justification for making it your business.
Dogula:
Government uses taxpayer money to pay for any number of things on which not everyone agrees and elects to provide tax breaks to organizations on which everyone does not agree. While we are all entitled to our opinions we aren’t given the luxury of picking and choosing on those matters other than through the votes we cast for who we want representing us.
Personally I see no problem with taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood, and for the record they provide numerous health services to women, especially women of low incomes, other than pregnancy terminations. However, ANYONE funding that organization can stipulate that whatever money they donate be used for specific purposes and not for other purposes. I believe that most of their funding for pregnancy terminations is from private donors and foundations and not from government sources.
If what you’re after is my personal position regarding a woman’s right to choose I am pro-choice, and I respect other people’s rights to their differing opinion.
Spouse – 4-mer-usmc
Well well. Dog WANTS Government intrusion. Ok Dog, let’s say my Daughter is raped and I agree with her aborting the rapists “offspring.” How exactly are you and “your” Government going to stop her/us?
Orale: PP got $542 million from the Federal Govt. in 2012. They may SAY they don’t use THOSE dollars for abortions, but that’s a freakin’ shell game. It’s 40% of their funding. Don’t play games.
Rock, you lie again. I’m not going to stop you. You OR your stupid hypotheticals. But I’m sick and tired of our government stealing our money to support murder, dictatorships, corporations, and lining politicians’ and their connected friends’ pockets.
Why you continue support those thieves in Washington DC and their crimes, I cannot understand.
Dog, according to factcheck.org abortions account for 3% of planned parenthoods total services. That encompasses roughly 10% of their clients.
But feel free to get YOUR facts from biased pro life publications.
Get a clue little shrew. How many times do you have to be proven wrong before you realize that your worldview is fundamentally flawed. Are creationists less intelligent and thus more susceptible to BS, or is their intelligence negated by being forced to believe in something that goes against every scientific discipline? And yes, studies show that their IQs are significantly lower.
Tax the churches. You want your book to be considered in government? Pay up like everyone else with an agenda. Stop poisoning the minds of our youth with creationism and all the other fairy tale nonsense that comes from The Angry Sky Man Chronicles. The consequences of your belief in your god are yours and only yours. Myself and many other people believe in many very different and equally imaginary gods. And we have the respect and understanding of social order to keep it to ourselves.
Dog, glad to know you agree to butt out of this issue. As for your Anti-Government rant, oh well, here you are living under the Government you hate; such a victim.
No games here. I’m sure no matter how many times PP is audited and turns in detailed reports on how federal funds are used, you’ll continue to believe that you have cause to interfere with someone else’s freedom of choice.
Bet you don’t want any money going to birth control either. Or to kids once they are born.
Such a conundrum is created when shallow Liberturdian political beliefs and even shallower bible Christian ethics must share the same bed, eh Dog? Teir dark offspring sure looks, smells and acts like many of the teaparty persuasion, hating, denying, judging….contradicting themselves at every turn.
Oooooooh, you’re all so brave, ganging up in numbers. Classic bully technique, stalking an old conversation thread, all the while claiming that I am something that I am not, that I believe things I do not.
Let me spell it out for you: I do not believe in government taking from one person to give to another. That is theft. I do not believe in the murder of innocents. Apparently YOU all are fine with those things. You think it’s funny that the authorities are taking away rights you don’t care about. So just remember when they come and take away all of YOUR rights that there were some of us fighting for them for you too, and you scoffed.
Dog, if you don’t like the heat you may take for voicing your opinon, then you have every right to not voice it.
But once one of us does voice our opinion publicly, we’re all fair game for dissenting opinions, whether they be kind or cruel!
And for you to cry bully is basically the pot and kettle business.
RE: Dog Crying-Poor persecuted little thing…crying because she gets called on the contradictions of her pick and choose Libertarian platform and her pick and choose brand of Christianity. There’s no conspiracy of liberals lined up against you…your shallow simplistic views are just obvious to so many.
Odd that liberals have become so hateful. I think that eventually you will scare off the 2 or 3 right wingers and then Kae will have significantly fewer comments, resulting in lower google scores and then less ad revenue. Cue more global warming stories to keep the comments flowing for a while, but once Dogula, Parker, et al abandon this site, the chirping crickets will take over. And Cosa will have “won” the internet.
Where else do you get a chance to confront ignorance? I don’t know the name of a single homophobe or bigot, but they get to have a big coming out party on the internet. It is great. I’ve said it before, aside from the inevitable Jehovahs witness that comes by every year, I wouldn’t have any evidence that those types of people exist, let alone thrive. And breed. If someone takes you home and doesn’t have books, don’t sleep with them. (RIP George and Robin). The number of elected representatives who deny evolution and promote a ‘young earth’ is more shocking than the 3rd hour of a heavy mushroom trip, and worse because the next day they are still there. They are dumb, the people who continue to elect them have transcended dumb. Here is how it works in the real world when ignorant people who try to talk to me: ‘oh, so your imaginary god hates me. awesome. tell me how old this boulder is or GFYS’. And then they leave. There is no barrier to entry here. You paid your gosh darn AOL bill this month, come on in! Want to criticize transgender people, but can’t differentiate between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’? Good news! This is the internet, just smash your nose on the keyboard and click the Submit button. Want to discuss climate, but lack a functional understanding of the most basic concept at play? Even better news! We have an global community of disinformationists who will be your fluffer and stimulate you until you are ready for your big scene, which will never come. Pun intended.
I think if you ever bought or were sympathetic to a ‘freedom fries’ bumper sticker, you should be branded for life as a flaming moron. All political stickers should be text outlines. If you rocked that McCain Palin bumper sticker for more than a year, you are going to need your bumper buffed out and resprayed because that wax job didn’t weather evenly.
Bill Watterson won’t license Calvin and Hobbes memorabilia because a bunch of morons started making bumper stickers of Calvin peeing on the idols of corporations. How many of those mouth breathers can give you 500 words on why Chevy is inferior, and have no idea that the character on their sticker is a reference to a philosopher?
All of them.
Me? Hateful? I lack the energy for that and can’t fall back on dogma (pun not intended) that makes hate as easy as showing up for the weekly meeting of the First Cult of Angy Sky Man.
To adapt a quote from the movie Mean Girls: ‘I don’t hate you because you are stupid. You are stupid because I hate you’.
The Idiocracy is nigh.
‘Welcome to Costco. I love you’
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. Supposedly from Eleanor Roosevelt, probably really from Buckles’, circa 1913. We see numerous examples of this every day in the commentary section of Lake Tahoe News; and in many other places. The smallest minds don’t just discuss people.
Common sense isn’t.
Most folks look intelligent…then they say something.
Caveat lector.
Poor dog, cry me a river. I would love to read these news posts without seeing her rant. Ive stopped reading them because its the same every time. YAWN
Cosa. I agree that we need to Tax Churches. I also have to wonder where all these “Hateful Christians” are coming from; sure wasn’t what I learned in Sunday School.