Federal Court Allows Texas to Enforce Harsh New Anti-Abortion Law

A federal appeals court Thursday allowed Texas to immediately begin enforcing tough new abortion restrictions that will effectively close all but seven abortion facilities in America's second most-populous state.

A panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court in New Orleans stayed a lower judge's ruling while it considers the overall constitutionality of key portions of Texas' sweeping 2013 abortion law, which Republican Gov. Rick Perry and other conservatives say is designed to protect women's health.

Comments

[C. S. P. Schofield]

A natural consequence of the Gosnell Grand Guignol, especially since the pro-choice advocates reaction was to either ignore it or defend the ghoul, thereby granting the pro-life side ownership of the issue.

[Agile Cyborg]

Pro-choice advocates should've ran that filthy scumbag Gosnell over with a slow-moving tractor. The pro-choice crowd has a serious image problem no hate-spewing left wing ass-wiping rag can fix. Go Salon!

So between the lord Jesus and his sick and morally-warped minions 'saving' women through draconian anti-abortion measures and the macabre-denying rotten sacks of brainless flesh on the Left who could care less about what goes on in an abortion clinic we have decent and desperate women who simply want an ethical and medically/socially-responsible way to abort an unwanted fetus as early on as possible and their choices are being stripped away even as they are being castigated and treated like mental-unfits for their choice. Praise the Lord for that!

[C. S. P. Schofield]

Your anger resonates with me strongly. I feel that every abortion kills a potential human being, and that makes me sad, but at the same time I feel abortion should be legal, because I don't think that every bad thing should be outlawed. I also feel that both sides of the abortion debate could do with having their bottoms paddled; they are all bratty children. Of the two sides, I have a tiny bit more patience with the Pro-Life people - at least the ones who believe a fetus is human ( I think there are some who don't really believe this, just a lot fewer than most Pro-Choice feminists would like to believe) - because if I believed that wholesale infanticide was taking place I doubt I would be anywhere near as restrained. The Pro-Choice bunch strike me as short-sighted, whiny , self-centered nitwits who are bound and determined to make every political mistake that they can, in as short a time as possible.

[entropy_factor]

yes, "harsh" law that bring abortion regulation to the same standards as vasectomies, outpatient skin cancer removal, etc.

What a ridiculous premise- that requiring doctors to have admitting permissions in hospitals is somehow "harsh" and less safe for the patient. Just incredible lol.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

I'm not sure you're right, because I'm not sure that the same standards do apply. It would not surprise me to learn that they didn't. That said, if you enthusiastically grant the government the power to meddle in all kinds of matters, you don't get to complain when your political opponents use that power to meddle in matters you, personally, approve of.

[Tony]

"Designed to protect women's health."

Heard a story on NPR about abortion in India. Even though it was very early in legalizing abortion, services are not available in rural areas. Large percentages of women seeking abortions die painful and drawn-out deaths from botched procedures provided by quacks and midwives brandishing herbs. Laws like these, which have absolutely nothing to do with medical standards, will kill women and make women unable to bear any more good Christian babies. Period. Republicans want to kill women. That's what these restrictions do.

[Agile Cyborg]

Republicans want to kill women. That's what these restrictions do.

They don't want to kill women. That's a verifiable stretch. However, much like the War on Drugs the moralist is quite happy to turn a blind eye to tremendous suffering as long as they 'feel' long-term goals of the Lord are being sought after by their team through the most far-reaching efforts possible- which is the use of government to force compliance.

This same sense of 'feeling' in regards to law-creation infects the pet social planning projects of the progressive community as well when political faith trumps the individual, common sense, and ethics.

[Tony]

I don't afford as significant a gap between will to do something harmful and willful ignorance of harmful effects as some ethicists might. Especially to people charged with making public policy. If they don't know their policies kill women, that ignorance is hardly excusable on the grounds that it's ignorance.

I think a distinction might be made by the social meddlers of the right and left based on whether there are actually positive outcomes for people. I don't know about you but I wasn't put on this earth to prove the thesis that social planning is always bad. It's not conservative religion that kills women seeking abortion in India (though taboos play a big role), it's a plain lack of access to facilities.

[Agile Cyborg]

I don't know about you but I wasn't put on this earth to prove the thesis that social planning is always bad.

To be fair you are a progressive, Tony. It is to be assumed that social-planning will strongly appeal to your political worldview which increases the likelihood that you will question its intentions far less than I would, for example.

It's not conservative religion that kills women seeking abortion in India (though taboos play a big role), it's a plain lack of access to facilities.

You have point but a country that is so retrograde that its problems include dowry deaths and gendercide isn't likely jumping at the chance to make abortion services readily available to all women who need it.

[Tony]

You have point but a country that is so retrograde that its problems include dowry deaths and gendercide isn't likely jumping at the chance to make abortion services readily available to all women who need it.

But enough about Texas.

[Agile Cyborg]

Texas has a least a couple of decades on India. 😉

[C. S. P. Schofield]

Lets say, for the sake of this argument, that you are right. Then, put yourself in the mindset of a fundamentalist Christian pro-lifer. He believes that unborns are human. He believes that, absent redemption, the souls of the dead go to hell. Given a choice between saving some souls that are only tainted by original sin and saving the lives of women who have had the chance to repent and redeem themselves, he will chose the unborn. If you shared the same beliefs, so would you ?. or you are a monster.

OK, end THAT argument' The fact is that this legislation will not shut down all the abortion clinics in Texas. In fact the article states that 90% of the women in Texas will still be within 150 miles of a provider. Just as ignoring Gosnell was a political mistake of gargantuan proportions, exaggerating the effect of this legislation is a mistake that will pay large dividends ? to your opponents.

[Tony]

It's a good thing, then, that laws in this country are not based on the fantasy beliefs of religious fanatics. Except it doesn't work. The point is the women will seek abortions anyway, except some percentage of them will needlessly and painfully die in the process. Is this The Birdcage argument? "But the fetus is going to be aborted anyway, so why not let it go down with the ship?"

Because I don't feel like arguing the finer points of a rightwing meme, I'll grant that the liberal media ignored Gosnell out of bias. But it need not have been so. He was an argument for safe and easy access to abortions. Keep outlawing it in this dishonest piecemeal way (and 7 clinics for all of Texas is not an exaggeratedly small number, it's ridiculous), and the only people left to perform them will be the creeps and quacks.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

Gosnell was a demonstration that the existing system of providing abortions for the poor didn't give a damn about the women in the process. That had to be addressed. Since the people who claim to be most interested in ensuring continued access, FOR WHATEVER REASON, had bungled catching the ghoul, and then either kept silent or defended him, it was politically inevitable that the solution would be driven by the position of their opponents. Bitching about that after the fact is like whining about an opposing team's touchdown when you not only fumbled the ball, but handed it off to one of their players. Political idiocy has consequences.

Gosnell was an accredited provider for Pennsylvania. He had, at least on paper, passed inspection and all his qualifications. He did so either because the system was inherently flawed, or because the people running the system were motivated to not notice. That isn't an argument that everything is swell and nothing needs be done. Gosnell's existence proves that without some further oversight th primary difference between a back-alley abortionist and an accredited abortion provider is that the accredited abortion provider will be invited to more Lefty Liberal political events and nobody will pay any attention to the blood on his hands.

[Tony]

My point is that making access to abortion services easier would reduce the number of poor women seeking out bad doctors in late terms. And I find it a little revolting that rightwingers are using dead infants as props in their political crusade. What he did was already illegal. They want to use his case as a reason to further restrict abortion access. It's the opposite of the correct approach and it's also dishonest and gross.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

Tony! (slaps head) Pay Attention!

Gosnell was AN ACCREDITED PROVIDER. Hw was AN OFFICIAL PART of the network of easy access you claim would reduce the number of women who resort to doctors like him. The right-wingers using dead babes as props are totally justified in using them BECAUSE THE PRO ABORTION SIDE AIDED AND ABETTED GOSNELL.

[Tony]

Who committed the crime of aiding and abetting a murderer? Who was convicted of this? What are you talking about?

[C. S. P. Schofield]

See, folks? He's totally incapable of absorbing that the pro-choice establishment ran the system that allowed Gosnell to flourish. They accepted his credentials, passed his facilities, made referrals to him, and NEVER CAUGHT THE SONOFABITCH. And when he WAS caught, all too many of the Usual Suspects fulminated against the charges.

Tony; go paint yourself purple and moo.

[toolkien]

Hey, but economics be economics - coat hanger sales are through the roof. Got my AAA Coat Hanger LLC paperwork on the way to the Texas Secretary of State.

If nothing else, this should give the "legalization" of drugs people some thought when they partially cave in and say drugs should be "legal, regulated, and taxed". It still gives too much control to puritans to use the "regulated and taxed" part of the statement.

[Faceless Commenter]

I just want to know whether this is reasonable oversight over a particular medical procedure -- although you'd think there would be decades of evidence to support that claim.

It's wrong to place obstacles before a perfectly legal procedure because you disapprove of it.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

On the other hand, the Pro-Choice people have demonstrated they they flat out don't give a flying fuck about the health of lower class women who seek abortions. If they did, they would have caught Gosnell early, or if they had missed catching him they would have been baying for his blood. Instead they ranged from maintaining an offended silence to actually defending the ghoul.

In light of Kermit Gosnell, and the prospect that the whole Pro-Choice apparatus probably harbors more of the same (because they don't care), some tightening of regulation was clearly politically inevitable. You might even view it as necessary, if (like most Pro-Choice people on most subjects) you expect the government to fix problems.

[Kure'i]

Great. Whether or not this law denies easy access to abortions -- which is yet another intrusion on individual privacy if it does -- it also will provide endless fodder for statist War-on-Wimminz talking points, and will allow the media (and therefore the general public) to conflate all of us who support free markets with those who want to save the unborn for Jebus. A twofer for Dems, entirely the fault of Repubs, and a lose-lose for the cause of freedom.

[Concerned Citizen]

If abortion isn't initiating force against the individual, nothing is.

[Kure'i]

Way to simplify something that isn't simple at all.

If a fetus that cannot survive outside the mother without life support is an individual, I'll agree. If not, it's as much of an initiation of force as surgery to remove a tumor.

[Concerned Citizen]

It's amusing how all you pro abortion people paint pro lifers as religious fanatics. I am pro life because every individual has the right to continue living. Individuals with their own DNA, with only one chance at life, same as the pro aborts.
You mock Christians, then proceed to play God.

[Tony]

Could you try... not believing that embryos and fetuses are persons? It would make this whole thing so much easier. And it wouldn't make the slightest difference in your life.

If something cannot feel, then the moral arguments for treating it as a rights-bearing entity dry up. You want to give embryos more rights than we give dolphins. Possibly more rights than the mothers. It doesn't compute in any logic of ethics even if we exclude the strict utilitarian ones. It only computes as a religious belief, that embryos are in need of some Jesus, and they have to be born before we can give it to them.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

Tony; please take the opening sentence of the above post and substitute the word "Jews" for the word "fetuses".

You certainly are very sure that not only fetuses aren't juan, but that anybody who thinks they are is a nut. Which, frankly, marks you as a fanatic jerk of just the type that murdered a hundred million people in the 20th century.

You'd better HOPE there isn't a God, because I can't believe that one would be pleased with you.

[Tony]

What if there is a God but He thinks it's a sin to deny women the right to reproductive control?

The problem with killing Jews is that they are self-evidently persons. Whether embryos are persons is the entire debate--and pro-lifers have a serious problem on their hands that pro-choicers don't:

If abortion is murder, we must treat women who get abortions and their doctors as capital criminals. All of them. Life in prison or the death penalty. There is no middle ground. To treat abortion as anything less than first-degree murder in the law is to admit that fetuses are not full persons. It is obviously untenable and morally reprehensible to reasonable people to treat women getting abortions as we do murderers.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

Tony, you are so stupid it mazes me that you are able to connect to the internet. Clearly, you are incapable of imagining any point of view but your own. Your argument that one class of being is self evidently a person and another self evidently isn't is EXACTLY the argument made by mass murderers and slavers throughout history. You are a howling bigot and a reflexive fascist, and my bloody-minded hope is that Karma visits you with exactly what you deserve.

[Tony]

I'll take that as a hysterical concession that I have a good point.

I didn't say it was self-evident that fetuses aren't persons. I said it was up for debate, but that if you want to claim that they are persons, then you have to accept the horrifying consequences of that.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

Tony, you and people like you are are who are going to scuttle abortion rights in this country, not the right-wing Christians. You will poison the pro-choice cause with your idiocy, your extremism, and your inability foresee consequences.

Go play on the freeway, please.

[Kure'i]

"You'd better HOPE there isn't a God, because I can't believe that one would be pleased with you.."

Yeah, where would we pro-abortioners ever get the idea that the voice of the anti-abortion movement is composed mainly of religious fanatics?

Here, try this and see if it affects you as much as your statement affected me: "If there is an Allah, he's going to be very pissed that you rejected his primary prophet."

Or: "If there is an Odin, I believe he's going to be really angry you didn't die in battle."

Or "If there is a Vishnu, he's going to be really offended you didn't believe he had X-number of arms."

[C. S. P. Schofield]

Refer back to my point, please. Tony wrote "Could you try... not believing that embryos and fetuses are persons? It would make this whole thing so much easier. And it wouldn't make the slightest difference in your life."

I suggested that he substitute "Jews" for "fetuses"

He's just like the anti-bellum Planters and their justifications for Slavery. Like the Aristocrats and their justifications for serfdom. And, yes, like a certain German Nationalist monument and its justifications for murderous anti-Semitism. If there's a god who is pleas with this kind of swill, I'll go to Hell, please.

I mean, what possible justification can you have for a sentence with the construction "Could you try... not believing that (blank) and (blank) are persons"? I can see saying that fetuses aren't persons, but saying "try not believing" that they are is just uber-creepy.

Of course we ARE talking about Tony here, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

[Kure'i]

Oh... yeah. Please construe nothing I say as a defense of Tony, ever. Even if he accidentally stumbles upon the truth every so often, I'm sure he's unable to recognize it as such.

Carry on, sir.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

No, no. After thought I see where my brimging God into it, even an a purely theoretical basis, would annoy. I just was so skeeved by that "try ... not believing" construction.

*shudder*