U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson has an opinion and it is a lengthy one. In fact it is 172 pages long. The gist of it is an Alabama law which requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital is just so much bull shit.
All right, we all know he didn't use that particular term, but he did say the law, "unduly hampers a woman's ability to obtain the medical procedure." According to the AP, he also wrote the state legislature of Alabama exceeded their authority when they passed the act.
Similar pieces of "legislation" are floating around all over the place. Usually that is an indication some shadowy big money outfit, like Heritage Action, Club for Growth, or FreedomWorks came up with it in draft form. Afterward, "the bill" is passed on to rubes in state houses everywhere so they can alter it just enough to give it a local flavor and claim responsibility for it.
There are couple of reasons guys like the Koch brothers have their people pull these back room acts of slight of hand. First, such laws have about as much chance of passing the United States Senate, or getting by a presidential veto as somebody does hitting the Power Ball lottery jackpot. Second, they know, better than anyone, your average tea party crank who represents a district in, say, Beaver County, Oklahoma is far more adept at doodling with crayons than drafting actual legislation.
The recommended, not to mention, quite canned, argument low level conservatives use when they defend this particular idea is they are concerned for the safety of the woman who is having the procedure performed. As state representative, Randy Grau said of the Oklahoma version, "If you are performing this type of surgery on an individual it just makes sense that you would have admitting privileges to a nearby hospital so you could continue the care of the patient."
Grau's statement is such utter nonsense, no one, not even the people who vote for him, buy into it. The whole point of these laws--while leaving a woman's choice to have an abortion technically legal--is to make it impossible for her to obtain one. It is rather like telling a person smoking marijuana is perfectly fine, however you can't buy, sell, grow, or possess it without being charged as a felon.
Judge Thompson did say his ruling on the law is not final and he will allow both sides to submit further, written, arguments. A similar law was blocked recently in Mississippi. The AP noted courts have voided nearly identical legislation in Kansas and Wisconsin, although it remains unchallenged in Missouri, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah. The Oklahoma law will come into effect later this year. It remains to be seen if anyone will step up with the money and expertise in these locales to sue, even though, given the recent decisions, a precedent has now been set and as we know, a federal judge, any federal judge, is loathe to overturn a precedent.
In the final analysis, for all their indignant blathering about too many laws and government overreach into the personal lives of American citizens, these terrible and crazed right wing mutants love to pass measure after measure which are far more invasive than anything liberals do.
The truth is conservatives don't care about a woman's safety during an abortion and they certainly don't give a rat's ass about children, unborn, or born. They simply want women to stop having casual sex and be good--well, either that, or they want to make sure those nasty sluts only give head.
Hey, given their demeanor and day to day behavior, the odds on that bet are about even.
8-4-14
No comments:
Post a Comment