Schizoid Court Orders Every State to have an Abortion Clinic

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which just finished ruling that abortion clinic regulations are perfectly constitutional in Texas, just ruled that the same regulations are flagrantly unconstitutional in Mississippi.

You can get whiplash trying to following the tortuous paths of logic these guys follow.

The 5th Circuit upheld these restrictions in Texas, which have been quite effective in reducing the number of baby abattoirs in the Lone Star State. Texas is down from 42 clinics not long ago to just 20 today.

But the same court, in a burst of illogical irrationality, ruled that the same restriction in Mississippi is flatly unconstitutional. Why? Because it would close the last remaining abortion clinic in the state, which would make Mississippi the first abortion-free state in the country.

In a fevered blast of judicial activism and rabid pro-abortion extremism, these judges invented an entirely new constitutional category of rights based exclusively on geography. Every state must have at least one functional abortion clinic, said these black-robed tyrants, because, “A state cannot lean on its sovereign neighbors to provide protection of its citizens’ federal constitutional rights. Pre-viability, a woman has the constitutional right to end her pregnancy by abortion,” the court ruled. This law “effectively extinguishes that right within Mississippi’s borders.”

The court lamented the fact that a woman living in Iuka already has to drive almost two hundred miles to get an abortion in Jackson, blindly ignoring the fact that the same woman can get an abortion less than 100 miles away in Memphis, Tennessee.

In other words, this court has now issued an edict that every single state in the union must have at least one operational baby butcher shop as a matter of constitutional obligation.

This raises some honest questions. What if the two doctors who fly into Mississippi to perform abortions in Mississippi get tired of the weekly treks, or decide to retire? Will the court order the state of Mississippi to own and operate a new abortion clinic at taxpayer expense to make sure that babies can be destroyed in the womb in the Magnolia State? That would seem to be a necessary corollary.

Imagine that new building codes in a given state would require the closing of its last gun store. Does anyone think that the 5th Circuit would order state government to keep that last remaining gun shop open at all costs because, “A state cannot lean on its sovereign neighbors to provide protection of its citizens’ federal constitutional rights” to keep and bear arms?

The issue does come down to the nature of abortion, whether it is morally benign or morally monstrous. Let’s not forget that the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany was perfectly legal. Now imagine that toward the end of the war, Germany decided to close every concentration camp, and a court popped up and said, no, you have to leave at least one operating furnace just in case somebody in Germany decides to gas a Jew. We can’t make good Germans go all the way to Poland to kill a Jew, they have to be able to do it right here at home.

The parallel is exact. The right the 5th Circuit should be protecting is the right to life, not the right to kill.