United States District Judge Myron Thompson on Monday ruled that an Alabama law passed in 2013 requiring abortion doctors to have hospital admitting privileges is unconstitutional.
Planned Parenthood Southeast and Reproductive Health Services, who were the plaintiffs in the case, argued that the law would shut down three of Alabama’s five abortion clinics, leaving only two open.
That argument was central to Thompson’s ruling, and led him in his 172-page opinion to lay out a surprising parallel between women’s right to get an abortion and Americans’ Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
Here’s an excerpt from Thompson’s opinion:
At its core, each protected right is held by the individual: the right to decide to have an abortion and the right to have and use firearms for self-defense. However, neither right can be fully exercised without the assistance of someone else. The right to abortion cannot be exercised without a medical professional, and the right to keep and bear arms means little if there is no one from whom to acquire the handgun or ammunition.
Thompson went on to describe a hypothetical scenario in which gun shops around Alabama were forced to shut down due to new government regulations.
“The defenders of this law would be called upon to do a heck of a lot of explaining,” Thompson wrote.
In other words, Thompson believes that a lack of readily available clinics to administer abortions on demand would place an undue burden on women who want to quickly end their pregnancy, thereby infringing on their Constitutional rights.
First of all, there is a pretty strong argument to be made that there is no Constitutional right to get an elective abortion. Even Alan Dershowitz, one of the country’s most well-known liberal Constitutional scholars, said on CNBC last year that although he supports women’s right to have an abortion, he “can’t find it in the Constitution.”
Many liberals believe, though, that the “right” to an abortion is implied in the Constitutional right to privacy, which has long been recognized by the High Court, although an argument could be made that privacy rights are also not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution.
The “right” to get an abortion, then, was essentially created judicially out of thin air, as opposed to the rights specifically named in the Constitution and those that derive from the common law.
So it seems at least somewhat hypocritical that Judge Thompson and many other individuals on the left would so adamantly defend judicially-created “rights,” which are neither based in the text of the Constitution nor implied by the Framers’ intent, while directly assaulting explicitly stated rights, including the very Second Amendment Thompson used as an example.
Indeed, when it comes to the right to keep and bear arms — a right that “shall not be infringed” — the left is more than willing to use any means at their disposal to impose regulations and restrictions. They may tout their “pro-choice” stance on abortion, but in reality they’re anti-choice on pretty much everything else — from union membership and soft drinks to energy sources and light bulbs.
As a matter of fact, Thompson’s hypothetical scenario actually happened in real-life in the City of Chicago, where the government really did ban gun shops — a ban supported by Thompson allies like President Obama and Rahm Emmanuel.
But what’s really wrong with Thompson’s argument is that no one said there couldn’t be an abortion clinic in the State of Alabama the way the government banned gun shops in Chicago.
All the Women’s Health and Safety Act said is that abortion clinics must have a doctor who has admitting privileges at a local hospital. That’s actually probably a lower threshold to do business than what it takes to become a firearms dealer. To pull that off you have to become a Federal Firearms Licensee, pay a fee, go through an extensive background check, get periodically inspected by the fire marshall since you carry ammunitions, and comply with a host of other federal, state and local regulations.
With that in mind, is it seriously a violation of anyone’s Constitutional rights to require that a doctor who is performing such an invasive procedure have admitting privileges at a local hospital in case something goes wrong?
And just think for a moment about the absurdity of comparing the right to defend ourselves from assault and government tyranny to the supposed right of women to “defend” themselves from a “trespassing” fetus.
Give me a break.
Follow Cliff on Twitter @Cliff_Sims
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