From Bassinets To Barricades In Texas

by JASmius

Just in case you missed it, a little justice has just been served - in a ten gallon bottle:

A federal appeals court issued a ruling Thursday reinstating most of Texas' controversial new abortions restrictions, just three days after a federal judge ruled they were unconstitutional.

A panel of judges at the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said the law requiring doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital can take effect while a lawsuit challenging the restrictions moves forward. The panel issued the ruling after District Judge Lee Yeakel said the provision serves no medical purpose.

The panel's decision means as least 12 clinics won't be able to perform the procedure starting as soon as Friday. In its 20-page ruling, it acknowledged that the provision "may increase the cost of accessing an abortion provider and decrease the number of physicians available to perform abortions."

However, the panel said that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that having "the incidental effect of making it more difficult or more expensive to procure an abortion cannot be enough to invalidate" a law that serves a valid purpose, "one not designed to strike at the right itself."

Translation: Judge Yeakel likes fetuside and thinks pro-lifers suck, while the Fifth Circuit applied the law.

Both sides' reactions are what you would expect:

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott had made an emergency appeal to the conservative 5th Circuit, arguing that the law requiring doctors to have admitting privileges is a constitutional use of the Legislature's authority.

Abbot said in a statement Thursday that "this unanimous decision is a vindication of the careful deliberation by the Texas Legislature to craft a law to protect the health and safety of Texas women."

Translation: Judge Yeakel so ludicrously overstepped his authority and so egregiously mangled constitutional jurisprudence that had A-G Abbott not immediately appealed, the Fifth Circuit may well have dropped a few daisy-cutters on Yeakel anyway, just because.

Lawyers for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers had argued that the regulations did not protect women and would shut down a third of the abortion clinics in Texas.

"did not protect women" = "let them get all the abortions the taxpayers can be raped to pay for"; "would shut down a third of the abortion clinics in Texas" = "protecting women AND children".

In a statement Thursday, Planned Parenthood said the appeals court decision means "abortion will no longer be available in vast stretches of Texas."

Which is the whole point.  But what really pisses off Planned Parenthood is Texas's "death by a thousand cuts" approach.  If the Texas legislature had simply outlawed abortion, that law would have been overturned even faster than Judge Yeakel's opinionating was.  But by passing a bundle of statutes that amount to one obstacle to abortion after another, not one of which can be fairly described as unreasonable and all of which are women's health-oriented, they amount to a phalanx of pro-life obstacles that aborticians and their bloodthirsty backers have to navigate.

Texas, in other words, is making Planned Parenthood bleed for every fetal corpse they toss in the Lone Star medical dumpster.  And they are not happy about it:

"This fight is far from over," Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said in the statement. "This restriction clearly violates Texas women's constitutional rights by drastically reducing access to safe and legal abortion statewide

Actually, for all intents and purposes, Ms. Richards, it is, since the Fifth Circuit cited SCOTUS precedent in their unanimous instruction to Judge Yeakel to go abort himself.  But I'm sure you'll keep trying.

Or, to modify a saying from Yosemite Sam, "It's gettin' so a baby-killer can't earn a dishonest livin' no more."