It was left to a mere 385-word-long concurring opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to summarize the argument that HB 2 could not possibly be what legislators said it was: a good faith effort to protect women from the likes of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, convicted of three counts of first degree murder and one count of involuntary manslaughter. It was, in Ginsburg’s words, “beyond rational belief.”
The usual in-the-tank suspects provided the medical cover to “prove” that abortion is safer than a walk in the park, an aspirin, or a tooth extraction. But it was left to Danielle Paquette, a Washington Post reporter, to tease out that Justice Ginsburg was rebutting a contention made by Justice Samuel Alito in his dissent.
Which was? That HB 2 was intended to cause unsafe abortion clinics to close and that it was the absence of active supervision “by state or local authorities or by his peers” that allowed abortionist Kermit Gosnell to run riot. Gosnell, as you recall, delivered three late-term babies alive and then murdered them by severing their spinal cords.
Ginsburg brushed this motivation aside. Or, put more accurately, turned it inside out:
When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners, faute de mieux [for lack of a better option ] at great risk to their health and safety.
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