MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - A federal court trial begins Monday over an Alabama abortion law that proponents say will make abortions safer and opponents say will close three of Alabama’s five licensed abortion clinics.
Planned Parenthood Southeast and the American Civil Liberties Union are challenging the 2013 law, which requires doctors at abortion clinics to have approval to admit patients to nearby hospitals.
Clinics operated by Planned Parenthood Southeast in Birmingham and Mobile and Reproductive Health Systems in Montgomery say they will have to close because they use traveling doctors without admitting privileges. The West Alabama Women’s Center in Tuscaloosa and the Alabama Women’s Center in Huntsville use local doctors who have admitting privileges at hospitals in those cities.
Proponents of the law say problems arise because traveling doctors remain in a city only a few hours and aren’t around to handle complications. Attorney General Luther Strange’s staff said in a court filing that the state will present witnesses, including physicians, who will testify that having a doctor on hand to manage complications and admit a patient to the hospital will improve the quality of care. The attorney general’s office also says there is a need for additional credentialing because one of the seven physicians performing abortions in Alabama is being prosecuted by the federal government on Medicaid fraud charges.
“The evidence at trial will show that abortion clinics have continued to fail to provide appropriate care to their patients in line with industry standards,” state Solicitor General Andrew Brasher said in a court filing.
The plaintiffs argue that abortion is one of the safest medical procedures and that doctors can’t secure admitting privileges because they have too few patients to meet hospital requirements or the hospitals won’t admit abortion doctors because they are controversial. They will also argue that the law’s real purpose is to reduce women’s access to abortion and make them travel greater distances to try to obtain one.
“Restricting access will lead to dangerous delays for women,” said Jeanne Conry, immediate past president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Mississippi, Texas and Wisconsin have passed laws similar to Alabama’s. All are on hold pending legal challenges, except the Texas requirement, which was upheld by a federal appeals court in March. A trial over the Wisconsin law starts May 27.
The legislatures in Oklahoma, Louisiana and Pennsylvania are currently considering similar requirements.
“The U.S. is now poised to become a country in which a woman’s ability to make the private and personal medical decision best for her and her family will be dependent on where she happens to lives. That is not supposed to happen in this country,” said Helene Krasnoff, senior director of public policy litigation and law at Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
In the Alabama case, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson has scheduled witnesses to testify in Montgomery through June 5. He will rule at a later date.
The Alabama Department of Public Health reports the two clinics not threatened by the law are the state’s largest, with the Tuscaloosa clinic performing 3,503 abortions in 2012 and the Huntsville clinic 1,451. The department reports the Birmingham clinic recorded 1,396 abortions in 2012, the Mobile clinic 1,275, and the Montgomery clinic 978.
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