Kendall Coffey on the Rights of Life

Flickr CC via Mercy Health

Kendall Coffey discussed a case in Texas with Steve Malzberg last week.  There is a law in Texas that is keeping a woman on life support because she is 14 weeks pregnant. Here is Kendall Coffey's commentary on the case:

The family is frustrated with the law, and they’re considering whether to in affect file a court challenge.  The essence of the court challenge would be that she has this tragically impaired woman has some right of privacy to determine her own death with dignity.  What I haven’t developed in the law, and certainly, other people who are not carrying a human life inside them, no question can provide living wills that specify under certain conditions.  Such as when someone’s brain does not seem to have maintained cognitive ability, they have a constitutional right to terminate their life. 

This situation, though I haven’t seen a court that says she has the right to end her own life if it eliminates the life of an unborn child.  That is the decision that has to be accepted.  Nor do I know, and haven’t been able to find the details whether she still wanted her own life terminated if she were pregnant. Surely this is not a situation that they would have anticipated at the time that the directive was given, but I would suggest that from a constitutional standpoint, that she is being described as virtually brain dead, it seems to be that there has to be a greater respect for the life of the unborn child, where her own life is irretrievably damaged.

This is not the normal situation of a Roe v. Wade where you have a healthy vibrant person who is in full possession of their power and chooses to invoke a decision of their constitutional right to privacy.  This is someone who is no longer capable of making any decision at all.  So in that situation, do you override the laws of Texas, which says that if there is an ability to keep an unborn fetus alive to maturity then that is what the law requires?  It’s very different than some the cases we’ve been talking about.

I think it’s a fundamentally different question if the woman is pregnant, and I don’t know if there is any evidence that she said she would want to be taken off of life support even with an unborn child.  There’s a lot of discussion between balancing the rights of a woman and the later months in pregnancy.  It’s a much more difficult question when the only life that is able to be saved is that of the child.

Kendall Coffey: Abortion Law has Political Agenda

Abortion Bill protest in Austin/ Flickr CC via Do512

A new law in Texas includes some of the toughest restrictions on abortion in the country.  The legal battle over the legality of some of the rules has been fierce.  Last week a judge ruled that the law would prevent a woman's right to an abortion and blocked its implementation.  Another court refuted that several days later.

The biggest issue in the law requires doctors that perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within thirty miles of the site. Another provision bans abortions after twenty weeks, except if the health of the woman is in danger. If a pregnant woman wants to induce an abortion by taking a pill, the state will require the pills to be taken in the presence of a doctor at a certified abortion facility. Lastly, beginning next September, all abortions must take place in a facility that meets the infrastructure requirements for an ambulatory surgical center.

Steve Malzeberg asked Kendall Coffey about the Texas law during the weekly "Spinning the Law" segment on the Steve Malzberg Show on Newsmax.  Malzberg commented on the requirement for doctors to have hospital practice privileges.  This is what Kendall Coffey said:

 

“That is certainly one of the issues.  Advocates of the law would say that abortion doctors had to be admitted with privileges in a nearby hospital, within thirty miles.  As you know, one of the things that establishes a credential for a doctor is to be granted privileges to practice in a local hospital.  It’s not automatically done, it’s not rightly done, it’s not as easy, frankly, as getting admitted to the state bar association.  It’s a significant validation of your professionalism and ability to grant the privileges to practice in a hospital.   

"Apparently a number of the doctors that perform this kind of procedure don’t have those privileges within thirty miles.  The Texas legislature has said that it’s a requirement and the judge following what is the law as of today presumably made the right decision of the existing law but advocates of these kind of laws, they aren’t simply trying to thumb their nose at the U.S. constitution.  They have a very thoughtful strategy for picking particular issues.  This is a type of strategy that no one should dismiss.  The outcome of this particular issue at the lower court level is not surprising.  But what’s going to happen when it gets to Washington and the nine Supreme Court justices will look at it? That’s much harder to predict.”

Wendy Davis/ Flickr CC via Do512

The law received the most media attention when legislator Wendy Davis performed a marathon filibuster to try and prevent it from being passed.  Wendy Davis is now running for governor of Texas.