Abortion in Alabama

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled that Alabama’s law requiring abortion-clinic doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital is unconstitutional.  Although I admittedly only skimmed Judge Thompson’s 172-page opinion (cut me some slack, I’ve got a three-month-old at home), I want to share my reactions. 

First, many states enacted laws like the one at issue here in reaction to Kermit Gosnell's Philadelphia abortion-practice-of-horrors.  In 2013, Gosnell was convicted of first-degree murder of three infants who had been born alive during botched late-term abortions.  He was also convicted of involuntary manslaughter of a woman who had sought his care in 2009.  State Health Department officials had not stepped foot in his clinic in the past sixteen years.  According to the report of the federal agents who raided the facility, “[s]emiconscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets.”

To ensure that women seeking abortions weren’t placing their life at risk like they did at Gosnell’s clinic, states enacted Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers. These laws regulated aspects of abortion clinics such as the size of the room or corridors (to allow for stretchers in the event of emergencies) and a doctor’s hospital admission privileges.  Most of these requirements apply the same standards to abortion clinics that ambulatory surgical facilities face.

Immediately, these laws were characterized as anti-abortion. This characterization baffled me.  When Wendy Davis donned her famous pink sneakers to filibuster Texas’s consideration of such a bill, she was hailed as a champion for women’s rights. But why? These laws were making it safer to undergo an abortion. They were ensuring that abortion providers were held to the same standard as other surgical facilities. They were providing for continuity of care if women experienced complications after an abortion.  How could it possibly be a victory for women’s rights to prevent or overturn these laws?

Judge Thompson reasoned that Alabama’s law would shut down three of five clinics in the state, thus placing an undue burden on women seeking an abortion. Yet again, laws that promote the safety of women are struck down as conflicting with the all-important availability of abortion.  Abortion is legal.  But it is not an unregulated right.  Not every law regulating abortion is designed to prevent access to it.  Some just attempt to make it safer.  Just because a law is introduced by a Republican or someone with a pro-life record does not mean that it will harm women.  Lawmakers need to read these regulations and consider their actual effect on women before denouncing them.

I do want to note that Judge Thompson’s opinion opened with a chronicle of the violence abortion providers in Alabama have faced—bombings, arson, and threats against their spouses and children.  While it is important for views against abortion to be expressed on the sidewalk and in the legislature, resorting to violence is abhorrent.  Regardless of one’s view on abortion, terroristic threats are always wrong.  For more on this, keep an eye out for Krysten Connon’s forthcoming Oxford University Press book based on her research into the targeted harassment of abortion providers.