The polling data doesn’t support this statement, because more women (who can get pregnant) are anti-abortion than men.

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.

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? 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.

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.

A procedure during which they’re often shackled.