Monday, August 4, 2014

To Courts, Abortion is the Über-Recht


by John M. Grondelski
Crisis Magazine

On July 29, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a 2-1 ruling, declaring H.B. 1390, a 2012 act of the Mississippi legislature, unconstitutional.
According to its title, the bill “require[s] that all physicians who perform abortions in abortion facilities must have admitting privileges at a local hospital and must be board certified in obstetrics and gynecology.”
Mississippi holds the extremist position that people who perform abortions should be doctors and should be able to admit their patients to a hospital.
Luckily, two federal appeals judges have restrained Mississippi from imposing such radical demands (one reader commenting in the New York Times called it “sharia law”) on the good women of the Magnolia State.
Now, benighted and bitter reader clinging “to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them,” “progressive states” like California have no longer adhere to silly notions like demanding doctors do abortions (at least on humans). As of October 2013, Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation letting a variety of non-physicians do abortions. One source, however, pointed out that California still requires a certified veterinary surgeon to perform abortions on an animal.
John M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ.

No comments:

Post a Comment