{"id":252086,"date":"2021-08-29T09:32:30","date_gmt":"2021-08-29T14:32:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=252086"},"modified":"2021-08-27T13:32:52","modified_gmt":"2021-08-27T18:32:52","slug":"roe-v-wade-special-privileges-abortionists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/roe-v-wade-special-privileges-abortionists\/","title":{"rendered":"Roe v. Wade granted special privileges to abortionists"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(National Review<\/a>) M<\/span>any<\/span> believe that Roe v. Wade<\/em> conferred on American women an absolute right to abortion. That\u2019s not the case. In Roe<\/em> and subsequent abortion cases, such as Planned Parenthood v. Casey<\/em>, the Supreme Court in fact conferred special privileges and immunities on the abortion industry.<\/p>\n

This coming term, the Court will reconsider some of those privileges, which have no basis in law or the Constitution, and which are contrary to the equal protection of the law. The Court should require the abortion industry to explain why it deserves those privileges.<\/p>\n

Whatever advantages women may have gained from Roe<\/em> and Casey<\/em> are more than offset by the power those decisions conferred on the abortion industry. The Court\u2019s abortion precedents immunize abortionists from basic legal accountability such as general medical regulations, professional oversight, common-law protections for bodily integrity, and other laws that would protect women and children from harm and which apply to all other medical professionals. In stages of pregnancy before the unborn child can survive outside the womb, the abortion industry\u2019s special immunities are absolute, or nearly so.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Planned Parenthood not serious about disavowing racist history<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The industry and its enablers in elite media portray abortion as a women\u2019s rights issue, but they can sustain this illusion only by ignoring several important facts. First, the Texas statute challenged in Roe<\/em> did not impose criminal sanctions on women seeking abortions. Rather, like nearly all pro-life laws, it applied to those who perform<\/em> abortions and those who pressure women to have abortions. The holding in Roe <\/em>thus conferred a new privilege on abortionists and pushy boyfriends, or anyone else who might coerce a woman into abortion. In strictly legal terms, women gained no new liberties from the holding.<\/p>\n

Second, Roe<\/em> did not recognize a right for women to control their bodies. Instead, the Court justified its holding on the privacy of the abortionist\u2013patient relationship. The Court made clear that, behind that cloak of privacy, the abortionist, not the patient, is in control. The Court expressly rejected the argument that \u201cone has an unlimited right to do with one\u2019s body as one pleases.\u201d As the author of Roe<\/em>, Justice Harry Blackmun, later emphasized in an interview with law professor Ronald Rotunda, it is the abortionist who gets to decide \u201cwithout regulation by the state, that, in his medical judgment, the patient\u2019s pregnancy should be terminated.\u201d<\/p>\n