On the 2nd of March, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that Louisiana can enforce a law that could shut down three of the four remaining abortion clinics in the state. The decision came a week before the Supreme Court heard oral debates about the biggest abortion rights case to date.
The law, HB 388, was an anti-abortion bill signed into law by Governor Bobby Jindal. The law would require doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within thirty miles, impossible for many physicians, particularly in rural parts of Louisiana.
Federal courts have blocked the implementation of the law several times, but the Fifth Circuit granted an emergency stay of the lower court’s decision; the law can take effect unless the Supreme Court steps in to stop it.
The ruling thrusts Louisiana into an antiquated reproductive health care crisis. Women will face limited safe and legal options once they have decided to terminate their pregnancy.
The Center for Reproductive Rights, an abortion activist group, said the decision means all but one provider of legal abortions in the state of 4.7 million people will be forced to close.
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While advocates of the regulation say it protects women’s health by ensuring “continuity of care,” abortion rights groups claim the regulation aid no public health purpose. Texas solicitor general Scott Keller says that even a medical abortion can have complications, which arise once the woman has returned home. However, others state that abortion complications are rare and, if they do occur, they can be treated by emergency medical room staff.
Pro-abortion doctors have stated that the riskier medical procedures, such as dental surgery and colonoscopies, are unregulated and can be performed within a doctor’s office, without the need for a fully equipped surgical centre. Even liposuction, thirty times more dangerous than early stage abortion, does not entail the same stringent requirements.
Kathaleen Pittman, spokeswoman for Hope Medical Group, lying just beyond the Texas border, says there is no reasonable basis on which to inflict this law. Pittman asserts it is impossible for one or two physicians to provide services for all the women in Louisiana in need of abortion care.
When a similar law passed in Texas, women were forced to drive hundreds of miles, leave the state and even take independent measures, including self-induced abortions, to control their own family planning.
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Despite Texas being a cautionary tale, Jeff Landry, Louisiana’s attorney general, praised the ruling and said in a statement that it allows “Louisiana’s pro-life and pro-woman admitting privileges law to go into effect.” He calls the the law “a reasonable, common-sense safety measure.”
And yet, in 2016, the medical recklessness, morally archaic and unnecessary conservatism promoted by this restriction is beyond constitutional. The court is not expected to reach a decision until June this year, while abortion rights activists have made an emergency appeal, asking the high court to put the Louisiana law on hold.
The outcome of the case will impact the 940,000 women of reproductive age. A tremendous hardship for patients, women are being forced to wait while an influx of demand as been sparked. With the two remaining clinics in New Orleans and Shreveport working over-time, it is not feasible that there is enough capacity to provide abortions for Louisiana women.
Despite the procedure being already exceedingly safe, Louisiana’s enforced counseling law requires patients to make an extra trip to the clinic 24 hours before to receive information in the hope to dissuade abortion. Combined with the admitting privileging law, women are looking at extra travel expenses, loss of wages up to several hundred and an increased wait time on top of it all.
If this law is passed, it’s difficult to know what these women can or will do.