from Our Word
Governor Mel Blunt signed an omnibus bill to restrict access to abortion in Missouri only weeks ago, but the sole abortion providing facility in Springfield, Missouri has already been forced to close its doors–leaving women in that region 160 miles away from the nearest doctor who is willing to provide abortion care.
The new law requires that doctors who perform abortions must hold professional privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of any location where an abortion is performed. But abortion providing physicians now have become such a rare breed that many must travel considerable distances, so that the nearest hospital where a doctor has admitting privileges can lie much farther than 30 miles away from the clinic where she or he provides abortion care.
Like all TRAP laws, its provisions might apply to doctors, but women are the ones who get trapped.
The clinic filed a legal challenge and won a temporary injunction to stave off implementation of the law, but all hospitals in the area – evidently bending to the prevailing political winds — have refused to consider granting privileges to the clinic’s doctor. The Springfield clinic’s director, Michelle Collins, explains, “It’s just so difficult to provide abortions for patients here when there’s zero support from the medical community.”
As a result of the clinic’s closing, the lawsuit will be dropped. “The law will now come into effect very quickly,” Sam Lee of Campaign Life Missouri said.
According to Collins, the clinic asked 10 to 15 local physicians and out-of-town doctors if they would offer the procedure, and all have declined.
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Dave Plemmons, chair of the Springfield chapter of Missouri Right to Life, said the organization will work against any provider trying to fill the closing clinic’s place by offering abortions.
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Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri President Peter Brownlie said that the closing of the clinic will further restrict a woman’s access to abortion, adding, “Women have … a legal right” to reproductive health care procedures, but “that right becomes pretty hollow if there isn’t a facility to meet” women’s needs. Lee said the clinic’s closing is “unexpected but great news.”Jessica Robinson, a spokesperson for Blunt, said, “The governor hopes this closing will move Missourians to consider alternatives to abortion so that our state can move forward in embracing a culture that values human life.”
It seems particularly ironic that this new law devaluing the human lives of women was heavily promoted and sponsored by an all-woman coalition of pro-“life” legislators including Democrats for Life All-Stars Belinda Harris and Kate Meiners — Our Loyal Democratic Sisters — in enthusiastic collaboration with the ongoing right wing crusade to persuade women to “move forward in embracing” compulsory childbearing.
about the new Missouri statute, the seriously disabled Ms. Roe made no comment. But her feeding tube remains in place, and she is generally believed to be resting comfortably.
Abortion is a right, goddammit and until or unless otherwise decided every woman should have equal access to reproductive health care. Thank you again for the work you do and for making us aware of these insidious TRAP laws.
It’s time to kick Democrats for Life out on their tails and insist on candidates who support abortion rights for every woman.
. . . and is this the line where we vote?”
moiv, I was wondering, is there a central place that you know of where all of these law are listed and described? The reason that I’m asking is because I’m thinking that it would make a pretty powerful presentation to put them all together and show, graphically, how limited abortion services actually are in this country. If I had all of these (maybe I should just go back through your diaries!), I could make a map….
Just an idea. Thanks for all you do!
I’m sure moiv has more sources, but http://www.guttmacher.org has a great deal of information about abortion, and broken down state-by-state as well. Might be a place to start.
Guttmacher has the most comprehensive, in-depth information, but NARAL‘s site has the information you’re looking for in a simpler format — and besides, they have maps!
Go for it, brinnainne, October is Abortion Access Month — and there are only four states remaining with pro-choice majority legislatures and pro-choice governors.
Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey and Washington; that’s it. The rest of us are already in trouble.
The medical community knuckling under is yet another example of so-called “professionals” putting their own economic and political comforts ahead of the entire reason we HAVE professionals: groups of people dedicated to a standard of practice, standards intended to guarantee a certain level of proficiency and ethical practice. Why do we bother anymore?
Don’t you know we’re just supposed to shut out little girlie mouths and vote for anti-choice democrats? None of those “women’s issues” matter, doncha know?
Grrrr. If men could get pregnant, abortion would be practically compulsory. Instead, we get idiots like Blount or that old guy I drove by the other day — he was about 100 years old and sporting an anti-choice bumper sticker. Like he’s in any danger of having to choose.
Democrats for Life All-Stars Belinda Harris and Kate Meiners — Our Loyal Democratic Sisters
Right-wing Democrats is a phrase we’re going to start seeing any day now. Then maybe we can have our bigots back, all those ones who used to be Democrats until our party was so gauche as to champion civil rights for blacks and women. My,think of all the elections we can win. What a happy day that will be.
“Right-wing Democrats”
“Right-wing Democrats”
“RIGHT-WING DEMOCRATS”
I’m ready to call ’em what they are right now. Bring ’em on.
you mean right wing democrats who don’t support a woman’s right to choose?
Democrats like Gene Taylor?
They would be the ones.
“Right-wing Democrats”
…is the hypocrisy with regards to pro-life credentials that Blunt has. While he’s a vigorous anti-abortion crusader, he’s also “buckled” under the economic pressure of St. Louis and KC business interests vis a vis embryonic stem cells.
Not that I have a problem with his backing of the proposed therapeutic cloning amendment, it would be a very bleak day for Washington University (where I’m an MD/PhD student), if the pro-life crazies managed to criminalize stem cell research.
However, it does put him at big odds with the Catholic church, especially Raymond Burke, the Archbishop of St. Louis, who condemned the procedure in no uncertain terms in his letter to parishoners before the ’04 election. It will be intersting to see how this all plays out in the next couple of years. Burke is VERY conservative, and VERY stubborn, it would just be too delicious to see him publically denounce the governor’s support. It sure will split the St. Louis vote come 2008.
Planned Parenthood vs. Casey requires that the government impose no undue burden on clinics or women on the ability to have an abortion. But this law is a clear violation of the undue burden requirement; I doubt this will hold up in court.
The Springfield clinic had won a temporary injunction to delay implementaion, but had little hope of prevailing in a challenge to the law. Planned Parenthood is well-financed and lawyered up, but they have made no move to challenge it, and probably won’t.
That’s because the only part of the law that stands a reasonable chance of being vacated is the provision that allows a Missouri parent to sue anyone who assists their minor daughter in obtaining an abortion in some other state where parental involvement isn’t required. And the only reason they have a chance of succeeding with that challenge is that the language of the law is very vague, failing to specifically define “assistance.”
Most federal judges have yet to consider any burden to be “undue.” In Texas we have restrictions even more severe than these, but since they had already been upheld by the 5th Circuit after the identical provisions were enacted and challenged in Mississippi — a state within the same federal court district as Texas, where only one clinic now remains — no challenge could even be mounted in Texas.
Federal court districts are the key to TRAP laws. After one state passes a restriction that has been challenged and upheld, other states in that same federal jurisdiction know that it’s safe to pass the same law, word for word, without risking lengthy and costly defenses in the federal courts.
The only way to challenge a law is then to find new legal grounds. The Center for Reproductive Rights will do that whenever it can, but I think it will have a hard time finding grounds to challenge this one.