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 āstabilizing treatmentā to pregnant patients by performing an abortionāwithholding the procedure until their condition deteriorates to the point of grievous injury or near-certain death.
The ruling proves what we already know: Roeās 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.
Thatās a lot of words for āboth side badā
I at least agree that a term like ādeath panelsā is a loaded label. I can still agree that judicially restricting life-saving treatments is a terrible practice, without shorthanding it to a ādeath panelā.
EDIT: Fixed double negative
No, itās not āboth side badā (and the implication there is that any time when someone says āboth sides do this badlyā is unhelpful, which I disagree with).
Itās āboth sides are doing something similar here but that thing isnāt part of the reasoning or decision making of each side, and youāre treating it like it is.ā
My original statement was an observation of the irony here, not a social commentary on what a ādeath panelā actually is. Whether the panels of death came about intentionally or not has nothing to do with the fact that they are creating what they were crying about years ago.