Abortion Access Should Not Trump Women's Health and Safety

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a severe blow to women’s health and safety throughout Texas by allowing subpar abortion facilities to operate without common sense regulations like those that govern nearly every other outpatient facility and physician in the country.

While blocking parts of the HB2 law, the Court sided with abortion advocates who, in the name of access to the sacred right of abortion, readily gave up the safety of women.

In this Oct. 7, 2014, photo, a police officer is dwarfed amid the marble columns of the Supreme Court in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Where are the women’s rights groups, like Planned Parenthood, that supposedly should be outraged that women have to go to subpar abortion facilities for care? Abortion advocates claim to want abortion to be “safe, legal and rare.” If they want it to be safe, why would they oppose a common sense regulation that seeks to protect women from dangerous doctors like Kermit Gosnell?

Dr. Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, rightly noted recently that emergency medical personnel couldn’t get through the narrow hallways with a stretcher at Gosnell’s Philadelphia abortion clinic to get to Karnamaya Mongar, a woman who had survived the horrific conditions of a Nepal refugee camp yet succumbed to an American abortion facility. In its indictment of Gosnell, the grand jury said that Karnamaya’s "slim chances of survival were seriously hampered because it was exceedingly difficult for responders to get her to the waiting ambulance."

Gosnell’s clinic hadn’t been inspected for 15 years. Dr. Yoest unveils that the heartbreaking story continues: “…Gosnell's peers in the abortion industry knew how appalling his clinic was. The National Abortion Federation had been inside the clinic. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania admitted it was aware. But they did nothing. And Karnamaya died.”

Why didn’t NAF and Planned Parenthood do anything? Because it’s all about the bottom line. If abortion facilities are forced to close, then the abortion industry will lose millions of dollars. According to Planned Parenthood’s own 2012-2013 report, they performed 327,166 abortions. An in-clinic abortion procedure costs anywhere from $300-$950 in the first trimester so let’s use a conservative average and say each abortion was roughly $450. That would equal an astounding $147+ million in revenue. Women and their preborn children are just dollar signs to the abortion industry. They could care less about protecting women’s health and safety.

The Kermit Gosnell trial was a grim reminder of what happens when political correctness trumps common sense health safety standards for women. There is no right to an unsafe abortion and for abortion advocates to promote a lower standard of care for women just to ensure the sacred cow of abortion remains intact, is morally indefensible.

The fight in Texas is not over yet and there are still many more hurdles to overcome to ensure that the abortion industry adheres to the same standards as any other outpatient facility, but, in the meantime, supposed women’s rights groups and abortion advocates should not get a free pass to cheer the Supreme Court ruling while calling common sense regulations “burdensome” for abortion facilities all in the name of “access.”

Kristan Hawkins is president of Students for Life of America.

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