Law appropriate to prevent additional killing at clinics

If we are to have legalized killing in Louisiana, at least let’s hold down the collateral damage. But some aren’t even willing to curb their thirst for that.

Yesterday, the Center for Reproductive Rights announced it was suing to overturn the recently-enacted Act 490 that creates more stringent operating standards for abortion clinics. In an unrelated development, today a hearing will determine whether to lift an injunction against shutting down oxymoronically-named Hope Medical Group in Shreveport under the new law.

About three weeks after the law went into effect the clinic was cited for numerous violations including one that was an immediate threat to safety. The law allows the secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals to forgo the 30-day grace period allowed in it if the violations are of a serious nature, as well as provides for the injunctive relief sought by the clinic. The seriousness of the violations will be at issue in today’s proceedings.

But the larger issue is the law itself, filed on behalf of several unrelated clinics and an abortionist doctor. The suit claims the law is discriminatory because of the change that allows immediate closure, unlike that of other health care facilities which may continue operation on appeal. The law specifically removed abortion providers from that category designed for hospitals.

However, the secretary already has that authority in the case of other health care facilities such as for substance abuse. Just like these institutions, abortion clinics perform invasive techniques that put the life of those patients at risk and that almost always are elective in nature (no government statistics are kept on reasons for aborting children, but surveys indicate perhaps five percent of them are because the physical life and health of the mother are severely threatened). Thus, it is entirely appropriate to be able to shut down violators immediately, since life-saving procedures aren’t being affected (quite the opposite for the clinics, and if there were such a case, a secular hospital could handle it).

Understand that there is no medical basis for the suit, just political and monetary reasons. Operators, who by the nature of their work show they have no regard for human life, just want to be able to cut corners to make some more dough off of death. Politically, they want to be put into the same category for handling violations as life-saving institutions when in fact they are death-dealing ones, to legitimize their activities.

Additionally, opposition to this law shows as little regard for the women exercising their right to terminate the lives of the unborn humans gestating inside of them. Deaths directly due to abortion are rare – the latest datum from 2005 attributes seven deaths in the U.S. to it although indirectly caused deaths would appear to be somewhat higher – but can happen so anything that will protect these women should be welcomed.

As of now, we must tolerate this holocaust. Yet in its prosecution, there shouldn’t be any more risks taken than need be, and this law is prudent and appropriate in protecting lives even of those unwilling to cherish the lives inside of them.