On July 29, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law new regulations on abortion clinics. The law requires state officials to regulate abortion clinics by applying the same standards used to regulate centers for outpatient surgery.

Restrictions such as this are disingenuous efforts by Republican leaders to uphold their own agendas while avoiding current laws legalizing abortion. 

USA Today reported that the regulations in North Carolina will effectively close all but one of the state’s 16 abortion clinics. The one expected to remain open meets the standards of an outpatient surgical center.

The new law is one of a series of efforts by Republicans at the state and local levels that is designed to make abortions nearly impossible for women to obtain. The laws undercut our rule-of-law system and, contrary to Republican rhetoric, endanger and alienate women.

According to The Guttmacher Institute, which seeks to advance sexual and reproductive health through policy analysis, public education and research, 19 states passed 43 new restrictions on abortion in 2012. This is on top of the 92 restrictions passed in 2011— the most in the nation’s history — due in part to Republican victories in the 2010 midterm elections.

Abortion restrictions are stealthily placed.

The new law in North Carolina was originally inserted into a bill ostensibly created to bar Sharia  law, which are faith-based, Islamic laws. McCrory threatened to veto the bill, so the abortion restrictions were then inserted into a motorcycle safety act — a sly admission of the restrictions.

This time, the Republican governor signed the bill into law.

This indirect placement of restrictions took fellow lawmakers by surprise. Rep. Joe Sam Queen (D-N.C.) tweeted, “New abortion bill being heard in the committee I am on. The public didn’t know. I didn’t even know.”

Abortion restrictions are also cunningly crafted.

Some of the restrictions on abortion range from mandating unnecessary pre-abortion medical procedures to increased regulation of abortion providers. There are even regulations regarding the admitting privileges of hospitals, and limits on the length of pregnancy before abortion.

All of these restrictions are designed to make abortions nearly impossible to obtain, scare women out of getting abortions and increase costs for abortion clinics.

The restrictions are passed despite the fact that in 1992, in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, the U.S. Supreme Court held that restrictions on abortions would be rejected if the restrictions imposed an “undue burden on a woman’s ability” to choose to have an abortion.

Not only are these prohibitive abortion restrictions devious and in direct contradiction to Supreme Court precedent, they are morally wrong.

A woman faced with an unplanned pregnancy is in the best position to decide what is best for herself — not the government. A woman has the right to decide if and when she wants to be a mother and whether to carry a pregnancy to term. This is especially true in cases of rape, incest or threat to the woman’s health, all of which carry added psychological implications.

Lawmakers have proved to be in denial and insensitive of abortion’s psychological and physical implications.

Richard Mourdock, a Republican Senate candidate in Indiana, stated last year, “…even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

This year, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) said, “the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low.”

A study from the American Journal of Preventive Medicine estimated that 25,000 pregnancies result from rape each year, hardly a low number.

And who could forget Republican Missouri Senate hopeful Todd Akin’s statement about “legitimate rape” and the female body’s ability to “shut that whole thing down?”

The sentiment from conservatives regarding abortion, such as Erick Erickson’s infamous coat hanger tweet, is representative of the uncompromising and dismissive Republican leadership in states like Texas.

The legislative policies regarding abortion passed by the far right are divisive legal ploys intended to protect a misguided bias, with no basis in modern medicine. More importantly, they hold no regard for the personal freedoms or health of women.

To use the words of Wendy Davis, the now famous Democratic state senator from Texas: “Lawmakers, either get out of the vagina business or go to medical school.”

Michael Hacker is a senior political science major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at mahacker@syr.edu and followed on Twitter at @mikeincuse. 

Published on August 2, 2013 at 2:07 am