Court ruling on abortion clinics should’ve stopped unfair crusade

Three summers ago, thousands of Texans inspired by state Sen. Wendy Davis’ pinkshoed filibuster filled the Capitol and, with the sheer power of their voices, stopped a bill from becoming law that would have hurt women and violated their constitutional rights.

It was a brief victory and a historic moment, one I was proud to witness. Those protesters were branded by political opponents as an “unruly mob.” And, in a way, they were.

This week, the “mob” was vindicated. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down HB 2, the bill that eventually became law and led to the shuttering of dozens of clinics and loss of access to abortion services across the state.

The ruling came after years of wasting taxpayer dollars. After years of state officials assuring us that they were motivated not by politics, but because they wanted to protect the health of Texas women.

Even after the nation’s highest court called their bluff, people like Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick stuck to the false mantra and vowed more of the same legislation. Who is the unruly mob now? Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the majority in the 5-3 decision, minced no words:

“We have found nothing in Texas’ record evidence,” Breyer wrote, that showed requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at local hospitals advanced any “legitimate interest in protecting women’s health.” He added: “When directly asked at oral argument whether Texas knew of a single instance in which the new requirement would have helped even one woman obtain better treatment, Texas admitted that there was no evidence in the record of such a case.”

Likewise, the court found no legitimate medical reason to require clinics to meet surgical standards when most abortions don’t involve surgery, patients with very rare complications are sent to hospitals, and, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in a

concurring opinion, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists maintains that abortion is “one of the safest procedures performed in the United States.”

Still, the ideologues who run this state refuse to give up and continue the ruse.

“I’m clearly pro-life,” Patrick said in a Houston news conference. “But if someone’s going to have an abortion, I want them to have it in the safest possible environment.”

He went on to claim that the Supreme Court, by striking down what it found to be onerous, essentially legalized conditions akin to back-alley abortions. How ludicrous. How can you be so desperate to thwart reason, law, and even the constitution for a cause?

This other mob is not a collection of frustrated citizens with limited influence. It’s a group of powerful officials sworn to uphold the laws of this state who are beating back facts with the blunt objections of ideology.

With this law, and with so many shortsighted policies, Patrick and his ilk are failing Texans. In a way, they’re failing their own agenda.

They use the term “pro-life,” but it’s hard to reconcile the narrow focus on policies affecting the unborn with a neglectful approach to policies affecting children in Texas.

Our foster care system is in shambles. Inequities and funding deficiencies in our public schools abound. 42 percent of Hispanic students are enrolled in high-poverty school districts, compared to 6 percent of white students, according to the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities.

This year, Texas ranked 43rd among the 50 states in overall child well-being, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s annual Kids Count data book.

Texas has one of the lowest rates of insured children in the country, ranking 49th in the nation. One-fourth of Texas children live in poverty, and the rates for Latinos and blacks are three times higher than those for whites.

Addressing those problems isn’t politically expedient. And so, the abortion wars rage on.

The Supreme Court has given Texas women a reprieve, but the assault on our rights and our health care access will continue.

The truth is no deterrence for an unruly mob.