By Tim Stanley, US politics
Last updated: September 1st, 2011
" Since the 2010 landslide, the prolifers have adopted a new strategy. Rather than shouting about a national ban and obsessing about picking the right presidential candidate, prolifers have refocused on making life uncomfortable for local abortion providers. Beneath the radar, state-by-state, they are starting to get the job done.
Take Kansas. In April 2011, Republican lawmakers introduced new regulations for the three remaining abortion clinics in the state. The regulations were dubbed “targeted regulation of abortion providers”, or TRAP laws. They specified everything from the size and temperature of counselling rooms to the appropriate number of janitorial closets. The regulations were issued after business hours on a Friday and clinics were given until Monday the next week to comply. Unsurprisingly, none of them were able to rebuild their premises in time. For a few hours it looked like Kansas would become the first state since 1973 to totally outlaw abortion.
Of course, as always happens in America, a judge intervened. Two clinics were given a stay of execution and the battle is now in the courts. But the war has spread to Virginia, where Republicans are using TRAP laws to try to shut down 22 clinics within 2 years. The genius of this strategy is that it has avoided the usual religious semantics by couching the prolife position in the language of “health and safety”. Republican lawmakers have insisted throughout that they are just trying to provide the best service for women seeking a termination. They don’t mean to restrict that service – it’s just that their standards happen to be very, very, very high. "
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100102706/a-beginners-guide-to-banning-abortion-from-the-usa/
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