Tag: unconstitutional
Judges: Wisconsin Abortion Admitting Privileges Law Unconstitutional

Judges: Wisconsin Abortion Admitting Privileges Law Unconstitutional

By Patrick Marley, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (TNS)

MADISON, Wis. — Federal appeals judges on Monday agreed with a lower court that a politically polarizing 2013 abortion law is unconstitutional, finding it endangered the health of women.

The provision of the law at issue — blocked by a court ruling immediately after Republican Gov. Scott Walker approved it 2 1/2 years ago — would have required doctors who provide abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of where they perform the procedure.

In its 2-1 ruling Monday, a panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago concluded the medical benefit to the requirement was “nonexistent” and “cannot be taken seriously as a measure to improve women’s health.”

“What makes no sense is to abridge the constitutional right to an abortion on the basis of spurious contentions regarding women’s health — and the abridgment challenged in this case would actually endanger women’s health,” Judge Richard Posner wrote for the majority.

A spokeswoman for Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel said he intends to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision.

Less than two weeks ago, the nation’s high court agreed to take a case challenging a Texas law that includes a similar admitting privilege provision. That law, upheld in June by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, is more extensive than Wisconsin’s and includes regulations that would shut down three-fourths of the abortion clinics in the Lone Star State.

In the Wisconsin case, Posner was joined by Judge David Hamilton. Posner was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan and Hamilton by Democratic President Barack Obama.

Dissenting was Judge Daniel Manion, a Reagan appointee. Manion determined the admitting privileges requirement helps ensure doctors are properly credentialed and promotes continuity of care and informed decision-making by patients.

“There is no question that Wisconsin’s admitting-privileges requirement furthers the legitimate, rational basis of protecting women’s health and welfare,” Manion wrote.

Posner’s fiery opinion picked up where he left off in October, when he presided over arguments in the case. The judge peppered an attorney for the state with skeptical questions, brought up comments Walker made on abortion during his brief run for the presidency, and stated he didn’t believe the abortion law provided any health benefits.

U.S. District Judge William Conley in Madison blocked the law almost immediately after it was approved in 2013 and struck it down as unconstitutional this March. Monday’s ruling means the requirement will remain unenforceable unless the Supreme Court goes in another direction.

The state’s two abortion providers, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and Affiliated Medical Services, had challenged the law, contending it would force Affiliated’s clinic in Milwaukee to close because doctors couldn’t get admitting privileges.

If that happened, the state’s three other abortion clinics wouldn’t be able to absorb Affiliated’s caseload, the clinics argued. Those clinics, all run by Planned Parenthood, are in Milwaukee, Madison and Appleton. The Appleton clinic stopped providing abortions last month because of staffing issues but is expected to resume providing them next year.

Doctors at Planned Parenthood’s clinics have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. They work at the clinics part time and were able to secure privileges because of the separate practices they have. Affiliated’s doctors work full time at their clinic and cannot get privileges because they don’t routinely practice hospital procedures.

Admitting privileges allow doctors to admit patients to a hospital and treat them there, but privileges are not needed to get a patient into a hospital in emergencies. The state does not require admitting privileges for doctors who perform other outpatient services, including those that have much higher complication rates than abortion, Posner wrote.

Posner noted abortion clinics already are required to have transfer agreements with hospitals in case of complications.

“The requirement of admitting privileges cannot be taken seriously as a measure to improve women’s health because the transfer agreements that abortion clinics make with hospitals, plus the ability to summon an ambulance by a phone call, assure the access of such women to a nearby hospital in the event of a medical emergency,” he wrote.

The clinics did not challenge a separate part of the law that requires women seeking abortions to get ultrasounds. That requirement remains in effect.

©2015 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Timothy Krause via Flickr

A Year Consumed By Obamacare Fight, With More To Come

A Year Consumed By Obamacare Fight, With More To Come

WASHINGTON — As the end of 2013 approaches, seldom has a domestic issue so dominated the political center stage as Obamacare did this year. The president’s health care insurance law has ridden a policy rollercoaster and will still have a huge question mark hanging over it in 2014.

From the very start of Obama’s presidency, the Republicans in Congress took dead aim at what became the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Obama was able to get it enacted only with solid Democratic support in 2010, while his party was still in control of both the House and Senate.

Thereafter, the Republicans looked to the Supreme Court to declare the law unconstitutional, but were surprised and disappointed when Chief Justice John Roberts led a 5-4 decision upholding it. After recovering from that blow, Republicans set out to “repeal and replace” the law, which they hoped to stigmatize by attaching the president’s name to it, with considerable success.

In 2012, Obamacare became a battle cry in Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, despite the fact that the health care law he enacted as governor of Massachusetts was a model for it. That reality made Romney a poor pitchman against the federal version, and Obama was re-elected. He seemed home free on the single most significant and hard-won legislative victory of his first term.

Still the Republican opposition continued, with party orators from the noisy Tea Party wing leading the fight against the law. But the naysayers miscalculated this year in allowing the 16-day government shutdown over the budget. Polls consistently blamed the Republicans, and Obama appeared to be coasting toward the new year with the wind at his back.

But then, like some ghost out of the political past, Obamcare came rushing back as an issue with its calamitous rollout failure, fanning new life into the opposition.

All through the president’s successful re-election campaign and thereafter, he had been busy touting the act’s benefits and castigating its opponents as bearers of inaccurate information about how the law would work. Suddenly, the tables were turned on him as he was caught overselling parts of it. His oft-quoted line — that if you liked the insurance plan you had, you could keep it — backfired on him. Insured Americans started receiving cancelation notices from insurers whose plans did not meet ACA standards.

Obama found himself scrambling to assure them that they could qualify for better coverage at less cost, a claim that he was hard-pressed to justify. Obamacare foes were thrown a lifeline with which to resurrect their opposition.

As a result, as the president approaches his last three years in office, more of his own political energies are being required to get Obamacare back on track, by cobbling together a more workable registration website and a renewed and revamped sales pitch on the details of the law.

As for the Republicans, fearful before the rollout fiasco that their ill-conceived role in the government shutdown would cost them votes in next November’s congressional elections, instead are looking optimistically toward them. The chances are good that the midterm voting will be seen as a referendum on Obamacare, obliging the Democrats to fight all over again the battle they thought they had won in Obama’s re-election.

If so, the president’s year-end objectives of reviving such stalled legislative initiatives as immigration reform and tougher background checks on gun purchasing may have to give way. Much, to be sure, will ride on the public response to the efforts to re-sell Obamacare in this suddenly more uncertain climate.

Optimistic Democrats cite similar early glitches in the introduction of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid before they were widely embraced and lauded by recipients. But none encountered the storm stirred up so far by the law that bears this beleaguered president’s name.

Those programs, regarded the heart of the social safety net, have been a magnet for Democratic support from poor and middle-class voters. So it’s not so surprising that Obamacare has become such a fierce partisan political battleground for so long.

Jules Witcover’s latest book is Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption (William Morrow). You can respond to this column at juleswitcover@comcast.net

AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski

Perry Doubles Down On Social Security Attack

Rick Perry is at it again. Just one week after Perry’s Communications Director Ray Sullivan told the Wall Street Journal that Perry’s anti-Washington book Fed Up! does not reflect the Texas governor’s current views on Social Security, the Texas governor reiterated the his controversial position on the program.

On Saturday Perry told an Iowa crowd that

“[Social Security] is a Ponzi scheme for these young people. The idea that they’re working and paying into Social Security today, that the current program is going to be there for them, is a lie,” Perry said. “It is a monstrous lie on this generation, and we can’t do that to them.”

Perry went on to declare that “I haven’t backed off anything in my book. So read the book again and get it right.”

Considering that Fed Up! argues that Social Security, federal education policy, consumer financial protection, and bank regulation are all unconstitutional — among other controversial claims — it’s hard to disagree with Perry’s declaration. Voters should definitely read Perry’s book and get his policies right, because otherwise they might find themselves unwittingly voting for one of the most extreme conservative presidential candidates in memory.