Planned Parenthood Challenges New Abortion Law

Governor Scott Walker has signed a controversial abortion law that could lead to the closure of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Appleton.

After the signing, Planned Parenthood filed a law suit in federal court in Madison challenging the law’s constitutionality.

The new law requires doctors at abortion clinics in the state to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic carrying out the procedure. Madison attorney Lester Pines, who represents Planned Parenthood in their lawsuit, says the law violates due process rights of physicians who perform abortions by leaving it up to private hospitals to decide which doctors can perform abortions.

Pines: “The state without any standards cannot delegate to a private organization the right of a licensed physician to practice his or her profession. It’s unconstitutional.”

Pines says the bill is designed to infringe on the constitutional right of a woman to get an abortion. Pines also says requiring hospital admission rights for doctors who perform abortions ignores what he says is the fact that the procedure is a safe one and rarely results in complications that might require hospital admission.

But Susan Armacost of Wisconsin Right to Life says when those complications do occur and the doctor doesn’t have admission rights, women are packed into an ambulance alone and sent to the hospital.

Armacost: “This is completely unacceptable, and Planned Parenthood has come up with all kinds of flimsy excuses as to why their abortionists can’t get medical privileges. This is something before they ever opened one abortion clinic in the state they should have had this nailed down. “

Armacost says eight states already have a similar law in place. But Planned Parenthood says some of these laws face court injunctions on constitutional grounds.