Abortion advocates are right. It is about women's health but just not in the way they'd have you believe.
The second of two bills dealing with abortion requirements, neither of which have any implications that could damage women's health (in fact, just the opposite), was heading toward a full state Senate vote last week in the Tennessee General Assembly.
One would require certain abortion clinics to be regulated as ambulatory surgical centers, assuring better equipped facilities, and one would require women seeking an abortion to wait 48 hours before having the procedure and to be given information about the child she is carrying and her pregnancy choices.
Abortion advocates would have you believe these common-sense regulations would -- in a physical sense -- damage a woman's health.
Proposals similar to the ones that were heading toward the Senate had been a part of Tennessee law before the state Supreme Court, in an overreach that voters corrected in November, found that abortion rights could be further protected in the state Constitution than in the U.S. Constitution.
And leave it to Republican Sen. Todd Gardenhire of Chattanooga, a recent lightning rod for the Left with his confident anti-Insure Tennessee votes, to make a telling point in the argument to help send one of the bills on its way.
During a discussion in the nine-member Senate Judiciary Committee about the waiting-period bill, Sen. Sara Kyle, D-Memphis, told committee witness Will Brewer, policy director for Tennessee Right to Life, that "you're putting all this burden (the so-called restrictions) on a woman."
"Why," she said, "don't we put these same standards on a man who wants to have a vasectomy?"
Gardenhire, from personal experience, knew that such standards were, in fact, required. And the Lookout Mountain legislator went on to explain that his decision to reverse a vasectomy he'd had years before required him to take more than 48 hours to consider it and included a process more involved than getting an abortion.
Kyle didn't present very compelling arguments against the waiting period, arguing, according to a Nashville Tennessean report, that it would force women to wait too long to choose a medically induced abortion through a drug available until the ninth week of pregnancy or a clinic-performed abortion available until the 16th week of pregnancy.
She's right, of course, but only if the woman waited until she was pregnant eight weeks and six days for the first type or 15 weeks and six days for the second type.
The waiting period, Kyle said, was "dictating to the family, to the woman, what they can and cannot do."
Of course, it does no such thing. The waiting period does not -- indeed cannot -- prohibit abortion.
What abortion advocates don't want is for women to have any time to reconsider their decision or to be fully presented with their options.
The ambulatory surgical center bill does not prohibit abortion, either, nor does it mandate that all abortions be performed in such centers. In fact, it simply requires that all facilities where more than 50 abortions in a year are performed to be licensed as such centers and, as such, fulfill requirements concerning the likes of clinic size, staff and emergency procedures.
Where that many abortions are performed, it's incredible such requirements aren't already mandated by law.
With Republican supermajorities in both the state Senate and the state House, the chances of both bills becoming law is good. But, before they're passed, legislators should determine if either are in danger of being struck down by any court.
In the past, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that some abortion restrictions were an "undue burden" on women. That's one reason the waiting-period bill has a clause that reverts the waiting period from 48 to 24 hours if it faces a legal challenge.
In the November election, voters didn't fall for the abortion advocates' argument that the Tennessee Constitution gave women additional rights to an abortion not found in the U.S. Constitution. The General Assembly, in turn, is following suit in attempting to return to law common-sense regulations that were removed 15 years ago. We urge them to complete the job with bills that, indeed, do protect the health of women, and will be able to stand any legal challenges.