The Intent is Clear: Controlling the Uterus

by Deedra Abboud in Political, Social Views, Solutions

July 9, 2020 • 1 comment

No law in the entire country mandates doctors have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital for male-only medical procedures.

Louisiana’s restriction – which required doctors who provide abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital – was struck down by the Supreme Court in June. 

Arizona law also requires doctors who perform medication abortions to have admitting privileges, though not necessarily within 30 miles.

Hospital admitting privileges are the rights granted to a doctor by a hospital to admit patients to that particular hospital.

The basic premise is that, if you need to go the hospital, your primary care physician can admit you at any hospital that has granted them privileges.

With the rise of the hospitalist role as the “point person” for patient care at the hospital, and effectively serving as the primary care physician for a patient during their hospital stay, admitting privileges for primary care physicians are few and far between.

The days of a primary care physician needing “privileges” to admit or care for their private patients in a hospital are effectively over.

Major professional medical organizations — including the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists — disagreed with the health claims, saying that given the safety of the procedure, admitting privilege laws for abortion providers are medically unnecessary.

The author of the Louisiana law, State Representative Katrina Jackson, has denied that its purpose was to reduce abortion access, and called the regulation “common-sense women’s health care.”

Yet, childbirth is 14 times more likely than abortion to result in death and laws allow a midwife to oversee childbirth in the patient’s own home.

And colonoscopy, which normally takes place outside a hospital or surgical center, has a mortality rate 10 times higher than abortion and the procedures don’t require admitting privileges at area hospitals at all.