Eric Gay/Associated Press

The Texas House today passed the abortion restriction bill that State Senator Wendy Davis derailed last month.

One provision would move the point at which abortions are no longer legal to 20 weeks from 24 weeks. Another would require doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and allow abortions to take place only in surgical centers.

The Catholic Association’s press release celebrating progress on the bill said it merely “seeks to raise standards for women’s health and limits the inhumane and heart-breaking practice of late-term abortion.”

So what’s the big deal?



Let’s start with the question of timing.

The way the Catholic Association mentions “late-term” abortions, you might think the only women who had them were lazy and callous, just waiting around until the last second for no good reason.

But as Cecile Richards, the head of Planned Parenthood, told me in an email, nearly 99 percent of abortions occur before 21 weeks; abortions later on often involve rare, severe fetal abnormalities and real threats to a woman’s health. In many cases, women are facing the need to terminate a desired pregnancy, not an unwanted one.

Ms. Richards cited the case of a woman in Nebraska, Danielle Deaver, whose water broke at 22 weeks, depriving her baby of most of the amniotic fluid. “Her doctor told her that the fetus could not develop or survive,” Ms. Richards said. “Despite this, she was forced to live through 10 excruciating days waiting to give birth, because her doctors feared prosecution under her state’s 20-week abortion ban.”

Medical associations oppose these laws, because they are dangerous to the health of women.

Politically, such laws are also dangerous because each decrease in the legal period for abortion is followed by another. “And then it’s on to a ban at 12 or 6 weeks — before a woman even knows she’s pregnant,” Ms. Richards said.

Let’s move on to the idea that rules governing hospital admission privileges and surgical centers are just common sense.

Abortions are safe and rare complications usually can be handled in the clinic where the abortion took place. If a woman becomes seriously ill and requires care in a hospital, she will get it. It makes no difference whether the doctor who performed the abortion has admission privileges.

Every hospital, moreover, has its own procedures for granting admitting privileges, which may have nothing to do with credentials and everything to do with politics or the religious affiliation of a hospital. State and national medical associations oppose these requirements.

In granting a temporary restraining order on Monday against a Wisconsin requirement of this type, federal district court Judge William Conley said his review of the law “does not reveal any medical expert speaking in favor of the act or otherwise articulating a legitimate medical reason for the admitting privileges requirement.”

In Alabama, district Judge Myron Thompson ruled last month that a similar law would mean “the majority of Alabama’s abortion providers would stop providing abortions” and that “would impose a substantial obstacle to a woman’s right to choose abortion.”

Both judges said the lawsuits against the states’ abortions restrictions are likely to succeed, as will the lawsuits that will inevitably be filed once the Texas legislators pass their outrageous bill.

But the legal battles are expensive and contribute to growing political pressure on doctors. They discourage women from exercising their rights, or push them to seek treatment from butchers like Kermit Gosnell.