Monday, June 27, 2016

The SCOTUS war on women

For an abortion clinic to not be required to be held to the same standards as other medical clinics could potentially put a woman's health in jeopardy. Yet the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such regulations in the state of Texas just aren't necessary.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down one of the nation's toughest restrictions on abortion, a Texas law that women's groups said would have forced more than three-quarters of the state's clinics to shut down.

The decision was 5-3.

Passed in 2013, the law said clinics providing abortion services must meet the same building standards as ambulatory surgical centers. And it required doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.

Since the law was passed, the number of clinics providing abortion services in Texas dropped to 19 from 42. Opponents said that number would fall to ten if the Supreme Court upheld the law.

So if the number of abortion clinics continued to drop, then what was holding them back from upgrading it's operation to meet the regulatory requirements as spelled out in the Texas law? National Review's David French noticed that the majority opinion implied that such regulations were downright burdensome.

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. The regulatory state should tremble in fear. There is now “no reason to believe” that additional regulations would affect wrongdoers. That means that regulations may not even be able to escape the lowest level of judicial scrutiny — rational-basis review.

Environmentalists are quaking in their boots. Gun controllers are throwing their hands up in despair. Financial and business regulators may as well close up shop.

Wait. What’s that you say? This is an abortion decision? The regulations in questions were deemed responsible for closing substandard abortion clinics?

Never mind. The regulatory state is safe. Everyone knows that the Supreme Court privileges the killing of children above all else. After all, as Justice Ginsburg has said, Roe v. Wade was motivated by “concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” The undesired have to die — the reasoning matters not.

These are strange times indeed when a so-called "right" that's not even specifically addressed in the U.S. Constitution may well take precedence over the Bill of Rights.

(O)ne wonders whether the five justices that signed onto this sorry decision will be as anxious to protect an explicit constitutional right — the Second Amendment, as well as the Fourth and Fifth — when it comes time to rule on an attempt to use “watch lists” to deny Americans the right to keep and bear arms. Don’t hold your breath waiting for consistency when that time comes

Sadly, many pro-abortion people have apparently forgotten (or, given the feeble media coverage at the time, are unaware of) the horrible aftermath of the women treated at Dr. Kermit Gosnell's unregulated clinic.

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