REALity  Volume XXXV Issue No. 4 April 2016

In 1973 the US Supreme Court handed down its decision, Roe vs. Wade, which permitted abortion on demand. 

This was a grim time for those with a pro-life perspective. The future stretched endlessly ahead, with nothing but aborted babies piling up, reflecting this tragic period of US history.

Yet brave pro-life individuals forged ahead, trying their best to educate the public and legislators about the ghastly killing of the unborn. Pro-lifers did so by way of clinic blockades, ignoring injunctions, etc.  Despite these efforts, by 1991, which is considered the high watermark for abortion clinics, 2176 surgical facilities offered abortions to the public. 

Around this time, pro-life individuals added a new strategy, prioritizing state legislative action. This propelled Republican state law makers to push to regulate the abortion industry because the latter had failed to regulate itself throughout the years. According to the abortion industry, women’s health and safety were far below the bottom line of making money. The legislation was incredibly effective.  As a result of this, abortion access in the US has diminished. Since 2011, at least 162 abortion providers have shut down or stopped offering the procedure, while only 21 new abortion clinics opened.  Since 1991, surgical abortion clinics have decreased by 81%.  This decline has occurred in 35 states in both small towns and large cities, where more than 30 million women of reproductive age reside. 

At the same time, there has been a marked reduction in demand, accompanied by the fact that new doctors are unwilling to perform abortions, as well as a crackdown on unfit abortionists. As well, many abortionists are now retiring.

Abortion Industry Fights Back

The abortion industry, making billions of dollars on the exploitation of women and unborn babies (they rarely, if ever, refuse a patient), have hit back in two ways:

  1. Abortion providers attempted to compensate the shutting down of their clinics by offering webcam abortions, whereby a woman would consult with a doctor on a webcam before being given the first of two chemical abortion drugs. The second drug is administered at home. Although abortionists claim this procedure is safe, this has not proven to be the case. Chemical abortions, usually the drug RU486, can be dangerous to women if not medically supervised. From the year 2000 to 2010, according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), there were 2,207 adverse events related to the use of RU486, including 14 deaths, 612 hospitalizations, 58 ectopic pregnancies, 339 blood transfusions and 256 cases of infections. To offset these webcam abortions, sometimes called “tele med abortions”, 18 states have prohibited this. The laws provide that the abortionist must be in the same room as the pregnant woman, and must perform the abortion in person, preceded by a physical examination before prescribing the abortion pill. This has essentially banned the webcam abortion practice.
  2. Abortion facilitators have brought a legal challenge before the US Supreme Court, objecting to a Texas law (similar to that passed in other states) which provides that abortion doctors must have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles of a clinic where an abortion is performed, and that minimum standards for an abortion facility must be equivalent to the minimum standards for other ambulatory surgical centres.

The pro-abortionists argue that this law places an undue burden on women seeking an abortion. The truth is that it places an “undue” burden on abortion practitioners – insisting they meet the same safety standards as other providers of surgery.

US Supreme Court Tests the Texas Law

On March 2nd, 2016 the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the Texas Law. The Supreme Court is now without pro-life Justice Antonin Scalia, who unexpectedly died on February 13, 2016.  This could result in the court having a tie, 4 to 4, which would leave the Texas law intact.  The swing vote, as usual, is Mr. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the infamous US same-sex marriage decision.  If Judge Kennedy votes against Texas, 22 other states with similar laws will be impacted. The court is expected to hand down its decision in June.

No matter the outcome, we know that the pro-life movement in the US will respond intelligently to this decision.