Photo by camilo jimenez on Unsplash
by Bonnie Finnerty, Education Director
Planned Parenthood is sounding the siren, alerting supporters in an email to the grave threat they face.
“… as the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the June Medical Services case, we’re faced with a terrifying possibility: that our rights could be gutted in a few short months.”
Hyperbole and half-truths.
This case is NOT about abortion “rights” or access. And it is not brought by women seeking abortions but by abortion centers seeking to maximize profits. Whether providers even have legal standing to file suit as a third party is itself questionable.
This IS a case about protecting the safety of women.
The abortion industry thrives on misinformation, doing everything it can to hoodwink supporters into believing that they truly care about women.
But they don’t.
If they did, they would provide medical care that meets standards required at any other out-patient surgical facility. They would employ qualified doctors who have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles, so that, if ever needed, emergency care could be sought. They would recognize that abortion complications do happen and that they can be deadly to a woman.
The reality is that the abortion industry sets their bar for women’s health much lower than the bar for their profit margin. Consequently, vulnerable young women, who’ve paid hundreds of dollars to entrust themselves to what is often an itinerant abortionist with whom they have no prior relationship, put their health and lives at risk.
According to a Wall Street Journal editorial, five abortionists at June Medical Services did not have hospital admitting privileges. When the Louisiana legislature passed a law to remedy that situation, one abortionist retired, three failed to make a good-faith effort to obtain privileges, and one was discovered to have had no medical school training to perform abortions.
Upholding the duty to protects its citizens, the state of Louisiana said women deserve better. Like 14 other states, their legislature raised the bar on the abortion industry, acting to protect women from substandard care by requiring admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.
And now the abortion industry is challenging that common-sense regulation at the Supreme Court, while its largest provider claims, “our rights could be gutted in a few short months.”
What “rights”? The right to an untrained doctor? Or one who can’t earn admitting privileges to a hospital due to incompetence? Or is too apathetic to even try? The right to delayed treatment of a perforated uterus or a fetal arm left behind?
What about the rights of young women who surrender their babies and bodies to the hands and tools of the abortionist? Is any abortion, whether unsafe, unsterile, and unregulated, better than an abortion that holds the provider to a reasonable level of accountability?
If the abortion industry is unwilling to enact basic safety guidelines that protect women, hasn’t the back alley just simply moved to the front office?
Yes, Planned Parenthood is sounding the siren, but it’s certainly not the one meant to rescue a wounded woman from a botched abortion. It’s the one meant to rescue them from any regulation that might diminish their profits.