In fact, a women’s rights group loves women’s bodies so much that they believe clinics which provide services exclusively for women shouldn’t have any of the regulations applying to other outpatient facilities applied to them. Because safety and sanitation, those are things only men deserve, right?
Pardon me as I step away from the main topic of this blog and ponder an issue that baffles me as a modern women who actually does consider herself a feminist – at least one who doesn’t hate men.
I can’t fathom exactly how pro-choice groups oppose regulating abortion clinics as ambulatory surgical centers. While I understand their goal is to make abortion as accessible as possible, it is still a fairly major procedure that can have a long-term impact on the reproductive health of a woman. Shouldn’t they be in favor of making sure that such facilities have the same kind of oversight and safety requirements as similar medical centers that provide services for men?
I’m not even getting into the moral issue of abortion, this is a matter of looking at it strictly as a legal medical procedure – which it currently is right now. After the horrors in Philadelphia with agencies in dispute over who controls what in the process, why is there opposition to providing a clear regulation structure that can allow abortion clinics to remain open, but also require the same quality of treatment and safety conditions required for clinics that also serve the needs of men? Instead, a woman’s group calls on such equitable standards as a “public health crisis.”
Even beyond the question of whether abortion should be legal, the fact remains that it is legal. But I’m really shocked when proposals that ultimately do protect the lives and health of the women who seek abortions are actually opposed by women’s groups on the grounds that it will somehow cut off all access to the procedure. This isn’t a notification law, it’s not a mandate to get an ultrasound with a waiting period imposed afterwards, or any of the medically-dubious types of rules that many pro-life lawmakers try to push around the country. It’s regulating an abortion clinic for what it is – an outpatient surgical center.
I’m not a doctor, and I don’t play one on tv. I also don’t follow the abortion debate or politics very closely because it’s not an issue that’s ever going to change in any substantial manner. But, I am a woman. And when I hear groups that are supposedly all for equality getting their panties in a twist over regulating surgical services for women the same way that men’s medical services are treated, it doesn’t really add up on how this advances feminism if the current structure allowed a clinic that killed live babies and a woman. That seems very anti-woman to me.
