Forced-birthers won another victory Wednesday in the nationwide effort to kill women’s reproductive freedom by a thousand cuts. In an 89-5 bipartisan vote, the Louisiana House of Representatives approved HB 386 to extend the state’s current 24-hour waiting period for obtaining an abortion to 72 hours. The five no votes were all Democrats, but far more Democrats voted yes.
The bill seems certain to pass the Louisiana Senate where there are 26 Republicans and 13 Democrats. And Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards has already said he approves the new restrictions. If the bill becomes law, it will make Louisiana the sixth state with a 72-hour waiting period. The others are Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Utah. Three states—Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee—have 48-hour waiting periods. Eighteen others in addition to Louisiana currently impose a 24-hour waiting period. But the pressure is obviously on to extend them all.
As it stands, the Louisiana bill requires that a woman visit a doctor for consultation and a mandatory ultrasound, then wait 72 hours before obtaining an abortion. The bill carves out an exemption for women who live more than 150 miles away. They only must wait the current 24 hours. But 90 percent of Louisianans live within that radius from one of the state’s four remaining abortion clinics. There are an estimated 10,000 abortions every year in Louisiana.
“Contrary to what our legislators would have us believe, women are capable of making family planning decisions without government intrusion,” said Kathaleen Pittman, [administrator] of the Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport. “This continued obsession with the private lives of women needs to end. Rather than dealing with Louisiana’s health care and education crisis, they choose to spend their time creating more obstacles for women attempting to make responsible decisions for themselves.” [...]
“Basically we’ve had the 24 hour waiting period since the nineties,” said Sylvija Cochran, administrator of Women’s Health Care Clinic in New Orleans. “It’s another tactic to deny women access to abortions. Extending to 72 hours won’t make a big difference in a woman’s decision. It’s going to make it inconvenient, but it’s not going to change her decision.”
One key factor of the waiting periods is that they drive up abortion costs from transportation, childcare expenses and lost wages. Feature, not a bug. If it costs more, the forced-birthers figure, at least some women won’t seek an abortion. In fact, as we are seeing in Texas, making safe and legal abortions more difficult means some women will, as they have done for millennia, choose to self-induce an abortion. And that can mean maiming or death. Clearly, this makes no never-mind to the so-called “pro-life” fanatics.
Lawmakers also want to make abortions more difficult to obtain in Louisiana with another bill that passed Wednesday requiring that the procedure only be provided by or under the direct supervision of physicians who are board certified in obstetrics and gynecology or family medicine. That might sound like a move to make abortions safer except for the fact that medical schools have been pressured not even to offer training in the procedure.
A 2005 study found that only 32 percent of the U.S. medical schools responding said they provide a formal lecture specifically about abortion as part of their obstetrics and gynecology rotation. Twenty-three percent reported “no formal education” about abortion at all.
All these new restrictions will not make abortions go away. But they will kill women. It’s impossible that forced-birthers don’t know this. And that makes them accomplices in those deaths.