FILE -In this Oct. 1, 2010 file photo provided by the Supreme Court shows, from left, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Justice Elena Kagan in the Justices’ Conference Room prior to Justice Kagan’s Investiture Ceremony at the court in Washington. (AP Photo/Steve Petteway, Supreme Court, File)
If ever there were a law that so embodied the original argument in favor of abortion, it was the Texas law struck down today by the U.S. Supreme Court. If ever there were a mockery of all that the early proponents of abortion held dear, it was made by the united votes of the three women on the highest court in the land. Abortions, if made legal, were supposed to have been brought out of the back alley. Women would have practitioners who were physicians in good standing. They would have clean, sanitary clinics that abided by the public health standards required in all other surgical procedures.
That never happened.
Most Ob/Gyn’s regarded abortion practitioners as the lowest form of membership in their honorable profession, and hospitals by-and-large prohibited the practice, keeping the slaughter of babies beyond the purview of their services. A majority of abortionists have been washouts from other branches of medicine, whose operations came nowhere near the minimal standards required of ambulatory surgical centers established in other fields of medicine. Not only are the minimal public health standards not required, but the minimal standards for STD testing and treatment have not been part of standard operating procedure.
Surgical procedures such as abortion, or even the insertion of an IUD can take a bacterium like Chlamydia and spread it to the inside of the uterus and fallopian tubes, setting up pelvic inflammatory disease, sterility, and chronic pelvic pain. Though some clinics now claim to do testing with the new rapid diagnostic tests, many do not, and almost none ever have before rapid testing was developed. That flies in the face of standards of care in other gynecologic surgery performed in hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers. With abortion, a woman can walk in off the street and be on her way in hours.
All too often, cases like Kermit Gosnell’s house of horrors are only a matter of degree, but not of kind. A “clinic” that does not test for Chlamydia, HPV, HIV and other STD’s, with treatment prior to surgery isn’t much of a clinic at all. It is even less so when the physician is neither an Ob/Gyn in good standing, or even an Ob/Gyn at all; let alone one with admitting privileges at a local hospital. Add to that recent laws in states like California that allow nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants to perform surgical abortions and one wonders, whatever became of the drive to imbue abortion with all of the medical standards and safeguards women deserve?
The answer to that question, and the key to today’s decision reside in the arguments between the justices over the effects of the Texas law. Since the passage of the law, half of Texas’ 41 abortion clinics closed, unable to meet the demands of maintaining a safe facility including having physicians with admitting privileges at local hospitals.
“Undue Burden” is the catch-phrase of the day.
If permitted to stand, the fear was that the law would force the closure of ten more clinics, leaving an area of Texas the size of California without abortion services. Allow that to sink in for a moment.
If abortion clinics in Texas were required to have physicians competent enough to have admitting privileges, and run surgical clinics held to the same standards as all other ambulatory surgical centers, a land mass the size of California would have no abortion providers. If that doesn’t define “back-alley,” then what does?
Today, all three women on the court said, in effect, that the back alley is better than nothing at all.
Today, all three women on the court passed the opportunity to fight for the vision of “reproductive freedom” espoused in 1973.
Today, all three women on the court demonstrated that the lust for killing babies outweighs the safety of the women driven to such acts of desperation.
Today, not one of the three women on the court said that we can do better, that women deserve better.
It was another blow against women today, an act of betrayal by the women on the highest court in the land, who more than anyone else ought to be using their perch to demand real justice, real care, and authentic dignity for women.
As chemical abortions take deeper root, and as hospitals increasingly absorb the lucrative business from the closing of local clinics, the issue of the Texas law will shrink in importance; but the abandonment of women by all three women on the highest court in the land will live and grow in infamy. It will be seen by future generations for what it truly is.
The real War on Women.
Coming Home 
Sad on both sides. The pro choice people claim they want safe abortions but struck this down. But the pro life people should NEVER be part of regulating “safe abortions”
Agree with Juda. There is no prolife side when your law allows baby killing under certain conditions, however hygienic. That hypocrisy undermines the intellectual argument against abortion.
When will we ever learn? Women against women. #realwaronwomen.
We have to work even harder to elect Trump!!
#hillarydoesntspeakforme
Thank you Dr Nadal for making this clear. I will share!
Juda, There are few I respect more than you in this work. I don’t advocate making abortions safe. They are inherently dangerous. I advocate using all existing laws and medical ethics to give the pro-choice side exactly what they asked for. Just by following existing law and ethics, we would save hundreds of thousands of human lives annually.
Gerard thank you for your respect. I love you but we can’t do things like the world. God’s ways are not like man’s and if all of us would STOP regulating abortion and just beat this thing til it’s dead instead of compromising it would be over. We are in our 50th year of legal abortion in the US. Started in MS in 1966 on Mother’s Day. What a slap in God’s face.
Then for seven years God looked for people to turn it around but instead satan looked around and saw no one to challenge him so he kept adding states that would slaughter the unborn. Nineteen states followed MS and in the 7th year God turned this country over to a reprobate mind and the desires of its heart to have murder in the womb on demand.
50 years is restoration on the Lord’s calendar. Who will fight for HIS WAYS?
As this author states half of Texas abortion clinics closed which was the exact effect Texas lawmakers desired. No where has there been serious side effects from abortion procedures yet Texas lawmakers fabricated risk that did not exist, thankfully the court saw thru this sham, and there were several men who agreed with the majority, stop trying to blame this on women….
I believe you mean “bloc”, not “block”
[Damned autocorrect!! Thanks. I changed the spelling, but it will be perpetuated on FB shares 😦 ~G.N.]
Joe Smoo, Your commentary here on no serious side effects from abortion is breathtaking in its ignorance. Truly, truly breathtaking.
To begin, it is well established in the mainstream scientific and medical literature that there are many unwanted effects from abortion:
Punctured uterus.
Scarred uterus leading to infertility.
Scarred uterus leading to placenta previa, which in turn leads to extreme premature delivery, which in turn leads to cerebral palsy.
Incompetent cervix resulting from tearing of unripened cervical tissue, with resulting miscarriages and extreme premature deliveries in future pregnancies requiring cerclage (placement of stitches in future pregnancies to hold it closed).
Pelvic Inflammatory Disease.
Hemorrhage and Death in many women, and on and on.
Again, this is mainstream and very well known. I don’t mind your coming here as the voice of prochoice opposition, but I do mind the ignorance associated with your defense of an ideology and against the health and safety issues inherent in this procedure.
Maybe you should leave it to the doctors and not religion to know what is “safe” and just how wide the hallway needs to be when I’m required to show up to a “ambulatory surgical center” to take a PILL two days in a row.
If you can legally give birth (where the rates of death and injury are much higher not just to myself but to my baby) in a kiddie pool at your house with a “trained” midwife, why can’t I simply take a pill in the privacy of my own home?
I AM leaving to the doctors (and I’m a Ph.D. in medical microbiology). Here is an organization of Ob/Gyn’s who aren’t afraid to tell the truth about your little pill. ~G.N.
Reblogged this on Nancy E. Head and commented:
Roe v. Wade–worse than misguided, but a sincere attempt to help women. Now we see how betrayed women really have been all along.
Why would ACOG be “afraid to tell the truth” about data, statistics and research? I’m sorry but your paranoia and bizarre source lacking both logic and scientific robustness is not convincing. As the court stated in the majority opinion, these restrictions are not enforced on other medical procedures which have been shown to have higher risks of complications, as the state of Texas has not waived the burdensome rules for clinics that perform abortions as they have for 2/3 of other clinics. In fact during oral arguments one of the arguments to defend lack of access to a legal medical procedure was that women could go to New Mexico, where none of the safety regulations exist. TRAP rules have nothing to do with the safety of the mother and everything to do with inserting a religious preference between a women and her body. Of course your link found that legal abortions increase when there aren’t onerous barriers to patients, that is the entire point of increasing accessibility. Abortions have gone down in Texas since HB2 was enacted, but reducing access to abortions isn’t supposed to be the point. Is the goal to force women to give birth to a baby that no one wants to raise and protect and care for or is the goal to protect a woman’s right to decide her reproductive future, because the goal is clearly not to protect women’s health.
It takes a special kind of craven to belittle a physician of Dr. Byron Calhoun’s capability and stature. But that’s all you have in the arsenal, ridicule. It’s boring. ~G.N.
A great question posed here on this thread:
“Why would ACOG be “afraid to tell the truth” about data, statistics and research?”
I reply with a few questions:
Why was it that ACOG broke with the field of embryology in the early 1970’s as they were fighting for abortion and redefined both pregnancy and conception ads the moment of implantation, and not fertilization, which happens six days earlier?
Why does ACOG reject over 70 statistically significant research papers from all over the world showing a definitive link between induced abortion and breast cancer, embracing the myth of “recall bias,” even after two proabortion researchers did studies that debunk the claims of recall bias?
Why doesn’t ACOG stand and demand that all abortions be mandated by law to be performed only by OB/Gyn’s in good standing?
Don’t women deserve the best?
@Joe Smoo: does the name Hermitt Gosnell ring any bells for you?
Juda,
Of course pro-life people should be part of regulating abortion. On the most basic level, women are lives too. If we are pro-life, then we must even be for the life of the mother too.
Beyond that, we diminish the effectiveness of our pro-life argument when we ignore the importance of the lives of the mothers.
And beyond even that, the reality is that the evil of the abortion industry profits from the poor conditions that are woefully common. The profitability of the abortion industry is harmed when they are forced to meet even basic standards of safety. The profits of the abortion industry are essentially subsidized by the risk and suffering of women. By harming the business of abortion, we make abortion a less easy choice and we save the lives of children. By harming the abortion industry’s bottom line, we leave them less money to politic in favor of abortion. By harming the abortion industry’s bottom line, we make the profession less attractive, leaving fewer abortion providers.
We absolutely should be trying to regulate abortion.
Joe Smoo: If you think “No where has there been serious side effects from abortion procedures” you haven’t even looked at the most superficial facts, much less done any study of the issue.
Disagreeing with Dr. Calhoun requires “a special kind of craven,” what does dismissing the capability and stature of the American Medical Association and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists take? “A special kind of craven”? Or a blatant disregard for facts and expert opinion because it doesn’t fit your predetermined faith-based narrative?
Since I’m not searching for conspiracy theories, maybe you would be better served answering your own questions. Off the top of my head, my responses are: 1) it made more medical sense especially given things like IUDs prevent implantation not fertilization, 2) the studies/papers didn’t meet their standards in either methodology or execution and 3) taking an oral pill doesn’t need to be overseen by an MD, patients do it in a variety of settings everyday.
Women deserve to have their rights protected in reasonable ways. Having to take off work, travel for hours, stay overnight so that a doctor can watch them take a pill in an ambulatory surgical center isn’t the “best.” Nor are you providing the “best” to require them to carry and potentially care for children they either do not want, can not support or won’t care for. Don’t children deserve the “Best” as well? [Yes, and whatever struggles life has in store are nowhere near as horrible as being torn apart limb-by-limb. ~G.N.]
“Torn apart limb-by-limb” LOL
[Most of your last post has been removed by me. There is a simple rule here on my blog. Guests are expected to comport themselves as they would at my dining room table, as this is a virtual extension of my table. You’ve been nothing but rude and condescending since your arrival, and I won’t have it here. Last chance:be civilized in your disagreement, or be gone. ~G.N.]
“Torn apart limb-by-limb” — for details, see the procedure described by an ob/gyn who has performed over 1200 abortions, at http://www.abortionprocedures.com
Wineinthewater:
To “regulate abortion” is to continue legal abortion. THAT is NOT “pro” life! Not Godly. We STOPPED the slaughter of the Jews by Hitler’s regime. We did not “regulate” clean gas chambers. We did not say the Germans had to look at each Jew they killed or be given information about each Jew they killed. We did not say you could kill Jews before a certain age or those who were raped conceived or had disabilities. Far more people have been killed because of “regulation” than had legal abortion been stopped 50 years ago when it began in MS for rape! Today we pretend to “fight” abortion never “expecting” it to end. This is like a fencing game. Neither side really expects to die. But both profit for putting on a great show.
Abortion continues to be legal because the very ones who purport to hate it are paid to push bills that make it legal. When legal abortion ends there will be loss of jobs on BOTH sides. I do believe there may be a conflict of interest.
National Right To Life told me on two occasions that they had to keep the exception for rape, even ousting Georgia Right to Life for NOT wanting to have exceptions. Passing bills is NOT the goal. Ending legal abortion should be the ONLY goal for anyone claiming to serve God and to be pro life.
Those of us who are pro-abortion rights were naturally very pleased with this outcome — although of course it’s always best that unwanted pregnancies be prevented in the first place.
Hi Lisa. Are you back in the states or still in Japan? What’s the deal with the nuclear fallout over there? No real news here. Hope you and your family are well. ~ G.N.
GN – When you delete, dismiss, and ignore date, research, and arguments instead of interacting with them, the only thing you continue to do is sit in a narrow echo chamber filled by a single uninformed voice. I’m ashamed you showed up on my Facebook feed. I’m ashamed that someone with a PHD would prioritize faith-based opinion over scientific evidence. But I’m mostly saddened that someone who seems to care so much for “life” isn’t interested at all in the lifelong repercussions of child-rearing and instead chooses to ignore the very real difficulties women face when not allowed to control their reproductive lives.
No need to assert your paternalistic dinner table rights. I don’t care to break bread with you and it’s clear you aren’t interested in hearing anything but your own voice bouncing back.
TV, You impress me as the sort of primitive religious bigot who believes that religious people are incapable of reading the robust scientific and medical literature on post-abortive sequelae in the areas of psychiatry, oncology, obstetrics and gynecology, and seeing medical evidence for arriving at the same conclusion as the faith-based perspective maintains. I can’t help you with your bigotry, or your denial of the scientific and medical literature, which has been amply linked in the medical literature in my blog posts over the past seven years. It’s all from CDC and peer reviewed journals such as the Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
But a bigoted hack has no use for such data, and projects her denial and closed-mindedness onto others because of their faith. It is a projection and bigotry that cannot admit both a faith-based view of the world, and an open scientific and medical mind that can be persuaded by the data in hundreds of peer-reviewed papers. A shame for you.
The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists is a group whose perspective is deeply rooted in the literature and linked on their web page, but I’m sure you won’t go there for fear that your cramped worldview might shatter. In twenty years as a scientist I have shared all of the mounting medical literature with people in both secular and religious venues. The universal question is why they have never heard of this before. So much for my echo chamber. ~G.N.
Greetings Dr. Gerard M. Nadal! I am the host of a daily, live, 2-hour Christian talk radio show called “Iron Sharpens Iron”, heard globally via live-streaming @ http://www.IronSharpensIronRadio.com Monday thru Friday 4-6pm *ET*. I hope you can accept my invitation to you to be my guest in the very near future, for your choice of 1 or 2 hours. My email address is ChrisArnzen@gmail.com & I hope to hear back from you soon. May God continue to use you mightily for the protection & rescue of the most fragile, vulnerable & helpless among us!!
Lisa Twaronite I’m confused as to why you don’t want hospitals involved in surgery on women?
Juda,
In your scenario, the actions of Schindler and Pius XII and countless others to save as many Jews as they could was unjustifiable, because they did what they could instead of just fighting to stop the pogrom.
All analogies ultimately break down, so I’ll address your point directly. I am anti-abortion. That means that i don’t just oppose abortion in general, but every individual abortion. I will work to end all abortions, but in the meantime, I will also work to prevent as many individual abortions as I can. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. For us, we don’t save lives just by winning the war, but by winning the battles as well. Each prevented abortion is a life saved.
The reality is that the profitability of the abortion industry is built on sub-standard safety practices. Regulating abortion providers cuts into the profitability of the industry, which means fewer clinics and more expensive procedures. And that means fewer abortions. (It also means less money for interfering in politics.) And when we expose how willing pro-choice advocates are to sacrifice women’s health in order to benefit the abortion industry, we land a major blow against their position. And when we put to lie the “safe and rare” part of their argument, we land a major blow against their position.
But ultimately, how pro-life is it to say to all the children who have died from abortions that could have been stopped by regulating the abortion industry that we didn’t because only stopping all abortions sometime in the future was pro-life enough for us?
NEVER did Schindler or Corrie Ten Boom or any other rescuer join with the Germans to kill a few so others could live!
Every person who compromised and allowed babies to be slaughtered will answer to God. We are to stand against evil not work with it. Those babies that you think were “saved” could have been counted among ALL babies saved had people not wavered from ENDING abortion. God’s ways are NOT man’s.
Juda, On the way to defeating abortion, reasonable Christians can make the argument that saving as many lives as possible along the way is not a bad goal. A good hostage negotiator works toward the salvation of all, but will take as many lives as the captors are willing to release. It’s never an all-or-none in such work, as that meets with carnage.
Juda, I don’t want hospitals involved in “sugery” on women when the “surgery” is chemical abortion, or even low-risk first trimester procedures. I simply want the same for other women as I want for myself — no more, no less.
Thanks to the blessing of contraception, I was able to keep my family small — I want others to be able to do the same if that’s what they want. Peace.
Lisa that wasn’t what the law was about except to have ambulatory and hospital access FOR SURGICAL ABORTIONS AND COMPLICATIONS ARISING FROM SURGERY. There can be complications for chemically killing babies but the law was specifically working to help women who had SURGICAL abortions.
Gerard with all due respect no negotiator plans to leave them to be killed. But laws that say …and then you can kill your baby are like the negotiator saying we’ll agree to let you kill 5 if we can get one. NEVER does the negotiator say that. NEVER. He continues to work for ALL of them and if somehow it doesn’t work out he has no blood on his hands. But if he goes in saying you can kill this amount cuz all I want is a few he would NOT be a good negotiator.
If Christians would be followers of the bible this wouldn’t have happened in the first place. God will not be mocked for people using His name in vain passing laws approving of the killing of millions of babies.
If ALL the people who SAY they are Pro life would actually stop compromising legal abortion would end. It might take a few years but we are now FIFTY years making money from passing bills.
Juda, that’s what I said — no need for this, for low-risk first trimester abortions. And there’s certainly no need that women be required to take “baby pesticide” in the presence of a doctor. Really, though, when women like me don’t want to have any more of the little buggers, it’s best to prevent their conception in the first place.
Again you should WANT “safe” abortions done surgically. Was Gosnell ok with you??
No, Gosnell wasn’t “ok” with me because he wasn’t “safe” for the mothers. In fact, I don’t know a single abortion rights proponent who thought Gosnell was “ok,” for that reason. And abortion is never “safe” for the baby, because hey, that’s the point.
I think it would be wonderful if every aborted baby had never been conceived in the first place.
There is a “Gosnell” in Houston who got off without even as much as a hand slap and I’m sure there are many others. Women are dying right along with their babies. Why don’t you research? And if you know babies are being killed why is that ok with you? Pro abortion rights is pro killing innocent baby wrongs.
I’m done because there is a point at which we are told not to throw pearls to those who trample them.
“Pearls” to you, asphalt to me. 😉
I have done plenty of research, and I am indeed “ok” with unborn babies being killed — hey, I culled my own kids with my contraception. I have no moral qualms against abortion, and I still wish unwanted pregnancies were all prevented in the first place. If we can agree on anything, it’s that.
Juda,
“NEVER did Schindler or Corrie Ten Boom or any other rescuer join with the Germans to kill a few so others could live!”
But Schindler largely bit his tongue, opting to save Jews instead of risking his ability to do so through open opposition to the regime. His opposition to the regime was less than the abortion to
The notion that regulating something means to “join” it is nonsensical. Do you favor laws to keep pornography off public library computers or out of public schools? Then by your logic you are joining the pornographers. Do you favor laws criminalizing drunk driving? Then by your logic you are joining the drunks. Do you favor laws limiting how much pollution that polluters can let runoff into rivers? Then by your logic you are joining the polluters.
To regulate abortion does not mean to say that it is ok to abort children. The abortion providers don’t want to be regulated, anyone who advocates their regulation is their enemy, not their compatriot.
We can advocate restraining evil and eliminating evil at the same time. The fact that we advocate restraining evil does not mean we somehow don’t advocate its elimination. It is not to compromise, it is to fight evil fully. To ignore the opportunities to save at least some of the lives is to opt to not fight evil fully. I am incredulous at the idea that it is God’s way to ignore the opportunities to save children *now* – as well as the opportunity to protect desperate women – because it is not saving all children, something that is currently a practical impossibility due to the state of our society.
[…] decision was somewhat overshadowed on Monday when the high court overturned a Texas law that put abortion clinics on par with other surgical outposts regarding safety and sanitation […]
Pro choice advocates want people to believe there are no health concerns from having abortions. Tell that to the million babies that lost their life this past year. Abortion is the leading cause of death in the US. Also tell that the the many would be moms who later regret killing their unborn child. Tell that to the women who become sterile from abortion procedures. Finally tell that to the thousands of dead women who lost their lives during the procedure. Thiese clinics should be scrutinized to keep them from performing life threatening procedures with less than standard care.
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