When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it claimed to be removing the judiciary from the abortion debate. In reality, it simply gave the courts a macabre new task: deciding how far states can push a patient toward death before allowing her to undergo an emergency abortion.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit offered its own answer, declaring that Texas may prohibit hospitals from providing “stabilizing treatment” to pregnant patients by performing an abortion—withholding the procedure until their condition deteriorates to the point of grievous injury or near-certain death.
The ruling proves what we already know: Roe’s demise has transformed the judiciary into a kind of death panel that holds the power to elevate the potential life of a fetus over the actual life of a patient.
Using the term this way is to point out the hypocrisy. Republicans are against “death panels” in Obamacare. These were nothing but a means to decide how certain end of life care should be done, and exist in every medical system going back to when we were striking flint to make fire. Republicans have just handed women actually bad death panels in the form of judiciary and legislative branches that can hold back medical care until it’s too late.