When Texas passed HB 2, it was almost as if the Abortion Industry saw the writing on the wall. Stay as far away as possible from the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act—too much public support, too horrific to have the public thinking about what a preborn child goes through as she is torn apart.
Instead focus their energies on moderate, middle-of-the-road requirements that the abortion movement clean up abortion clinics, as Texas did. Not because these minimal regulations are all the onerous, but because abortion advocates could pretend it’s not about safety but access.
That work has been, as always, abided by an-in-the tank media, in this case the Texas Tribune newspaper. If you believe “a Texas Tribune review of state inspection records for 36 abortion clinics from the year preceding the lawmakers’ vote,” it “turned up little evidence to suggest that the facilities were putting patients in imminent danger.” (To save time, I will not talk about how much wiggle room there is—how much can be ignored–when the baseline is “putting patients in imminent danger.”)
Okay, let’s take a deeper look, bearing in mind that ”A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.”
I must start with the “best” quote, the kind that really cuts through all the malarkey and reveals (once again) that these people do not have copy editors.
Reporter Becca Aaronson is bemoaning the entire panoply of new pro-life laws including “requiring abortion facilities to meet the structural guidelines for ambulatory surgical centers.” After a while Aaronson brings up an unnamed Houston-area abortionist who is being investigated for “performing illegal, late-term abortions.”
The abortionist is Douglas Karpen about whom the Houston Chronicle recently did a superb investigative report. (See “Houston Chronicle’s breakthrough story on abortionist Douglas Karpen”)
E. Joseph Deering wrote about “troubling allegations of a woman’s death caused by a botched abortion as well as allegations of a late-term procedure that went awry, with a baby being born and living for six months before dying.” There were other allegations by former employees that bore an uncanny resemblance to what took place in Kermit Gosnell’s “House of Horrors.”
Suffice it to say the allegations are so startling that Deering reported three examples of renewed interest in Karpen’s behavior. (1) The Harris County District Attorney’s office said it will have “several people” look into the claims. (2) Likewise for the State Department of Health Services, which described its investigation as “a very high priority.” And (3) “A group of 20 Texas legislators sent a letter last week to the Texas Medical Board asking that it investigate Karpen again in light of the allegations made by the former employees, calling their claims ‘disturbing, to say the least,’” according to Deering.
So what does all this have to do with Aaronson’s story? Read the following and take my word for it that I am not making it up:
“Abortion rights advocates say that even if the investigation uncovers wrongdoing, the doctor was operating an ambulatory surgical center that would have met the requirements of the new law.”
Get it? Just look! Requiring abortion clinics to operate as ambulatory surgical centers doesn’t prevent the kind of behavior that makes any sane person’s stomach turn. True–to the extent that unless someone actually monitors how abortionists operate, the law is just words written a piece of paper. Pennsylvania could have made Gosnell meet that requirement and if nobody showed up for 17 years, he was free to do what he wanted.
But is that the best opponents can offer? Nothing can prevent rogue abortionists?
CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!
I asked Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon, NRLC’s director of education, about the Texas Tribune story.
“I really wonder how many abortion injuries/complications ever get reported as such. Women show up at the ER, are treated, but what information gets put on the report? But even supposing that everything is recorded and reported correctly, we know from this very report that there are five women known to have died in Texas. Commonsense would tell you that at least several more have suffered injuries. Under such circumstances, it is only reasonable to take measures to insure safety. Those clinics that are already in compliance have nothing to fear. That some may face closure may well be an indication not that state officials are too zealous but that too many clinics are substandard. Those clinics not reporting injuries may have been more lucky than good. That they weren’t already in compliance is an indication that they didn’t take their medical responsibilities that seriously; that they were cutting corners to have cheaper locations, less equipment, less training; that they don’t regard abortion–or the women that have them–to be that significant of a deal. Their resistance to compliance shows that women’s safety takes a back seat to their abortion agenda … or to profits.”
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in his National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
