That’s the question that the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals will be hearing arguments on this week.
A federal appeals court panel in St. Louis this week will consider whether Missouri is obligated to transport female offenders seeking an outside abortion.
A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments in the class-action case Monday.
Attorney General Jay Nixon appealed a federal court ruling requiring Missouri to take pregnant inmates to abortion clinics when they request the procedure. U.S. District Court Judge Dean Whipple in Kansas City last year ruled that a relatively new Missouri policy against transporting inmates for abortions was unconstitutional.
It had damn well better be unconstitutional. This seems pretty clear to me: A prisoner does not give up her right to health care when she’s in jail. A prison sentence does not mean that a woman is obligated to give birth against her will. If the prison isn’t able to provide the necessary health care for its inmates, then it needs to transport them elsewhere. End of story.
I’d love to read the justifications for Missouri’s law. I’m assuming its because abortion is an elective procedure, and therefore incarcerated women aren’t entitled to it. I wonder if the state of Missouri would require men to involuntarily maintain a condition that involves huge physical changes to a person’s body, requires serious physical and psychological strain, and culminates in a horribly painful hours-long procedure. I wonder if they would argue that men aren’t entitled to end that condition because ending it is “elective.” (I’d like to say that they wouldn’t inflict that on men, but if those men are prisoners, it wouldn’t surprise me).
Lots of individual liberties are curtailed when you go to prison. That’s the whole point. And while I have some choice words for the prison system in general, even in its current incarnation, the notion that we should be able to deny prisoners health care is pretty abhorrent.
I’ll hunt around for the actual documents and write more on this later.
A procedure during which they’re often shackled.
Speaking of MO law, did you hear about the new one, requiring clinics in which abortion is performed to have to remodel or shut down?
My question, though, is whether before-hand clinics performing surgical abortions were subject to less stringent standards than clinics performing other surgeries and why? And whether clinics performing medical abortions were subject to less stringent standards than clinics performing other procedures with similar risk levels?
If this law is only correcting a double standard (which is how the media’s reporting it, albeit along with lots of “oh noes, they’ll shut me down for sure with this — I can’t afford to remodel my clinic” from physicians), why was that double standard in place in the first place? And if there was no double standard, how come even the liberal NPR is reporting, with little questioning of the veracity of the claims by the anti-choicers, as if there were a double standard?
Note to the media — saying “X claims Y but Z claims W” is not fair and balanced reporting. Fair and balanced and objective reporting is “X claims Y. Z claims W. Y is actually bullshit. W may be the case, but Z’s being a cry-baby for whining about it”. Why doesn’t the media get this? Oh wait … I think I know … follow the money, eh?
OTOH … since we pro-choicers wish to frame abortion as a medical procedure — even though outpatient surgery is quite common, since when people think of surgery, they think of hospitals — I think there should be a quiet move to somehow ensure more (at least surgical) abortions are performed in hospitals rather than outpatient clinics.
The sad thing is that Jay Nixon is the most prominent pro-choice politician we have in Missouri, and the top Democratic contender to face Matt Blunt in the 2008 gubernatorial race. In fact, Blunt is trying to force Nixon to step aside so he can hire outside counsel in the court case in which Planned Parenthood is fighting the new TRAP laws. So I don’t understand what Nixon’s objection here is, either, unless it’s a “tough-on-crime-no-rights-for-prisoners” stance.
I’m sure that it has something to do with “taxpayer dollars funding abortion.” Even if the woman pays for the abortion herself, there’s the cost of gas, and a guard . . . you know, bullshit reasons. But I bet you anything that’s it.
I’m sure that it has something to do with “taxpayer dollars funding abortion.” – Cara
No doubt some of these abortions violate, e.g., my religious principles. So does blood sausage. Should I raise a stink that my money as a taxpayer is going to fund inspections that put government imprimateur on food-suppliers that make blood sausage?
If I can pay for USDA inspectors to make sure that all sausages are not made in the style described in The Jungle (which, as someone who likes the occassional cervelat or liverwurst, I support) — even if that includes blood sausage, sure religious anti-choicers can pay for abortions.
“My question, though, is whether before-hand clinics performing surgical abortions were subject to less stringent standards than clinics performing other surgeries and why?”
When have women’s clinics ever been held to less stringent standards than general-populace clinics offering comparable services?
“I think there should be a quiet move to somehow ensure more (at least surgical) abortions are performed in hospitals rather than outpatient clinics.”
With more and more hospitals going religious and farming even contraceptive services out to local clinics, good luck on that front. Hospitals also tend to charge more and be less common than outpatient clinics, which would put abortion even farther out of the reach of poor and/or rural women.
It’s like the comic said: “If men could get pregnant, abortions would not only be completely and utterly legal, they’d be a God given right!“
It’s like the comic said: “If men could get pregnant, abortions would not only be completely and utterly legal, they’d be a God given right!“
The polling data doesn’t support this statement, because more women (who can get pregnant) are anti-abortion than men.