The US Supreme Court handed down a decision Monday in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt that invalidates a Texas law requiring abortion facilities to meet the same health and safety standards as ambulatory surgical centers and that further protected women by requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at a local hospital in the event a woman must seek hospital care due to post-abortion complications.
Senior Counsel Steven H. Aden for Alliance Defending Freedom weighed in on the decision, saying that abortionists “shouldn’t be given a free pass to elude medical requirements that everyone else is required to follow.”
“We are disappointed that the Supreme Court has ruled against a law so clearly designed to protect the health and safety of women in the wake of the Kermit Gosnell scandal,” Aden said. “The law’s requirements were commonsense protections that ensured the maximum amount of protection for women, who deserve to have their well-being treated by government as a higher priority than the bottom line of abortionists. Any abortion facilities that don’t meet basic health and safety standards are not facilities that anyone should want to remain open.”
Gosnell was an abortion doctor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 2013, Gosnell was convicted of first degree murder in the deaths of three infants and involuntary manslaughter in the death of a mother who was his patient, Karnamaya Mongar. Gosnell was also convicted of 21 felony counts of illegal late-term abortion, and 211 counts of violating the 24-hour informed consent law. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
For his part, Fr. Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life, said the Supreme Court is now acting like “the Supreme Medical Board, setting its own standards for patient care in the United States.”
