An abortion act that's fast-tracked to nowhere
The Hill
July 21, 2014
An abortion act that's fast-tracked to nowhere
By Wendy McElroy, contributor
Senate Democrats wish to eliminate almost every legislative gain made on the state level by pro-life activists in recent years. But the bill they propose as a solution is an attempt to federalize abortion and an unconstitutional attack on states' rights. It is also doomed to fail except, of course, in the goal of rousing the Democratic voting blocks of liberals and women.
First introduced in the Senate on November 2013, the Women's Health Protection Act, S.1696, would prohibit states from regulating abortion providers in a manner not "generally required in the case of medically comparable procedures." The purpose is to block and to reverse targeted regulation of abortion provider (TRAP) laws. These laws impose medically unnecessary and uniquely expensive requirements upon abortion providers and drive them out of business.
The laws are a powerful strategy. Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, claims that more than 200 TRAPs have been passed on the state level since 2011. Texas is an example of their impact. In 2011, the state had 44 abortion clinics. Today there are 21. By September, when the TRAP law entitled House Bill 2 is fully in effect, only six clinics will remain.
The situation may be lamentable or laudable, but the regulation of abortion is inescapably a state's right under the Constitution. The 10th Amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Nothing in the federal powers enumerated by Article I can be stretched into a grant of federal authority over abortion.
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/212583-an-abortion-act-thats-fast-tracked-to-nowhere#ixzz388M1DQB2
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