“You’ve created an environment in Texas where you’ve put women’s health at risk, and that’s the real issue here.”
Those are the words of Texas Senator Wendy Davis, a recent catapult to stardom among abortion advocates, thanks to her June 25th filibuster during which she spoke for 11 hours, in an attempt to exhaust the clock and prevent a vote on the bill. Although a last minute vote was held with enough votes to pass the bill, the disruption of hundreds of protesters from among the spectators (what Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst defined as an “unruly mob” see footage here ) prevented the vote from being entered in time for the midnight deadline. Undeterred, Texas Governor Rick Perry, has called the senate back for a second special session, which began yesterday July 1st and could reportedly last up to 30 days.
So what’s the big deal with this bill, and why is Wendy Davis being hailed as a champion for the health and rights of women? What is the dreadful and health-damaging law from which Texas women must be protected? Again and again online media has been flooded with dire warnings from Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights groups warning us that SB 5/SB 9 “will shut down 37 of 42 abortion clinics”! Wow! Sounds drastic! Accordingly, protesters by the bus-full have flooded the state capitol to parade coat-hangers and chant about not losing “the right to choose” in Texas.
The truth, on the other hand, may not have generated quite so many band-wagon picketers and chanters. The fact that so many of Texas’ abortion clinics would be “shut down” is a simple side-effect of these clinics not measuring up to surgical health standards ironically put in place to ensure the health and safety of women undergoing a surgical procedure.
The bill in question:
– Limits most abortions to the first 20 weeks of a pregnancy (after which point it is believed a fetus can feel pain and abortion becomes much riskier for the woman)
– Requires that doctors performing abortions have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles.
– Requires abortion clinics to meet the standards of an ambulatory surgery center. (including ambulance and gurney accessibility)
– Puts new rules around abortion-inducing medications, including requiring that women take such medicines in the presence of a doctor.
The fact is, abortion IS a surgical procedure. One need look no further to the disastrous results of the recent Kermit Gosnell case in Philadelphia to see that later-term abortions pose an increase in risk. A clinic not close enough to a hospital or not accessible to ambulance gurney in case of emergency is precisely how an abortion complication becomes a fatality.
Yes, fatalities occur – even under “safe & legal”. The Center for Disease control counts 386 deaths under legal abortions in the U.S. between 1972 and 2003 – see image below. (I do not currently have updated stats for the past decade). And while in no-wise a complete collection yet, www.abortionsafety.com recently launched a growing data-base of reported malpractice suits in the United States for which court documents are publicly available. These cases involve injuries to patients as well as documented negligence of patients and of health practices.
While it’s certainly true that injury and/or death is rare in a woman having an abortion in North America , and that most abortions since the introduction of antibiotics are largely safe (for the woman, not the unfortunate child for whom every abortion is intended to be deadly) it is nevertheless true that surgical and medical complications can and do occur. It therefore behooves anyone who cares for the health of women – as Senator Davis and company claim to – to ensure that if women are subjecting themselves to an abortion, they won’t end up facing a punctured uterus in the middle of a rural county clinic more than 30 miles away from a hospital.
So it seems to me, dear Senator Wendy Davis and fellow protesters who thwarted the passing of SB5 and so blocked a bill that would shut down less-than-safe clinics, “You’ve created an environment in Texas where you’ve put women’s health at risk.“
I do however agree with Senator Davis’ statement to Governor Perry:
“Gov. Perry… If you, truly care about women’s health, let’s do something to make sure that we’re protecting them. Let’s make sure that we’re preventing unplanned pregnancies and that we’re committing resources to make that happen. Let’s make sure that we’re working for age-appropriate sex-education in our school system… Because what we do know is that closing down the ability to access that service unfortunately does not take the need away or women’s confronting that issue away.”
Therein lies common ground on which those on both sides of the fence should unite! Shutting down abortion clinics and making abortion illegal won’t eliminate the crises that women face when affronted by an unplanned pregnancy. Neither, on the other hand, will abortion. Abortion eliminates the immediate symptom of the problem, but it’s little more than a cover-over to problems of inequality and societal imbalance that make a new child appear so problematic in the first place. As feminist writer Frederica Matthewes-Green said: “No woman wants an abortion as she wants an ice-cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg.” Abortion sells women a sterile knife to escape the trap, but it leaves the open jaws of the trap lying in wait for the next woman. Merely removing the sterile knife leaves women to agonize in the trap and risk self-injury.** Neither option is a full solution.
I therefore urge anyone, whether or not you believe in the humanity of the fetus*, if you at least care about the health and the lives of women, join me in dreaming bigger. Join me in aspiring toward real choices for women and their children. Barring a life/death emergency, no woman and no child need ever die or be injured in abortion – be it by coat hanger, knitting needle or suction machine. Women and our children deserve better than abortion!
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* At Pro-Life Humanists we believe that the moral issue of abortion is whether or not it ends the life of a dependent human being. Abortion is not wrong merely because it hurts some women (many personal choices are harmful). If the unborn are not human beings, abortion is not a moral wrong. If they are, outside of immediate self-defense it cannot be a moral right.
** We do hope to eventually see an end to legal fetal extermination. That some women might, even under better societal circumstances still seek dangerous illegal means of killing their unborn offspring does not justify keeping abortion legal – no more than we might feel compelled to offer condoms to rapists so that they might rape another human being without bringing harm to themselves. We are nevertheless compelled as compassionate pro-lifers and Humanists to move toward an ethos of care for the born as much as for the unborn.
Thank you for you article and point of view Kristine.
“We do seek to eventually see a legal access to fetal extermination.”
Is that what you meant to say?
Nope. Thank you for the editing. You score ten cookies for that one. Also redeemable in Awesomeness Vibes that are worth 15 Kudos. 🙂
Hi.
“That some women might, even under better societal circumstances still seek dangerous illegal means of killing their unborn offspring does not justify keeping abortion legal.”
Do you mean “would not justify keeping abortion legal under those better societal circumstances,” or “does not justify keeping abortion legal now” — ?
Do you recommend unborn child-protection legislation (a term I use rather than “anti-abortion legislation”) now? I don’t think I’ve seen on your site so far any explicit statement of the need for such legislation, though there’s a lot that would imply that need. Is there a page you might point me to where the need is made explicit, and where perhaps the form of the needed legislation is set out?
Legislation is part of the equation but I believe changes of law follow changes of mind. Legislation can influence changes of mind (legal = moral to many people), but my preference is to start with logic and reason and move from there as people are receptive. If you follow the pattern of civil rights and justice issues of past, that’s usually how things flow when it comes to social change.
Yes, even under better social circumstances some women might still choose to have abortions and put themselves at physical risk by doing so. That doesn’t justify making it legal. Robbery would be safer if it was legal and thieves didn’t have to worry about a home-owner clobbering them over the head, but we don’t legalize it so that it’s safer to perpetrate. If an injustice is being done against another human being we don’t make it legal and safe for others to commit that injustice.