ACLU: Abortion is “necessary medical care”
Posted on May 15, 2006
The ACLU can’t even manage to stick to its own story within a single paragraph in this release. First they claim that inmates are denied “access to abortion care.” Two sentences and another lie later, they acknowledge that an inmate may seek an abortion with a court order!
ACLU Asks Court to Uphold Decision Allowing Inmates To Access Abortion Care (5/12/2006)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: media@aclu.orgPHOENIX – The American Civil Liberties Union today asked an Arizona court of appeals to uphold a lower court decision allowing inmates access to timely, safe, and legal abortions.
“Jail officials cannot ignore the medical needs of inmates simply because they do not agree with the decision to end a pregnancy,” said Brigitte Amiri, a staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. “We hope that the court will see this policy for what it is: dangerous and unjust.”
At issue is an unwritten Maricopa County Jail policy denying inmates access to abortion care. The policy prohibits jail officials from transporting an inmate to obtain an abortion. The only way an inmate can get an abortion is by seeking and obtaining a court order. The jail transports inmates without a court order for all other necessary medical care, including prenatal care and childbirth.
In August 2005, the Superior Court of Arizona, Maricopa County, struck down the jail’s policy, holding that it serves “no legitimate penological purpose.” After weeks of being denied access to abortion services, a pregnant inmate filed the case in May 2004 on behalf of herself and future inmates seeking abortion care. Because of the policy, the inmate was delayed seven weeks from the time she first told jail officials she wanted an abortion.
“The Maricopa jail is putting unnecessary obstacles in the paths of women seeking basic medical care,” said Alessandra Soler Meetze, Executive Director of the ACLU of Arizona. “Regardless of whether a woman is in jail, she still has a constitutional right to make her own decision – without government interference – about whether or not to have an abortion. ”
According to today’s brief, the ACLU noted that Joe Arpaio, the sheriff in charge of Maricopa County Jail, has “maintained the Policy throughout his tenure, consistent with his well-publicized stance against abortion and his ‘America’s toughest sheriff’ persona.”
The ACLU today filed a brief in the case, Doe v. Arpaio, 1 CA-CV 05-0835. Lawyers on the case include Amiri, Talcott Camp, Jennifer McAllister-Nevins, and Charu Chandrasekhar with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.
To read today’s brief visit: www.aclu/reproductiverights/abortion/25553lgl20060512.html
Since the ACLU failed to include a working link in their own release, you can access the brief here.
Suffering through the entire complaint, the ACLU’s twistedness shines through in its insistence that an abortion is a basic/standard/routine/necessary/no-different-from-removing-a-splinter procedure with no moral implications. The fact is, an abortion, especially if an inmate is asking that state resources be used to obtain one (although in this case the ACLU swears up and down that inmate was picking up the tab) should be weighed with more scrutiny than a regular trip to sick call. I know that there are some onerous Supreme Court rulings out there that create a muddy “undue burden” “standard” (courtesy of Queen Nebulous, SDO’C) in the case of the exalted “right” to in-utero dismemberment of a child that say different, but Maricopa County’s duty is to the taxpayer. How long before the ACLU claims that requiring the inmate to compensate the state for expended resources in pursuit of an elective and morally abominable procedure is an “unconstitutional” “undue burden?”
The dementia continues throughout the brief when the ACLU repeatedly compares pre/post-natal care to butchering an unborn child — as if the state’s effort to ensure the healthy delivery of a baby is morally equivalent to the state ensuring the agonizing death of another. This, my friends, is what the macabre Architects of the Culture of Death have spawned.
Sheriff Joe gets it right (except about whose money it is, but we’ll forgive him) when he says:
“It’s government money and this is elective surgery. What are they going to ask for next? A nose job?”
Final note: One of the more audacious claims in the brief is that requiring a court order for state resources to be used to provide services and transport an inmate to an abortion somehow violates the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Would they apply the same claim to the baby being ripped piece-by-piece from the place where she should be most protected?
» Filed Under ACLU, Abortion, News
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5 Responses to “ACLU: Abortion is “necessary medical care””
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Its just sickening to use “care” and abortion in the same sentence, much less as a synonym.
“The ACLU can’t even manage to stick to its own story within a single paragraph in this release. First they claim that inmates are denied ‘access to abortion care.’ Two sentences and another lie later, they acknowledge that an inmate may seek an abortion with a court order!”
There isn’t a contradiction in that paragraph. They state that the Maricopa County Jail is denying access, not that access is absolutely, 100% denied. Their point is that the inmates shouldn’t need to go to the length of getting a court order for the procedure. Whether you like it or not, inmates have the right to abortions, and it isn’t the jail’s place to deny them transportation. The court is pretty clear in its interpretation of the law.
Next, it seems pretty uncouth to bring up the unpleasant imagery involved with an abortion into this discussion, which is strictly a legal matter. No one ever said the abortion procedure is like picking daisies, but once again, whether you like it or not it’s still legal. At that same time let me say that you’re definitely entitled to your beliefs concerning the morality of abortion, and I won’t argue against those; however, they’re irrelevant to this case. Now if abortion should someday be outlawed, then by all means…
“They state that the Maricopa County Jail is denying access, not that access is absolutely, 100% denied.”
Bwwwaaaaaaaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha. Are you serious? You’re worse than they are!
“it seems pretty uncouth to bring up the unpleasant imagery involved with an abortion into this discussion”
Uncouth? Abortion is what it is and the ACLU’s position that abortion should be permitted at all times for any reason up to the instant before a baby is completely delivered is “uncouth,” not my accurate descriptions. I’ve never heard of another “right” that offends someone when properly described, but the abortion debate has been muddled for years by the euphemistic pap you prefer to a real discussion.
“No one ever said the abortion procedure is like picking daisies”
No, but the ACLU insists that it’s the same thing as delivering a baby or getting an MRI. Further, because killing unborn children IS a moral issue (AND a legal one, it’s not either or here), a public entity should apply more scrutiny when public funds and resources (which should never, under any circumstances, be used in pursuit/conduct of an abortion)are involved.
Maricopa County’s position as a steward of (coercively obtained) taxpayer money requires it to enforce such a policy.
I hope the opposition makes sure that court records show that abortion is an act of violence against a human being. I believe there is already court cases that admit that an Unborn Child is a human being from conception on. If I am right then the violence is easy to prove.
I do not like the idea of abortions. Few do, even pro-choicers. But more importantly, I’m not sure what kind of mental deficiency is keeping most of you from understanding CaptainRational’s point. If someone needs to get a court order to obtain a given medical procedure, then she does not have access to that procedure in any traditional sense. You hammherheads make it sound as though getting a court order is a simple end run around a statute and is akin to snapping one’s fingers.
If you had to get a court order before being permitted to post your daily dose of senselessness onthe Internet, “Glib,” would you not complain that you were being censored? (No need to answer any rhetorical questions.)
Then again, people who are committed anti-abortionists rarely show even a glimmer of the kind of cognitive dexterity required to appreciate all of the issues at hand here; they just squeeze their beady little eyes shut, plug their ears with their fingers, slap madly away at their Bibles, flippantly and stupidly refer to one-day-old fertilized ova as “babies” and abortion as “murder,” and yammer away like the hapless goofballs they are.