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PA moves to shut down abortion clinics
Yesterday, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed legislation that will require abortion clinics to spend millions of dollars on renovations that are not medically necessary or shut down, and the Senate is expected to follow suit today before breaking for the holidays.
PA moves to shut down abortion clinics
Yesterday, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed legislation that will require abortion clinics to spend millions of dollars on renovations that are not medically necessary or shut down, and the Senate is expected to follow suit today before breaking for the holidays. The transparent bid to drive abortion clinics out of business would require them to meet the standards of “ambulatory surgical facilities” that perform far more complicated and risky operations.
No medical association supports the legislation and The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposes it. This bill is unambiguously about the political movement to criminalize abortion.
In the Inquirer, Karen Heller reports on a “widely circulated 2007 memo, [by] James Bopp Jr., general counsel for the National Right to Life Committee, [which] proposed such a statute 'to advance the pro-life cause.' He noted, 'While bans on the core abortion right at the state level are currently both useless and potentially dangerous, there are many helpful things that states can do,' including requiring clinics to meet 'certain standards, such as those required for other ambulatory surgical care facilities.'”
Yesterday, the House also passed legislation (House Bill 1977), which would bar insurance plans participating in the state healthcare exchange created under the federal health care reform law from covering abortion.
The push for the current round of anti-abortion legislation began in January, when a grand jury investigation uncovered Dr. Kermit Gosnell's unregulated and dangerous West Philadelphia abortion clinic, where patients would seek late second-trimester and illegal third-trimester abortions.
Limited access and information, however, can delay women seeking an abortion. This legislation will not stop women from choosing abortions. But it will make those abortions more dangerous.
As I wrote in January, the legislation pushed by the anti-abortion right is is exactly what has forced women into such life-threatening situations. Poor women throughout the United States cannot afford safe abortions and in consequence sometimes make extremely dangerous choices.
“Because of the Medicaid ban on abortion funding and state restrictions, poor women in the state and in Philadelphia really face horrific choices about what to do if they have an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy, or a pregnancy that poses significant health problems,” says Rose Corrigan, a professor of politics and law at Drexel University, told me at the time. “So what I’ve seen is that women often shop around for abortion services. Women are so poor that a few dollars really make a difference.”
And as poor women shop around, their pregnancy advances, the price goes up, and the operation gets more complicated.
Gov.Tom Corbett is expected to sign the legislation. He would do better to ensure that the current laws protecting women are enforced. Women did complain about Gosnell, and the grand jury report faults the State of Pennsylvania for a catastrophic failure of oversight.
“The grand jury investigation revealed,” according to a press release from District Attorney Seth Williams, “that, for over two decades, government health and licensing officials had received repeated reports about Gosnell’s dangerous practices. No action was ever taken, however, even after the agencies learned that women had died during routine abortions under Gosnell’s care.”
Williams, whose office is prosecuting Gosnell and his accomplices, opposes the legislation.
“The intent of the grand jury's recommendation was to assure that women who seek the services of an abortion provider are afforded the same protections as those who go to other medical providers,” he told Heller.
The debate about abortion, however, will likely only get murkier.
As former City Paper staff writer Holly Otterbein uncovered this August, millions in Pennsylvania taxpayer dollars are spent each year to fund organizations waging “a massive, statewide anti-abortion information campaign” that lies to pregnant women about the medical science behind abortion.
This is a bad day for women in Pennsylvania, and particularly for poor women who will have to search harder, pay more, and take greater risks to end an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy.
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