In the last election year, many Republican policymakers raised the specter of a “war on women” by pushing new restrictions on reproductive rights, opposing equal-pay measures, and endorsing new curbs on contraception access.
This election year is starting to look awfully similar, isn’t it?
At a Baptist church [Thursday], Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signed into law legislation requiring that abortion providers have admitting privileges at local hospitals. The legislation is also expected close several legal abortion clinics. […]According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, there is only one abortion clinic in Louisiana currently able to comply with the law, in Shreveport, a five-hour drive from the New Orleans area. If local hospitals don’t grant admitting privileges to doctors at the state’s four other clinics — as has been the case in nearby Mississippi and Texas — the four other clinics in the state will be forced to close.
Irin Carmon’s report added that the proposal drew criticism from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association, which said the legislation had “no medical basis,” though Jindal and his allies didn’t seem to care.
The far-right talking point about the dangers of government interfering with the practice of medicine only applies when conservatives are attacking “Obamacare,” not when GOP lawmakers are actually interfering with the practice of medicine.
Making matters slightly worse, one of the new measures in Louisiana will also “prohibit abortion providers or their affiliates, including Planned Parenthood, to instruct or distribute information on health related issues, such as sex education, at public or charter schools.”
Because if there’s one thing proponents of these measures object to, it’s groups like Planned Parenthood* providing educational materials to sexually-active teens, preventing unwanted pregnancies and abortions.
Related video:
Disclosure: My wife works for Planned Parenthood, but had no role in this report.
Recommended
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."