Hysterical crusades

A recent editorial derided Planned Parenthood for finally complying with a medically unnecessary law that requires a backup physician with hospital admitting privileges for abortions by pills—“common sense,” according to the editorial (for a procedure that is a hundred-fold less risky than fullterm pregnancy).

The law, crafted to discourage persons who manage their own sex lives and families, cleverly exploited an outdated FDA policy. The FDA currently considers Planned Parenthood and emergency rooms good backup for abortions.

Like other licensed facilities, Planned Parenthood’s already complied with strict clinical standards (and still does). The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found no evidence that hospital admitting privileges improve abortion safety. Instead, it reported that such laws threaten quality of care, obviously adding expense, alarm, and bureaucracy with no benefit—just as legislators apparently intended. Yet misstatements like yours help scare doctors from open support (the reason for Planned Parenthood’s delay in finding one).

When the law took effect earlier this year, women across Arkansas faced an obstacle course of money, time, and travel to visit the state’s only remaining abortion facility, where surgical abortion was their only option. These hurdles might be invisible or trivial (as the state’s attorneys tried to claim in their imaginative courtroom testimony) to well-paid writers of the statewide newspaper, but they are effective hurdles to most women. Ultimately, a court intervened, agreeing with medical evidence and informed common sense that the law protects no woman’s health.

Access to abortion in Arkansas remains tenuous. It is a serious matter that most of us want available (safely) and free of sensation and hysterical crusades. Falsely reviling professionals who provide legitimate, desired services makes our state neither healthier, safer, nor happier.

JIM WOHLLEB Little Rock