| inbluevt | Date: Friday, 2013/07/26, 0:00 AM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
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Should the new abortion laws signed by Gov. Rick Perry of Texas last Thursday, which are expected to close 37 out of 42 abortion clinics through needless red tape, survive a court challenge to go into effect, it will certainly usher in a new era of restrictions on women’s ability to get a safe, legal abortion. Conservative writer Ross Douthat of The New York Times called it the “Texas experiment,” though his reasoning for the term is foggy at best. But he’s not wrong to note that what’s going on in Texas is an experiment. What Rick Perry and the Texas Republicans are trying something unprecedented: seeing if you can end legal abortion without directly banning it.
Outside of the 20-week ban, this new law doesn’t technically restrict a woman’s right to obtain an abortion or force her to give a reason for the abortion, but it makes it so hard to operate a clinic that it will make getting an abortion physically impossible or prohibitively expensive. It will force most women to travel out of state, often across many states, to get to a clinic that has the room to see them, pushing the cost into the thousands of dollars, the opposite of free. The strategy is to take away abortion without banning it, and it’s something that has never really been done before.
Needless to say, the ban-without-banning strategy has its skeptics within the anti-choice movement, many of whom would rather just go with an outright ban and are suspicious that simply ending access will not do enough to drive women away from safe, legal abortions. These detractors tend to support another, competing strategy, backing bills that would ban abortion at six weeks, which is too soon for the vast majority of women to get an abortion. North Dakota went this route, banning abortions at six weeks, and some upstart hardliners in the Texas legislature also introduced a six-week ban after the new law was passed, though the six-week ban is not expected to go very far in the legislature before the session is over.
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Message edited by inbluevt - Friday, 2013/07/26, 0:02 AM |
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