There are three things you need to know about this issue.
Abortions are legal and Rick Perry doesn’t want them to be.
Abortion clinics enable more women better access to this procedure, particularly women whose options are limited by economic factors.
Uh…there was a third thing…
“I’m Rick Perry, and I confused this message.”
I’m certain that if her clinic had had a restriction against existing, it would not have been capable of providing as good of care as it did.
Maybe she died because he doctor did the procedure with a coat hanger.
Is there any evidence whatsoever that Rivers died because of substandard conditions where she had her surgery, or is Perry Just Asking Questions?
He’s just asking stupid questions. It might actually be true that Rivers would have survived had she been in an hospital. However, there certainly isn’t any evidence that the regulations Texas is imposing on clinics have any effect on intubation procedures.
So you’re saying the message is that Rick Perry is in favor of government regulations.
Do you agree that this is an unusual message for a conservative Republican to be making?
Only if you are saying that your message is that abortions should be performed at Wal-green’s like a flu shot.
Look, I understand the temptation to wildly exaggerate and distort what Republicans say, and then condemn them for hypocrisy. But it does very little for reasonable debate.
Rick Perry has never said that all regulation is bad. The notion that he has, and that this is some big gotcha and contradiction, is rather more than petty, not to say stupid.
No one can force you to understand something if you want not to badly enough. I was foolish enough to take your suggestion that you really needed help in understanding seriously. My bad. It was another Two Minute Hate.
Fine - knock yourselves out.
Regards,
Shodan
The notion that these regulations are designed for anything but to close down abortion clinics is not credible. So Perry’s suggestion that such regulations might save lives (other than fetuses) or have saved Joan Rivers is not made in good faith, unless he’s even more of a fool than his popular image.
“To be clear, my goal, and the goal of many of those joining me here today, is to make abortion, at any stage, a thing of the past … the ideal world is a world without abortion. Until then, however, we will continue to pass laws to ensure abortions are as rare as possible under existing law.”
– Rick Perry, December 11, 2012, at a press conference organized by “Texas Right to Life”
And last year, according to the New York Times, Perry’s minion Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst stated on Twitter that shutting down abortion clinics was part of the purpose of House Bill 2, but apparently he was mainly tweeting this to fellow lunatics.
However, Perry’s latest pronouncement must have been a completely honest and sincere observation, because this was the “new” Rick Perry, the one who wears glasses and is obviously now intelligent and incapable of making idiotic comments.
Well that’s only true if the procedure performed in a NY clinic on Joan Rivers would have been outlawed in a Texas clinic. My understanding is that she was getting a biopsy. There’s no reg outlawing those in Texas clinics.
Yes, that’s also true. In any event Perry’s point doesn’t make sense (even assuming Texas’ new clinic regulations aren’t poorly camouflaged abortion restrictions.)
But the regulations supposedly weren’t about abortions. And obviously Rivers’ death had nothing to do with abortions.
I guess I touched a nerve.
Despite your flailing, there’s no wild exaggeration or distortion here. This is a reasonable debate.
Rick Perry is an elected official who made a public statement about government policy. It’s completely reasonable to ask legitimate questions about what he said. If those questions can’t be answered, it reflects poorly on Perry not on the people asking the questions.
My understanding is the Texas law requires all places that perform certain procedures to comply with the regulations that were set up for hospitals.
So, to give an example, the law might require a hospital to have the capacity to admit patients for overnight care and to have a doctor on duty twenty-four hours a day. That’s a reasonable law for a hospital.
But now suppose you have a clinic that does minor surgical procedures like skin biopsies. All of its patients are out patients - they get their procedure done and go home. The clinic closes at five every evening. Does it make any sense to require this clinic to have bed space and a doctor on duty at night? Of course not.
Maybe I’m confused. My understanding of the Texas reg that effectively bans abortion is that they require the doctors at smaller clinics to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Then the hospitals, by design, refuses admitting privileges to those doctors at abortion clinics.
Forgot to provide a cite to the Perry quote in #30:
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/12/11/1319871/rick-perry-abortion-goal/
Both Perry and his Lt. Gov. are on record as stating that they will pass every possible misogynistic law to make abortion as difficult as possible until they wipe it out entirely, notwithstanding Roe v. Wade. So when Perry tries to use the Joan Rivers case to pretend that he’s actually concerned about women’s health – something that he’s never cared about any more than he cares about children’s health or the health of the poor in his state – well, I guess we can reach our own conclusions about whether this might be a bit of cynical, hypocritical political opportunism. 
The latter. Rick Perry isn’t known for making subtle statements. Actually, that’s part of his political savvy. That’s not sarcasm either. You have to have political smarts to stay in power for so long. But political popularity in Texas doesn’t necessarily translate well to a broader Presidential campaign.
Broad and not entirely sensible statements work in Texas where the overwhelming majority of people generally agree with his stances. I think he believes (or has been told by his PR team) that the rest of the country is like Texas in that regard. It does lead to some boot-firmly-in-mouth moments.
That was one of the requirements of the law. But there were others.
It’s not enough that Perry wants to tell women what they can & cant do with their uterus, he wants to start at the other end, too.*
(*here I’d put the rolleyes emoticon, but the current one is craptastic)
Texas Senate Bill 5has a provision that
" On and after September 1, 2014, the minimum standards for an abortion facility must be equivalent to the minimum standards adopted under Section 243.010 for ambulatory surgical centers."
And under that mentioned Health and Safety Codethere are requirements that
“Standards set under this section may not exceed the minimum standards for certification of ambulatory surgical centers under Title XVIII of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. Section 1395
et seq.)”
So, in short, Texas Senate Bill 5 defines facilities that perform abortions as ambulatory surgical centers and requires they meet federal law as to design and specifications. But it also references other requirements (which may not be more rigid that the standards for certification of ambulatory surgical centers under Title XVIII of the Social Security Act) such as plumbing, heating, ventilation and hygiene of the facility; presence of “the equipment essential to the health and welfare” of the patients as well as the qualification of the personnel working as such a center.
What any of that has to do with Joan Rivers I can’t be sure. Perhaps there was some question about the qualifications of the personnel or lack of some needed equipment at the facility where her procedure was done?