It’s hard to think of a topic that divides people as strongly as abortion. To the left, it’s a symbol of feminine equality and women’s liberation; to the right, it’s legalized infanticide.
It should therefore come as no surprise that people on both ends of the spectrum are willing to go to extremes to push their views. But recent laws restricting abortion – most prominently Virginia’s new ultrasound laws – go too far.
In case you haven’t been following the issue, Virginia’s infamous proposed abortion law would force most women to undergo a highly invasive trans-vaginal ultrasound prior to receiving an abortion. Detractors have complained that this law would drive up the price of procedure, which is a serious problem. Supposedly, the law exists to ensure that women are informed before they decide to abort, but this explanation falls flat. Any relevant information that an ultrasound could convey to a prospective patient would have already been told to them in order to establish informed consent.
This law failed in February, but there are more like it. A law was passed in August that required abortion clinics to meet the same physical requirements as hospitals, even though the two share few of the same functions. Among other things, this law required that certain rooms and hallways meet minimum size requirements. This meant that many abortion clinics were rendered suddenly and arbitrarily illegal, unless the clinic somehow procured and moved to a larger building.
The advantages of this law are vague at best, and its most prominent effect was to create massive costs and logistical problems for abortion clinics. This is especially suspicious when one considers that through legislation, state governments are dictating the minute details of private health care in ways that many healthcare providers find questionable.
There’s a colloquial term for laws like these: TRAP laws, standing for “Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers.” They don’t exist to make clinics safer, to make health care more efficient or to inform patients about abortion. They exist to make abortion an expensive, complex, traumatic process that is inaccessible or undesirable to women who would otherwise seek it out.
Is abortion morally defensible? I don’t know. But I do know that our Supreme Court has ruled it constitutional. I know that TRAP laws exist to subvert legislation that has withstood more honest methods of attack. I know that our courts have ruled in the past that for a clinic to emotionally harass abortion patients is illegal.
Most of all, I believe that meaningful reform cannot be accomplished by legislative sneak attacks. Do you hate abortion? I’m not a fan myself. But looking for loopholes in Roe v. Wade is neither the courageous nor the honest way to fight it. What pro-life advocates should do instead is protest, raise awareness and consistently exercise their right to vote. These are the ways that we as Americans can change things, and their best feature is they allow us to do so with a clear conscience.
