Abortion Activists Sue to Overturn Every Louisiana Pro-Life Law After Supreme Court Ruling

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jul 1, 2016   |   2:04PM   |   Washington, DC

After the terrible Supreme Court decision on Monday striking down a portion of a Texas pro-life law that protects women’s health and has also saved the lives of thousands of unborn children and closed abortion clinics that can’t ensure adequate protection for women, abortion activists are now going after pro-life laws in Louisiana.

Breyer’s majority opinion for the court held that the regulations are medically unnecessary and unconstitutionally limit a woman’s so-called right to an abortion.

Pro-abortion forces have filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn every single pro-life law Louisiana approved this year. The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a new lawsuit in federal district court today on behalf of abortion businesses suing to stop the state’s new 72-hour waiting period and a new law that would ban dismemberment abortions.

Among those pieces of legislation being challenged are common sense restrictions such as:
  • Prohibiting Dismemberment Abortion, in which an abortionist uses forceps to grasp body parts of the unborn child and dismember it piece by piece while it is still alive.
  • Requiring abortionists to be Board Certified in OBGYN or Family Medicine, or to be under the direct supervision of a provider who is Board Certified in OBGYN or Family Medicine.
  • Giving women a 72-hour reflection period prior to abortion in order to have adequate time to consider all their options, as well as to allow women who are being coerced or trafficked time to seek help to protect themselves and their unborn children.
  • Prohibiting abortion businesses from profiting from the sale of body parts gathered from aborted babies and requiring instead that the abortion businesses bury or cremate aborted children.
  • Protections for unborn children over 20 weeks who are diagnosed with genetic abnormalities that are consistent with life, and requiring that abortionists give a woman information about treatments and resources that may be available for her child.
  • Prohibiting state taxpayer dollars and contracts from going to abortion businesses, which is especially important when state funding for education and healthcare are floundering.

“Louisiana politicians are trying to do what the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled decisively they cannot, burying women’s right to safe and legal abortion under an avalanche of unjustified and burdensome restrictions,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “This law creates a web of red tape that women and their doctors cannot hope to escape, driving safe and legal care out of reach for many Louisiana women and putting their health and well-being at risk.”

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Louisiana Right to Life’s Legislative Director, Deanna Wallace reacted to the lawsuit, saying: “Today’s lawsuit by the abortion industry is yet another reminder that they are committed to abortion-on-demand without any common sense protections for the safety of women. Louisiana legislators, both Democrat and Republican, both women and men, overwhelmingly enacted these reasonable policies in order to ensure that abortion clinics adhere to rational health and safety standards. Not only does the abortion industry wish to avoid those safety standards, but in this lawsuit they are also defending their ‘right’ to use the completely barbaric procedure of dismemberment abortion in order to rip living, unborn human beings limb from limb.
“We have complete faith in the ability and determination of Gov. John Bel Edwards and Attorney General Jeff Landry to defend these common sense laws that protect both women and their unborn children from the profit-driven abortion industry.”
Dorinda Bordlee of the Bioethics Defense Fund echoed these thoughts, saying, “We are not surprised at this brazen attempt by the abortion industry to misuse the courts to overturn bipartisan pro-woman, pro-life laws passed this session, such as board certification standards and a 72-hour reflection period for women considering pregnancy options. They have a financial interest in lower health and safety standards and increasing their sale of dismemberment abortions. The Louisiana governor and attorney general understand that abortion is violence against women and children, and they will certainly mount a vigorous defense on behalf of the state’s legitimate interest in preferring childbirth over abortion.”

The 5-3 decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt shows the paramount importance of judge’s in this year’s presidential election. In approving the appeal from abortion companies, the Supreme Court did not allow Texas’ pro-life law to stand.

At issue in the ruling were two provisions–that abortion clinics meet the same building standards as ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs) and that abortionists have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital for situations of medical emergencies.

Texas’ law is arguably responsible for saving the lives of tens of thousands of unborn babies by closing abortion clinics that are unable to protect women’s health. The laws protects women’s health and welfare by requiring abortion clinics to meet the kinds of medical and safety standards that legitimate medical centers meet.

Breyer wrote that “the surgical-center requirement, like the admitting privileges requirement, provides few, if any, health benefits for women, poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions and constitutes an ‘undue burden’ on their constitutional right to do so.”

Justice Clarence Thomas, who authored the dissenting opinion, wrote, “Today the Court strikes down two state statutory provisions in all of their applications, at the behest of abortion clinics and doctors. That decision exemplifies the Court’s troubling tendency ‘to bend the rules when any effort to limit abortion, or even to speak in opposition to abortion, is at issue.’”

He continued, “… today’s decision creates an abortion exception to ordinary rules of res judicata, ignores compelling evidence that Texas’ law imposes no unconstitutional burden, and disregards basic principles of the severability doctrine. I write separately to emphasize how today’s decision perpetuates the Court’s habit of applying different rules to different constitutional rights— especially the putative right to abortion.”

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