Much like the announcement of a last-minute stay of execution for a convicted murderer/rapist/pedophile, a terrorist who did not have his rights read to him, or any Republican gaffe, the news flashed rapidly across the country this week that the last remaining abortion facility in the State of Mississippi was saved. Saved from ignorant, anti-choice crusaders who enacted an anti-constitution, woman-hostile new statute, which, if implemented, would set back the cause of women's reproductive health by at least a couple of millennia.
The loving, tolerant, pro-choice, pro-woman crowd breathed a collective sigh of relief as the enforcement of the draconian measure drafted and passed by those stupid Southerners was delayed.
The hero of this scenario, U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III, in an innovative Roberts-like display of jurisprudence, ruled that the public comments of supporters of the bill outweigh the actual text of the law. Judge Jordan, apparently, is unfamiliar with the recent admonishment by the president to unelected federal judges that they should not take the unprecedented step of setting aside laws passed by a duly elected legislature.
The new requirement under this "inhumane" law:
... that all physicians who perform abortions in an abortion facility must have admitting privileges at a local hospital and must be Board Certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology.
According to Nancy Northrup, CEO of The Center for Reproductive Rights in New York, who helped sponsor the legal challenge to Mississippi's new amendment to their existing law:
Today's decision reaffirms the fundamental constitutional rights of women in Mississippi and ensures the Jackson Women's Health Organization can continue providing the critical reproductive health care that they have offered to women for the last 17 years. The opponents of reproductive rights in the Mississippi legislature have made no secret of their intent to make legal abortion virtually disappear in the state of Mississippi," Northup said. "Their hostility toward women, reproductive health care providers, and the rights of both would unquestionably put the lives and health of countless women at risk of grave harm.
It would seem to me -- remember, I am just an ignorant Southern layman and not a medical professional -- that there would be inherently more danger in a woman's reproductive health procedure that is not performed by someone who is Board Certified in women's reproductive health. Having a doctor with admitting privileges at local hospitals might be an additional safety feature in the event that one of those "safe, legal, and rare" procedures ends with complications.
In 2010, according to the latest information available from the State Health Department, there were 2,297 infanticides committed by these reproductive health care providers at the Jackson Women's Health Clinic.
According to their posted business hours (and assuming they are closed on national holidays), they are open for business about 2,400 hours per year. That means that in 2010, every 62 minutes they were open, another baby was dismembered and then killed.
These figures do not include facilities where fewer than ten abortions per month, or fewer than 100 per year, are carried out -- those are not considered by the state to be abortion facilities, and their infanticides are not required to be reported. The new law does not apply to them -- only to those "who perform abortions in abortion facilities." These figures also do not include abortions committed in neighboring states -- which are geographically closer to 51% of the population.
The clinic says if it closes, most women would have to go out of state to terminate a pregnancy - something that could create financial problems for people in one of the poorest states in the nation. From Jackson, it is about a 200-mile drive to clinics in New Orleans; Mobile, Ala.; or Memphis, Tenn.While it is true that Jackson is about 200 miles from each of these cities, only 14% of the state's 2,978,512 population lives in Jackson. Fifty-one percent of the population lives closer to these other cities than to Jackson. As it turns out, Mississippi women -- or the majority of them -- will not be burdened if the Jackson clinic closes. Most women desiring to terminate their unexpected or otherwise inconvenient children should not be too inconvenienced, hopefully.
It took only about 15 minutes to research the census information for Mississippi, which I referenced in the previous paragraph. I was shocked, shocked to see that these demographics and simple geography were omitted in every story I read about this event. The vast right-wing conspiracy must have used The Force to cloud the minds of all those "journalists."
To summarize Mississippi's new law: The State requires that only abortionists committing more than ten child terminations per month, or 100+ per year, actually be board certified as women's reproductive health experts. In addition, if there are complications from abortions committed in abortion facilities which require subsequent hospitalization, those abortionists must have admitting privileges to local hospitals.
Abortionists terminating fewer than ten children per month or fewer than 100 per year are not required to be Board Certified as OB/GYNs -- women's health experts -- nor must they have hospital-admitting privileges. Moreover, those abortionists do not have to report the terminations they carry out.
I suppose that by this weird logic, the less one performs a procedure, the greater his/her skills? And less expertise translates into the need for less supervision and reporting requirements?
Please pardon my layman's ignorance, but if that is logical, I just cannot my simple mind around it.
With the impending full implementation of Obamacare, our tax dollars will continue to increasingly provide aid and comfort for this growing genocide. The engineers of this monstrous movement care little for the health of women, especially poor minority women.
Mississippi's legislature passed a law that, as written, would guarantee increased patient safety for a dangerous elective surgical procedure. How can women "choose" to trust a movement that actively tries to restrict quality control and accountability for providers?
In spite of what the intentions of its supporters may have been, what matters is what the law actually says.
When I consider this and other recent rulings by some of our judges, I am reminded of the words of an aristocrat who lived from about 720 to 702 B.C. in what was once called Edom, now part of Jordan. His name was Isaiah. He was widely known for his oratory, and for speaking truth to power. This is what he said about elitist legislators and judges who took advantage of the poor and oppressed in his time:
Woe to those who enact evil statutes and to those who constantly record unjust decisions, so as to deprive the needy of justice and rob the poor of my people of their rights, so that widows may be their spoil and that they may plunder the orphans.
Fifty-three million abortions since 1972. Josef Mengele and Margaret Sanger, whose ardent belief in the existence of a master race led to their pioneering work in "reproductive health services," are dancing a jig in Hell over the prevented abortion of their lovechild by this GOP-appointed Judge in Mississippi.
(Originally published July 7, 2012, The American Thinker)
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