In the span of two years, the number of abortion clinics in Texas has dropped from 44 to 17, with the possibility of another drop to seven, pending a 5th Circuit panel’s decision on whether the state can impose clinic regulations on abortion clinics and force abortionists to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.
At issue is whether trying to make abortion clinics and abortionists follow the same health and safety guidelines as legitimate healthcare facilities and doctors places an “undue burden” on women seeking an abortion.
“Undue burden”… that elusive and undefined term thrown into the judicial abortion morass by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v Casey decision.
Left to decide for themselves, liberal judges have pounced upon the term to overturn all kinds of pro-life laws, while strict constructionist judges have ruled oppositely. As Politico recently reported, the resulting “patchwork of contradictory rulings” may finally force the Supremes to tighten their verbiage – or nix it.
Meanwhile, even with only seven abortion clinics, 83% of Texas women, or five of six, would still live within 150 miles of a Texas abortion clinic. Does that place an undue burden?
State borders became an issue in Mississippi last year, when a different 5th Circuit panel ruled that shutting down the state’s last abortion clinic, whether or not there were clinics nearby in neighboring states, would place an “undue burden” on women.
Hence, abortion proponents are pushing a story line that procuring an abortion at an out-of-state clinic, which may, in fact, be closer for a woman than an in-state clinic, is fraught with intrigue and difficulty.
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So, some abortion zealots have begun to take on the role of abortion coyotes, as the Feminist Majority Blog dramatically reported…
“Coyote” is the term for people who smuggle illegals across the Mexican border into the U.S. And they now have abortion counterparts. Reported FMB:
Texas abortion clinics have been under attack in recent years, significantly reducing women’s access to comprehensive reproductive health care…. As a result, abortion rights advocates are increasingly helping women seeking an abortion travel from Texas to neighboring New Mexico….
Whole Woman’s Health successfully opened a clinic in Las Cruces, New Mexico last fall, just 50 miles away from El Paso, Texas. “Going into Las Cruces felt like a really smart thing to do on behalf of the women of west Texas and south Texas so that they could have an option no matter what,” [clinic owner Amy] Hagstrom Miller continued.
Abortion coyotes would have us believe that getting a woman 50 miles from El Paso to Las Cruces is laden with more hardship and expense than taking them 1,100 miles to San Antonio.
If crossing state borders for abortions is so awful, you’d think abortion proponents would support the federal Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, which would ban nonparental adults from trafficking minors across state lines for abortion without parental authorization. –
Reprinted with permission from Jill Stanek.