Just as in Roe v. Wade, when the Supreme Court discovered in the “penumbras and emanations” of the Constitution a right to an abortion the silly Founding Fathers forgot to be specific about, SCOTUS has discovered a footnote to that right that entitles women to get their abortions in clinics unregulated by the states they live in.

You see, it seems that some silly Neanderthals in the Texas legislature thought it might be a good idea since, as pro-abortion groups insist, we are talking about a women’s health issue, abortion clinics ought to meet some sort of health standards – namely, those required of ambulatory service centers.

So the Texas troglodytes passed such a law, thinking it might be a good idea to have standards slightly higher than your nearest auto mechanic or butcher.  The practical effect of the law was that it forced many Texas abortion clinics to close and required those seeking an abortion to travel longer distances, taking as long as 45 minutes to reach a clinic.  The finite wisdom of the Supreme Court, after revisiting those penumbras and emanations, was to strike down the law, saying requiring the same health standards as, say, an emergency room in a hospital put an “undue burden” on a women’s right to choose – not to mention the burden it put on these clinics’ bottom line.

As NBC News reported:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down one of the nation's toughest restrictions on abortion, a Texas law that women's groups said would have forced more than three-quarters of the state's clinics to shut down.

The decision was 5-3.

Read the decision

Passed in 2013, the law said clinics providing abortion services must meet the same building standards as ambulatory surgical centers. And it required doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.

Since the law was passed, the number of clinics providing abortion services in Texas dropped to 19 from 42. Opponents said that number would fall to ten if the Supreme Court upheld the law.

Somehow, I do not believe that this is what the Founding Fathers meant when in the Declaration of Independence they put life as an inalienable right that comes before even liberty and certainly the pursuit of happiness.  When the Constitution was written under the concept of federalism, it was assumed that such issues, undefined in the Constitution, would be left to the states, not five unelected grand pooh-bahs in black robes.

One wonders if the Supreme Court will be as adamant about gun rights, which are specifically mentioned in the Second Amendment, and so will rule that banning gun purchases because some clerk violated your due process rights and put you on a no-fly list puts an “undue burden” on your right to bear arms.  This undue burden thing should be applied to all rights, should it not?

Basically, SCOTUS has ruled that abortion clinics need meet only the standards of Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s clinic in Philadelphia.  Abortion supporters claim they want to make it “safe, legal, and rare,” but this ruling does nothing to make abortions safer or rarer.  When you are running an abortion clinic, like any other business, volume is important in improving the profit margin.  Presumably, young mothers entering a Planed Parenthood clinic aren’t told about this part of the operation.

Kermit Gosnell was a Philadelphia doctor who was charged with seven counts of first-degree murder and one count of third-degree murder for killing seven babies who survived his abortions and a woman who died after a botched pain-killer injection.  As Investor’s Business Daily noted, comparing what went on at Gosnell’s clinic to the school shooting at Newtown, Connecticut:

Whether one is pro-life or pro-choice, there ought to be agreement that a squirming infant on a table outside the mother's womb is as worthy of protection from harm as children in classrooms in a school in Connecticut.

If Dr. Gosnell had walked into a nursery and shot seven infants with an AR-15, it would be national news and the subject of presidential hand-wringing.

Instead, Gosnell is ignored, charged with the deaths of seven aborted babies who were born alive and then killed, their spinal cords cut with scissors.

Kermit Gosnell faces 43 criminal counts, including eight counts of murder in the death of one patient, Karnamaya Monger, and seven newborn infants.

Additional charges include conspiracy, drug delivery resulting in death, infanticide, corruption of minors, evidence tampering, theft by deception, abuse of corpse and corruption.

Gosnell's clinic was inspected only after a federal drug raid in 2010. It was the first time the facility had been inspected in 17 years because state officials ignored complaints and failed to visit Gosnell's Women's Medical Society, the clinic's official name, for years.

Although charged with only seven counts of infant murder, witnesses have testified that he may have murdered more than 100 babies outside the womb in the three decades the clinic has been open.

One witness says she saw Gosnell perform his "procedure" on 30 infants.

According to another, Gosnell said in one instance, "'This baby is big enough to walk around with me or walk me to the bus stop.' "

Women were paying him to end their pregnancy, and by golly, that’s what he was going to do under the penumbra and emanations of Roe v. Wade.  Sanitation and cleanliness and the inconvenient first breaths of an infant who survived the first attempt at dispatching him or her were an “undue burden.”  So, according to liberals, pro-choicers, and a SCOTUS majority, is regulation of clinics as potentially ghastly as Dr. Gosnell’s.  As TheBlaze described Gosnell and his operation:

… we’ve seen what happens when abortion clinics are unregulated. We don’t have to come up with hypotheticals. Kermit Gosnell killed born-alive infants and grown women in a dingy butcher shop with blood stains on the walls and dead bodies piled up in the refrigerator and the corpses of infants clogging up the toilets. He hired unlicensed kids to assist in dangerous operations and distribute medicine to desperate, poor women. He didn’t even bother to sanitize his equipment before he sliced open his patients, sometimes giving them infections and venereal diseases in the process. He did all of this for 30 years in a facility situated right in the middle of a major American city. And he wasn’t alone. There are other Gosnells, and they all clearly demonstrate what happens when the abortion industry is allowed free rein to govern.

The Supreme Court and who gets to fill the current and future vacancies do indeed matter.  Hillary Clinton has called the decision a “victory for women.”  Well, not for the unborn ones.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.