As Texas moves a bill forward that would ban late-term abortions and could put some abortion facilities out of business that can’t follow basic health and safety laws, abortion activists are lamenting how states are passing so many pro-life laws.
A pro-abortion group that is a former Planned Parenthood affiliate and still receives funding for the abortion business, says the number of laws approved this year by state legislatures is ahead of 2012 and could break the record number of pro-life laws set in 2011.
From the Washington Times:
In a report released Monday, the Guttmacher Institute said that states’ efforts to restrict abortion — including clinic regulations — were on pace to exceed those enacted in 2012. The institute also reported that there were nearly 3,000 U.S. abortion providers
in the early 1990s and fewer than 1,800 providers since 2008.
Abortion rights supporters say regulations, many passed in states where Republicans dominate the legislatures, are not-too-subtle efforts to drive clinics out of business and deny women their rights to abortion, even while allowing abortion to remain nominally legal on the books. Techniques include raising treatment standards clinics must meet, blocking relationships with public hospitals and banning online technology that enables abortion doctors to treat patients in remote locations.
“Extremist politicians” made “a blatant attempt to shutter the Red River Women’s Clinic, the sole abortion provider in North Dakota, with a law that would require the clinic’s doctors to unnecessarily have admitting privileges at a local hospital,” said the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is planning to block the law in state court this summer. Pro-choice activists call these measures targeted restriction of abortion providers (TRAP) laws.
Pro-life groups counter that in the wake of the May murder conviction of abortionist Kermit Gosnell — his inner-city Philadelphia “house of horrors” clinic operated for years under lax state rules and oversight — it is imperative that state officials step up their oversight of the abortion industry and leading practitioners such as Planned Parenthood.
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“The taxpayer-funded abortion Goliath, Planned Parenthood, is trying to take over with its extreme agenda that is out of touch with Texas — and American — values. We are in Austin to tell them the eyes of Texas, and America, are upon you. You won’t get away with subverting the democratic process to protect Gosnells in Texas — or anywhere,” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, said Monday.
Every U.S. state still has at least one abortion provider, according to the Guttmacher Institute, but in 87 percent of U.S. counties, there are no doctors, hospitals or clinics that offer abortion services. Lone clinics in Mississippi and North Dakota are fighting to survive TRAP laws, pro-choice advocates say.
The Guttmacher Institute reports that 83 pro-life laws were passed in 2011, than double the previous record of 34, enacted in 2005, and more than triple the 23 enacted in 2010.
