I’m glad the court called bullshit on “continuity of care” because continuity would be best achieved by every hospital and clinic offering abortion care like the routine, medically unremarkable procedure that it is, instead of being segregated into separate, inherently unequal standalone facilities. But the agents of medical segregation are the same religious and political actors offering up this continuity crap.
Discussion: Federal Court: Restrictive WI Abortion Law Is Unconstitutional, Endangers Women's Health
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Posner was also appointed by Reagan, so that’s a stalemated charge. For the tie-breaker, who appointed the third judge?
Liability. Not every doctor wants admitting privileges (cost of the insurance if they are contractors) and hospitals want the ability to pick and choose who they’ll be liable for in case something goes wrong. Doctors who get admitting privileges technically have to go through a credentialing process initially and then again after a certain time frame. There is some cost involved in that where the hospital is required to verify malpractice coverage, current licensing, lack of lawsuits and disciplinary issues, etc. In addition, there are different kinds of privileges. Hospitals require a full time staff to do this work.
This is really a bogus attempt to prevent women from exercising their right to abortion, but the question from a practical standpoint is more complicated than just giving privileges to everyone. Another consideration is the hospital wants the doctor to live in a reasonable distance so they can be responsible for patients they admit. Many times abortion doctors, for safety and other reasons, travel from far away and many times from different states.
Laudable, however misguided…but doubtful. I think the fanatics that want to stamp out all abortions, under any circumstances, are more driven to exert power and control over other people for shallowly-thought-through “principles” they’ve chosen to clasp to their hearts, than anything else. It’s the usual “do what I say, dammit!, not what I do” – how many abortion foes cheered the murders of abortion providers? “Right to life,” indeed. Why do you suppose forced vaginal ultrasounds suddenly became the GOP rage? Power and control – and whenever possible, humiliation for those that don’t fall in line.
And I strongly suspect a large proportion of the GOP politicians are simply chasing the votes, not any particular principle.
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Amen and hallelujah
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Why does the anti-abortion crowd bother to argue such a law is necessary for the sake of women’s health? It weakens their case, because everybody knows that’s a fucking lie.
Why don’t they simply acknowledge they want to do everything possible to stop abortion? It would be a lot more honest.
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The reason the Wisconsin decision is important is that the opinion’s author is by all standards the most conservative appellate judge in America. 25 years ago working for my JD and taking classes in “Law and Economics” I read many Posner articles. From allowing bosses to fire women for not sleeping with them to allowing living people to sell their kidneys you cannot be more conservative than Posner.
What Posner is not is a member of todays GOP. That is Roe v Wade is a conservative decision like allowing woman to do what they want with their bodies to include selling their kidneys.
The comment that the law requiring these restrictions is to protect women’s health is laughable because most of our general doctors that examine us in their offices do not have admitting privileges at near by hospitals. The real result of this law will be to replace doctors by bringing back butchers to perform abortions. That is everyone my age is familiar with the term “backroom butcher” and knows someone or someone’s sister who was harmed by a back ally abortion. Which is why after Nixon appointed 4 conservative justices to the Supreme Court one of the first things they did was the Roe decision.
Which brings up the eventual result by the Supreme Court: If this is a conservative Supreme Court the case will get laughed at. If it is a GOP Supreme Court the laughable argument that this is to support Woman’s health…
Federal Court: Restrictive WI Abortion Law Is Unconstitutional, Endangers Women’s Health
Well, to be honest, the second part was by design…
Number of Women’s health doctors assassinated in the past 25 years versus the number of federal judges assassinated in the same time frame. Why everyone wants to be a judge.