By: Adeeb Bayat | Writer
February 8, 2019
In a major scare to pro-choice groups, the Supreme Court narrowly blocked an arbitrary Louisiana abortion law aimed to limit the number of legal abortion doctors and clinics available in the state with a 5-4 vote.
In 2014, Louisiana passed a law stating that for a doctor to be legally allowed to perform abortions in the state, they must have admitting privilege in a hospital. This means that the doctor must be given the privilege by a hospital to keep their patients in the hospital for an extended period of time. While this initially seems like a very logical law, when one digs deeper, it is simply a ploy to limit the amount of abortion providers.
The problem with this law is that, for a doctor to be given admitting privilege by a hospital, they must meet a minimum threshold for number of patients admitted overnight. Because only less than 5% of abortions result in complications that result in a patient being admitted overnight, it is nearly impossible for a doctor performing an abortion to meet these thresholds. The result is that the abortion doctor who doesn’t meet the threshold of admitted patients has their admitting privilege revoked by their hospital. Under the Louisiana law, this doctor would have their ability to perform safe and legal abortions revoked simply because their patients are being given good treatment that does not require them being admitted overnight.
If this law was allowed to be implemented, only one abortion doctor would be sufficiently licensed to continue to perform abortions in the state of Louisiana. One doctor for the roughly 10,000 women who seek abortions in the state every year.
“This law just sounds like another way to shut down more abortion clinics and that’s just wrong” said San Clemente High School senior Jeffrey Larson.
The fact that this intentionally and blatantly destructive law was only blocked from being implemented by one vote has terrified pro-abortion groups and individuals; it means that if President Donald Trump is allowed to nominate just one more conservative judge, newly minted abortion laws will conceivably be passed by the overly conservative Supreme Court. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court’s most popular liberal judge, is 85 years old and has been recently having health complications, it is possible that while Trump is still in office he will be able to appoint a new justice.
“If something happens to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and another Justice is appointed by Trump, laws protecting abortion could be completely overturned and that’s terrifying” senior Vivienne Meyerhofer said.
In a effort to make the Supreme Court representative of the bipartisan and balanced nature of the American public, hopefully this never happens.
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