The Texas law is not unlike legislation on the books all over Western Europe, where late-term abortions are rightly considered barbaric — except, of course, in cases of rape, incest, or health risk to the mother.

The Texas bill also imposed new regulations on clinics, and its opponents claim that requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion facility would force the closure of 37 of the state’s 42 clinics.

Clearly, the case of abortion doctor — and now convicted murderer — Kermit Gosnell changed nothing in America, where it’s commonly accepted that the “woman’s right to choose” should extend even beyond birth. Neither do allegations against the Houston abortion doctor Douglas Karpen seem to have changed hearts and minds on the most intractable issue in American politics. Karpen runs three clinics where ex-employees said they’d witnessed him doing what Gosnell did, killing babies who had been born alive. In Delaware recently, nurses testified that their former employer, Planned Parenthood of Delaware, routinely put women’s health at risk by rushing procedures to maximize profits, using untrained staff, and neglecting medical standards. Yet any desire to regulate this industry can only come from some deep hatred of womankind?