Discussion for article #243152
Discussion: Federal Court: Restrictive WI Abortion Law Is Unconstitutional, Endangers Women's Health
To be clear, the court didn’t say that the law endangers women’s health. It said that the law isn’t rationally related to the legitimate government interest of protecting women’s health. Still, a happy development.
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Abortion is an “imaginary” crime, the supposed victim, imaginary. The supposed victims of this crime never, In fact, existed. The victims, in fact of law and science, are only cells from a potential life that never existed. In light of that, it is a powerful rhetorical device. When the victims can be anything you imagine, then extraordinary steps can be taken to protect them. Now, in the name of women’s health, republicans imagine that if they make abortion difficult, they will save these imaginary victims. But the victims of their policy is not the shining baby on the billboard, but the women who is forced to travel long distances and wait. No one will be alive because republicans made it harder to obtain an abortion. No victim will be saved. In the end, these policies are about cruelty, and distracting voters. If republicans true feelings about abortion matched their rhetoric, all women with the potential of becoming pregnant would be in prison, to protect any potential life that forms inside them.
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How about a regulation that says, to keep receiving public funds, a hospital must offer admitting privileges to board-certified doctors who perform abortions at location facilities? That would certainly meet the goal of protecting women’s health…
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Screw Christian Extremist SLIMEBALLS.
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This is potentially significant. Posner is the most widely quoted and probably the most respected judge on the federal appeals courts. His words carry weight. On the other hand, he has been pretty free in his criticisms of the Supreme Court for the past few years, so some of the justices may look for a way to get back at him.
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He also was appointed to the bench by well-known ultra-liberal Ronald Reagan.
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Surely the lawyers explained to the IDIOT judge that every doctor in the hospital ER has admitting privileges and they will admit any patient with complications from outpatient surgery be it a dental procedure, abortion procedure, or any other procedure?
Does the IDIOT judge think that the ER physician is going to let the patient lay there dying until they can track down the outpatient surgeon?
This kind of stupidity makes my brain hurt!
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Why would these doctors need admitting privileges when every ER physician as admitting privileges and they are the ones that will be doing the admitting in case of complications anyway just like the did in the past and will do in the future?
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“Standard of care” and what you must do and have to provide to achieve it has been ( until now ) the purview of the States Board of Medicine. In this case legislators are assuming that power. Untrained in medicine and driven by ideology. That’s a formula for disaster and while we are talking about it flies in the face of those same legislators claims of wanting to keep governments hands off of healthcare. Another example of the GOP wanting to have its cake, eat it too and throw in peoples faces.
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The law’s supporters counter it ensures continuity of care if a woman developed complications from an abortion and needed to be hospitalized.
One can develop complications from wisdom tooth extraction and need hospitalization. Do these same supporters advocate such a law for dentists and other oral surgeons?
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Two reasons:
- It’s not always going to the the ER physician who is doing the admitting. Some complications are serious but not ER-serious. (And in any case, if you can avoid having a patient run through the mill that is a typical ER it’s better all round.)
- A lot of these hospitals are refusing admitting privileges (see coverage of Texas, for example) because their management thinks abortion is icky, or that being seen as having anything to do with abortion, even indirectly, will subject them to pressure from crazies. (There’s also the argument that post-abortion complications don’t generate enough revenue, but that one seems shaky.) So pushing the hospitals in this way would remind them that their purpose is to care for patients, not to be big cash-flow-generating machines that support their owners’ and managers’ political views.
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So why isn’t the law that EVERY doctor that performs outpatient procedures have admitting privileges?
Currently the hospital attending physician will consult and work with the patient’s own physician, so why isn’t that good enough?
Sorry nice try but a swing and a miss.
The argument is “continuity of care”: that is, the physician who knows the patient best should be responsible for coordinating her care.
It’s a specious argument in this case: the physician at the clinic is very unlikely to have a relationship with the woman beyond having seen her at the clinic and writing a prescription (for a medical abortion) or performing the surgical procedure and writing the follow-up prescriptions associated with that.
Posner is correct: this is a transparent attempt to put barriers in place. Paulw is also correct that many hospitals refuse admitting privileges to qualified physicians who perform abortions because they just don’t want the potential hassles.
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I believe you are on the right side of thinking about this issue. Personally, I’d like to see CMMS (Medicare/Medicaid) institute a new policy that any and all hospitals who contract with Medicare and/or Medicaid must also have on staff OB/GYNs who offer the wide range of abortion services recommended by the AMA and the OB/GYN-equivalent physician group in order to be considered as offering proper global services in the field. Along with nipping in the bud all these wrong-headed state requirements for hospital privileges, it would help to strengthen the healthcare system in the nation with regards to women’s health.
Edit: Even with such a proposed policy, public funds would still be barred from paying for abortions. My suggestion is a much easier (than getting a Congressionally-passed bill) than getting a federal law and still has the exact effect. Still, no taxpayer dollars being spent on abortion procedures (outside what’s already being done in life/death situations, etc.).
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I agree.
I must also point out that today the hospital attending physician will consult with the patient’s private physician about their care, just like they will do tomorrow so no law is needed.
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Shhhh. Don’t tell the knuckleheads how to camouflage their actions.
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The one vote dissent was probably from Reagan/Bush family, a reminder that the next president will be picking new judges, Vote accordingly.
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I think it did, at least in one part (See the analysis here )
the abridgment challenged in this case would actually endanger women’s
health. It would do that by reducing the number of abortion doctors in
Wisconsin, thereby increasing the waiting time for obtaining an
abortion, and that increase would in turn compel some women to defer
abortion to the second trimester of their pregnancy-which the studies we
cited earlier find to be riskier than a first-trimester abortion.
Manion was appointed by Reagan, so score one to you.
“The solution to the plaintiffs’ problems is that they find more qualified doctors, not that the state relax — or that we strike down as unconstitutional — precautions taken by the state to protect the health and safety of pregnant women who have chosen to end their pregnancies,” Manion wrote.
Yesirree Mr Judge, there’s practically a line of people waiting to become qualified to have people stalk, harass, even threaten their children and murder them based on the word of the invisible sky man. And plenty of facilities that will cheerfully host or give them admitting privileges so said stalkers and harassers can spread their hate over more victims. No problem whatsoever.
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