The Last Abortion Clinic
Just as the Senate prepares to begin the confirmation process for staunchly anti-choice nominee Sam Alito, the PBS series Frontline aired a powerful and important documentary on the latest developments in the war over reproductive rights.
The segment, "The Last Abortion Clinic", was a sobering assessment for pro-choice advocates. Frontline charted the growing strength - and success - of the anti-choice movement in Mississippi from the 1973 Roe v Wade decision through the present day.
Constantly testing the "undue burden" standard introduced by the Supreme Court in its 1992 Casey ruling, Mississippi has enacted a series of restrictions on access to abortion. Starting with rigid parental consent rules, the state added steep new barriers to abortion access, including requirements that abortion doctors must have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Starting in 2006, facilities performing second and third trimester procedures must meet the same regulatory standards as full surgical hospitals, 36 pages of rules in all. As a result, the entire state of Mississippi, one of the poorest in the nation, now has only a single abortion clinic, the Jacksonboro Women's Health Clinic.
Last year, I wrote about the increasing success of the "Slippery Slope" strategy used by anti-choice forces to undermine reproductive rights. Federal measures like the Partial Birth Abortion Ban of 2003 (currently blocked in the courts) and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act tap into the revulsion over rare but viscerally gruesome medical procedures or circumstances to chip away at the consistent pro-choice consensus in the United States.
Now, the threat comes not only from the new Roberts Court, which may have the opportunity if not the votes to overturn Roe. The more likely threat to the reproductive rights of American women may instead come from new state laws that further curtail access by challenging both the "health exception" and the undue burden standard. (Alito, the lone appellate dissenter in Casey, has made it clear where he stands). The Court's decision in the upcoming Ayotte case from New Hampshire could well be all important.
For progressives of all stripes, the lessons of "The Last Abortion Clinic" are clear. While all eyes on the left are focused on the war over Roe, the anti-choice forces and their slippery slope strategy are winning most of the battles.
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