by Rod D. Martin
October 29, 2013

As reported everywhere (but the Baptist Press story is most enlightening), Texas’s ban on abortions after 20 weeks takes effect today, aside from one provision targeted by a Federal district judge.  Texas has appealed that ruling to the 5th Circuit.

What did the judge strike? A provision requiring abortionists (you know, doctors, albeit doctors without the slightest respect for their Hippocratic Oaths) to have admitting privileges at local hospitals; and also requiring that they follow FDA guidelines when giving women drugs to induce abortions.

Huh?  Really?

First, can the U.S. Constitution possibly be construed to prevent a state from regulating whether or not a doctor must have admitting privileges at a local hospital? Ridiculous, and also impractical: women die of abortion all the time, many of those deaths being preventable if the abortionist could get them quickly to a hospital.

Why would Wendy Davis, Planned Parenthood and leftists generally NOT want qualified doctors? And why would they NOT want the FDA to protect Texas women from unsafe drugs? Is this not reminiscent of their refusal to give schoolchildren aspirin (sometimes in the form of a “zero tolerance” drug policy) while handing out birth control pills in many of those same schools? Maybe their “cause” has nothing to do with caring, or with the health of women, in the first place.

Anyway, contrary to what you’ve probably heard, the judge did not strike down the core of the law, and abortion is today illegal in Texas after the 20th week (which is to say, the 5th month). Since most of the civilized world considers abortions after 20 weeks to be barbaric, maybe our liberal friends should take heart: Texas law is now a lot more like Europe’s; and unless something very odd happens between now and the inevitable Supreme Court hearing, that’s likely to be true very soon for most of America.