To be an abortion provider in Texas, you have to have “admitting privileges” at a hospital within 30 miles of the facility. That restriction, which recently was first overturned by one judge and then, within days, upheld by the conservative Fifth Circuit Court, is essentially a fraud. Texas is not the only state taking this tack–see Mississippi–but it’s the most recent.

So far, in most mainstream media reports, the effect of the admitting-privileges restriction has been well documented: It’s going to force almost all abortion clinics in Texas to close, making—as anti-choice advocates have hoped for—abortions infinitely more difficult to get and leaving thousands of women– with legitimate reasons to terminate their pregnancies in a way sanctioned by law—with no good options.

Left unmentioned in most media reports is an examination of the term “admitting privileges” itself. Obviously, the admitting-privileges gambit is another ploy to make abortions harder—in some areas virtually impossible–to get, but what is less known is that the concept of admitting privileges is an antiquated notion that is mostly irrelevant in contemporary medical care.

Here’s a formal definition of admitting privileges, from USlegal.com:

Admitting privilege is the right of a doctor, by virtue of membership as a hospital’s medical staff, to admit patients to a particular hospital or medical center for providing specific diagnostic or therapeutic services to such patient in that hospital. Each hospital maintains a list of health care providers who have admitting privileges in that hospital.

Anti-reproductive-rights advocates and legislators would have us believe that, if a medical emergency occurs during an abortion, the doctor in charge needs to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital in order to ensure the safety of the woman. On the surface, that argument sounds plausible.  But, in reality, it’s a fraudulent concept—and proponents know that.

Why? Because, when there’s an emergency, admitting privileges become irrelevant. Under a 1986 federal law known as EMTALA, hospitals are required to provide care to anyone who needs emergency care [with or without insurance, by the way.] This requirement includes pregnant women who need a life-saving abortion, are in labor, or are suffering the effects of a botched abortion. [Sadly, in 2011, a bill was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives that would have allowed hospitals to turn away patients arriving in the ER in need of a life-saving abortion or other medical help related to abortions. Fortunately, that bill went nowhere, but the fact that it was introduced at all is very disturbing. Opponents of that inhumane notion called it the “Let Them Die” bill.]

Think of it this way: If you’re walking down the street and have a heart attack, it doesn’t matter who your personal doctor is, or whether he/she has admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of where you are: You can be taken to any hospital emergency room, get admitted, and receive treatment, even if your doctor isn’t there, and even if you don’t know a doctor within 30 miles of the hospital.

Also, if a woman is at home and experiences a pregnancy-related emergency, emergency responders will transport her to the closest hospital, regardless of where her doctor has “admitting privileges,” and—again, under federal law–she’ll be cared for there, no admitting-privileges questions asked.

It’s also important to realize that the notion of admitting privileges does not jibe with contemporary norms in inpatient hospital care. Today, many hospitals employ staff physicians to provide inpatient care, and whether an abortion provider has admitting privileges at a particular hospital plays little or no role in determining which hospital may be best suited to care for the patient.

So, does the admitting-privileges requirement make abortions safer, as anti-reproductive-freedom legislators would have you believe? Well, of course we want abortions to be safe—and in the vast majority of cases under Roe v Wade—they are, as opposed to what happened in the back-alley, pre-Roe-v-Wade era, when abortions were illegal, unregulated and often dangerous. Given the current state of emergency care and federal law governing such care, the admitting-privileges requirement doesn’t do much to enhance safety. In fact, it may have the exact opposite effect, making legal, safe abortions more difficult to obtain and putting women at even more risk.

The post The “admitting privileges” fraud appeared first on Occasional Planet.

A classic country/western song says: “If you want to play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddle in the band.”  Well, if you want to vote in Texas on November 5, 2013, you gotta have a photo ID in your hand—a photo ID with your “up-to-date legal name” on it. That’s the new specification for Texas photo IDs, and it’s designed to disenfranchise the class of people who are most likely not to meet that standard: women.

As many as 34 percent of women voters in Texas lack a photo ID with their current name on it. The reason, of course, is that so many women change their names when they get married or divorced, but don’t get around to changing their drivers’ licenses until the next expiration date. Ninety-nine percent of men have their up-to-date legal names on their documents, because they never change their names.

And just to make the hurdle for women even higher, according to The New Civil Rights Movement:

Texas law now requires women to show original documents of the name change: a marriage certificate, a divorce certificate, or a court-ordered name-change certificate—and no photocopies are allowed. This leaves women in Texas either scrambling to gather the proper paperwork and get their ID in order before the registration cut-off, or leaves them unable to vote.

Think Progress adds:

Getting approved copies of these documents is often expensive or difficult for many, especially low-income women, to obtain.

…In the absence of original documents, voters must pay a minimum of $20 to receive new copies. Due to inflexible work schedules and travel expenses, voters often opt to have their documents mailed, incurring additional costs.

Similar to how poor, minority, and elderly voters in Pennsylvania had trouble getting to the DMV to obtain a state ID or driver’s license before the election, women in Texas are having trouble getting an acceptable photo ID that matches their most current name.

Just to put all of this into the real world, let me ask you this question: If you’re married or divorced, how quickly could you put your hands on your original marriage certificate, or your original divorce papers?

Why now?

The timing of this discriminatory voter ID law is not an accident. It comes as a direct response to the rising popularity of Texas State Senator Wendy Davis—a Democrat in the Republican-dominated legislature—whose 11-hour filibuster of anti-choice legislation catapulted her into the limelight. She is now running for Governor against Republican Greg Abbott, and she is galvanizing women voters in the state. The Texas Republican party is running scared, so, rather than try to win an election fair and square, they’re doing what Republican legislatures are doing all over America–rigging the election system to disenfranchise “undesirable” voters. It’s a sickening trend. First it was African-Americans, then it was Hispanics, then it was poor people, then it was anyone whose name sounded “foreign.” And now it’s women. After they exclude all of these groups, who will be left to vote? Oh, wait, that’s their point, isn’t it?

The post Voting rights watch: Texas makes voting harder for women appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I never thought I’d hear myself say this: I love Texas. Well, to be a bit clearer: I love Texas women. To clarify further: I love the badass, pro-reproductive-rights, Texas women who stood up to the Texas legislature yesterday [June, 25, 2013] and prevented it from passing one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws ever proposed. And in particular, I love Wendy Davis, the courageous Texas state senator who filibustered the bill under nearly impossible rules, until past the legislatively imposed midnight deadline.

AlterNet gives a full account of Davis and the heroic effort of her cohorts. Here’s the heart of the story:

SB5 would have closed nearly every abortion clinic in the state, leaving only a handful of locations where women in Texas can safely and legally procure the procedure. It also would have outlawed abortion after 20 weeks, directly contradicting Roe v. Wade.

…Davis literally stood with Texas woman for eleven hours, unable to even lean against a podium for support, let alone take a bathroom break or eat. Determined to strike down the bill to which she brought national attention, Davis flat-out refused to yield.

After hours of Davis delivering facts about the necessity of access to abortion and heart-wrenching testimony from women across the country, Texas republicans decided they just couldn’t take any more of her talking and moved to shut her right up. They claimed she violated the filibuster’s “three-strike” rules, twice by allegedly veering off topic by bringing up topics like Planned Parenthood’s budget, mandatory sonograms, and Roe v. Wade (not “germaine,” the GOP claimed), and also by receiving assistance to strap on a backbrace. Shortly after 10 p.m., her Senate foes said she had broken the rules and the filibuster was over.

Attempts to silence Davis resulted in an in eruption of shouting, as supporters yelled “LET HER SPEAK!” At 11 p.m., Democratic senators challenged the end of the filibuster and debated the rules, postponing the vote about 11:45 p.m.. Backing Davis were Sen. Kirk Watson, Sen. Rodney Ellis and Sen. Leticia Van De Putte, who came from her father’s funeral in San Antonio to stand with Davis and Texas women.

The crowd loudly refused to accept the filibuster’s end. Chanting ensued for a straight 15 minutes, drowning out the vote.

Sen. Robert Lloyd Duncan asked for “order” to no avail, and the unruly crowd was ordered out of the building so that the Republicans could have their way and throw away women’s rights in some peace and quiet.

But then, the article continues, “the Senate Republican pulled some really shady shit.”

The Senate passed the bill minutes after the midnight deadline, but the GOP went ahead and changed the document to pretend they met the deadline anyway:

The initial time stamp on the Capitol website and on Senate documents placed the vote at 12:02 or 12:03 on June 26. But then someone mysteriously changed the time stamp to make it appear SB5 passed before the deadline. The time stamp evidence, circulated on Twitter, eventually forced GOP leaders to admit defeat, at least for tonight.

By 12:45 AM, protesters were cleared from the room, and a couple of hours later, the bill was officially dead.

That’s the kind of protest we can all believe in. And we’re going to need a lot more of it. Texas Governor Rick Perry has already called for a special session of the legislature to reconsider the bill.

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