Women in Louisiana: Say Goodbye to Your Freedom

By lara s. ‘22

The United States of America is the land of freedom and second chances— that is unless you live in one of the many Southern states that seem to be in a race to see who can ban abortion first. At the moment, Alabama seems the first to do so but Louisiana is catching up. 

Currently, abortion is already more or less impossible to obtain in Louisiana. There are only three abortion clinics (ACs) in Louisiana. As if the lack of ACs wasn’t enough, Louisiana law mandates that patients who plan on having an abortion must have an ultrasound and visit a doctor twenty-four hours prior to the procedure. The session can last many days and can cost fifty dollars or more, not including transportation, lodging, etc. There is also a waiting period of seventy-two hours which again is medically unnecessary and complicates the logistics of getting the procedure done. Not to mention that when you are trying to seek an abortion time is ticking, the longer you delay the pregnancy the more costly and potentially more dangerous. Abortions must also be performed by a physician licensed in Louisiana, which means nurses and midwives are not allowed to administer the abortion pill, nor are they allowed to perform surgical abortions. These laws, among others, have proven successful in limiting the already scarce abortion clinics in Louisiana from five in 2014 to three in 2018. 

Even with a barricade of restrictions in place, what will most likely bring reproductive rights in Louisiana to its knees is a requirement that an AC have admitting privileges to a hospital within thirty miles. That means a doctor has to be a member of a hospital’s staff to have admitting privileges. Additionally, before granting admitting privileges, the business arm of the hospital considers how many patients a doctor is likely to bring in, and more patients means more money. Of course, since abortion has a 99% safety record and clinics already have plans in place if something were to go wrong, there would be an extremely low chance of patients needing to be admitted to a hospital. Additionally, hospitals have traditionally despised being embroiled in political fights. Combine that with the threat of what many ACs face on a regular basis, harassment, bombings, shootings, arsons, death threats, murders, and just endless violence and vitriol directed towards women usually among the most vulnerable of society and doctors who are sometimes risking more lucrative careers to help women. Where is the medical merit of this law? Regardless, Louisiana decided to copy and paste Texas HB2, a law that mandated abortion clinics must have admitting privileges to a hospital within thirty miles and like Texas, this law ended up being challenged in court but it didn’t prevent the closure of half of the abortion clinics in Texas. The case of June Medical Services vs Russo debates whether the previous case of Whole Women’s Health vs Hellerstedt from 2016, which ruled that it was unfair to women to require ACs to have admitting privileges to hospitals within 30 miles, should be upheld. If the court decided to ignore Whole Women’s Health and uphold the Louisiana law, only one clinic would remain open and only one doctor would be able to continue to perform abortions. This change would not only be in direct violation of the Whole Women’s Health ruling but also Roe v. Wade. The most sinister part of this change would be that states wouldn’t even need to directly challenge Roe v. Wade to scrap reproductive freedom for women. Additionally, this case could cause many other anti-abortion states to follow Louisiana’s lead and limit their abortion rights as well. 

This is one of the largest abortion cases to be tried by the current Supreme Court, which includes conservative judges Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh who are more likely to vote in favor of the TRAP law. The decision of this case is expected to be made in the spring or summer. However, it’s important to remember the makeup of the court and that the outcome would rely on Chief Justice John Roberts, who voted for abortion restrictions in the past, yet voted against the enforcement of the Louisiana law while the case was being played out. The outcome as of now is not incredibly clear, but the state of reproductive rights as of now isn’t bright.