By Dave Andrusko
That The Texas Tribune, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party, would lament the statewide drop in abortions is as predictable as swallows returning to Capistrano. If, however, you believe it is a good—indeed a wonderful—thing that the Abortion Industry has eviscerated 13% fewer babies statewide, then you are not as glum as Gilad Edelman is in writing her sky-is-falling story based on a study from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project at the University of Texas.
What can we learn from “Report: New Law Led to Statewide Drop in Abortions”?
First, because of “reproductive health-related laws passed during the last two legislative sessions,” we’re told that the number of abortion clinics has declined as has the “number of abortions performed statewide.” As NRLC’s Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon has explained on numerous occasions, there are many explanations why abortion clinics close.
Near the top is that Planned Parenthood continues to consolidate, building larger and larger mega-clinics and closing smaller clinics that don’t make as much money as PPFA would like (perhaps because they don’t provide abortions).
In explaining the impact of clinic regulation laws, Dr. O’Bannon observed
“If the clinic is second or third rate, they could choose to close their doors rather than allow the public to find out how many of these ‘medical’ facilities are poorly staffed, decrepit, unsanitary, poorly equipped, bizarrely configured, and ill prepared to handle inevitable complications.
“This could help explain why some of these clinics close before clinic regulation laws actually take effect. Perhaps because they don’t want to wait for the state health inspector to come around and prepare a public report on what the actual clinic conditions are and prompt a scandal that could taint the abortion industry as a whole. Easier to preemptively close and blame the lawmakers who are attempting to protect the public interest while the circuit riding abortionist makes his money elsewhere.”
Edelman’s story avoids the part of the law that requires abortion clinics to meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers, a common sense safety standard.
Instead she focuses on the requirement of HB 2, passed in 2013, that abortionists have admitting privileges at a local hospital when there are (as inevitably there are) complications. Abortionists are having “difficulty,” according to the report with the result that “All facilities in the Rio Grande Valley and all but one in West Texas have shut down.”
Her other emphasis is HB 2’s “new restrictions on medical [chemical] abortion, which is induced by swallowing a pill.” It’s quite a bit more complicated than that, as she no doubt knows.
To begin with the law requires the abortionist be in the same room as the woman receiving chemical abortifacients (which is not the case with so-called ‘web-cam” abortions) and that abortionists follow the protocol approved by the FDA for the use of the two-drug “RU-486” abortion technique. The two drugs are the RU-486 itself (mifepristone) which kills the baby and a prostaglandin (misoprostol) which induces contractions to expel the now dead baby. It also limits its use to the first seven weeks of pregnancy.
Click here to read the July issue of
National Right to Life News,
the “pro-life newspaper of record.”
Last October when U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel struck down much of HB 2 (since reinstated by an appeals court panel), even he upheld the FDA protocol requirement that limits the use of the RU-486 abortion technique to the first 49 days. (The abortion industry wants it expanded to 63 days.)
Yeakel also found a narrow exception for women between 49 and 63 days into their pregnancy: if a surgical abortion is “in the sound medical opinion of their treating physician, a significant health risk” they could have chemical abortions. The three-judge panel concurred.
Besides lamenting the drop in the number of abortions, the thrust of the story is “given the dramatic reduction in the number of abortion providers,” whew, it could have been worse than a 13% overall decrease.
Edelman quotes Daniel Grossman, a California-based abortionist and one of the authors of the report, who said, “In some ways, we were expecting a bigger decline.”
“One possible explanation, he said, is that most of the facilities that remain open are in population centers like Austin, Dallas and San Antonio. Reproductive rights groups have also been contributing money and resources to help women obtain abortions since the law went into effect, which the report suggests may have mitigated its impact.”
The story ends with the admonition from Grossman the story isn’t over. He offers the pro-abortionists ultimate trump card. They plan on researching “the effects of HB 2” on “women performing self-induced abortions.”
And, oh by the way, Edelman managed to miss that pro-abortionists never challenged the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.
Wonder why.
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