Legislator Who Sponsored Pro-Life Law Slams SCOTUS: They Care More About Abortion Than Women
Louisiana state Sen. Katrina Jackson slammed the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday for putting the profit-driven abortion industry ahead of the health and safety of women.
Jackson wrote the 2014 law that the high court struck down Monday in June Medical Services v. Russo. The law required abortionists to have hospital admitting privileges to treat patients with potentially life-threatening complications.
“This is just wrong in so many ways,” she said. “The Supreme Court has issued a tragic decision that continues its practice of putting the interests of for-profit abortion businesses ahead of the health and safety of women.”
Perhaps a surprise to many given the Democratic Party’s growing abortion radicalism, Jackson is a proudly pro-life Democrat. She has spoken at the March for Life, and she works to protect human life, born and unborn, as a state lawmaker and attorney.
In a video statement after the ruling, Jackson urged people to continue to “pray for life.” She also promised to continue working to protect the most vulnerable people in society.
“Together with my colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans and women and men, we passed the Unsafe Abortion Protection Act to protect the health and safety of women in Louisiana,” she said. “While today’s decision is not what we wanted, we will never stop working to put the women of Louisiana above the interests of the abortion businesses.”
Jackson said health and safety standards must apply to everyone, and, while abortion remains legal, abortion facilities should not get a special exception.
“In a time when America is making strides to provide access to healthcare, the Court denies the women of Louisiana qualified physicians,” she said. “This is true of any procedure, regardless of whether I believe in the procedure or not. I believe that all physicians providing services to women should do so in a safe and qualified manner.”
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Her 2014 law required Louisiana abortion practitioners to have hospital admitting privileges to treat patients with emergency complications. If allowed to take effect, it could have closed shoddy abortion facilities that are not prepared to help patients suffering from potentially life-threatening complications.
Jackson said her desire and that of many of her fellow Republican and Democrat lawmakers was to protect women, many of whom feel pressured into aborting their unborn babies.
“Abortion has known medical risks, and the women of this state who are often coerced into abortion deserve to have the same standard of care required for other surgical procedures,” she said.
But abortion activists with Hope Medical Group for Women and the Center for Reproductive Rights – groups that claim to fight for women – slammed the law as an “undue burden” on access to abortion, and a majority of the Supreme Court justices agreed.
The court’s opinion, led by Justice Stephen Breyer, “found that conditions on admitting privileges common to hospitals throughout the State have made and will continue to make it impossible for abortion providers to obtain conforming privileges for reasons that have nothing to do with the State’s asserted interests in promoting women’s health and safety.”
Writing the dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas explained the heart of the problem with the court’s decision: a legal “right” to the unlimited, unrestricted killing of unborn babies forced upon Americans by the highest court in the land.
“Today a majority of the court perpetuates its ill-founded abortion jurisprudence by enjoining a perfectly legitimate state law and doing so without jurisdiction,” Thomas wrote. “But today’s decision is wrong for a far simpler reason: The Constitution does not constrain the States’ ability to regulate or even prohibit abortion. This Court created the right to abortion based on an amorphous, unwritten right to privacy.”
Though abortion activists and so-called women’s rights leaders complain about abortion restrictions, America actually has very few. The U.S. is one of only seven countries in the world that allows elective abortions on unborn babies after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and states are prohibited from protecting unborn babies from abortion prior to viability.
With the Supreme Court’s recent rulings on Texas and Louisiana health and safety regulations, it appears states now are very limited when it comes to protecting women from unsafe abortion practices, too.
Yet, there is strong evidence that the billion-dollar abortion industry puts profits ahead of people’s lives, including the women it claims to help.
As the case progressed to the Supreme Court, two starling revelations occurred.
In November, the Louisiana Department of Justice announced suspicions about alleged criminal activity that may have happened at the Hope Medical Group, the abortion facility involved in the lawsuit. It accused the abortion facility of hiding evidence of criminal and professional misconduct from the Supreme Court. The state asked the Fifth Circuit to unseal documents in the closely-watched case.
A few weeks later, a Fifth Circuit ruling suggested one abortionist in the state may be performing abortions that lead to second-trimester babies being born alive.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined the liberal justices in the latest ruling, while Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh dissented.
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