Texas Gov. Rick Perry said over the weekend that Joan Rivers might be alive if New York medical clinics had the same standards as those in Texas.
According to CNN, Perry made his comment about the late comedienne in the course of explaining Texas HB2, which he signed into law last year.
The bill requires that abortion clinics meet the same facility standards as hospitals, but was halted by a federal judge in late August after it threatened to shutter a number of cash-strapped abortion clinics across the state. Perry and the state are now appealing the ruling.
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"Clearly, the will of the Texas Legislature — which I agree with — that it is a state's right to put particular types of considerations into place, to put rules and regulations into place, to make a clinic be as safe as a hospital," Perry said when asked about the bill at the Texas Tribune Festival.
"It was interesting that, when Joan Rivers, and the procedure that she had done where she died, that was a clinic. It’s a curious thought that if they had had that type of regulations in place, whether or not that individual would be still alive."
Heather Busby, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas,
sent an email to CBS News in response to Perry's comments.
"The reality is that complications happen in all areas of medicine. There’s risk inherent in just about anything. You could have a heart attack and die while having your wisdom teeth removed. Should we outlaw wisdom teeth removal?" she wrote.
The details surrounding Rivers' death remain under investigation by New York State Department of Health officials.
MSNBC noted that Rivers was pro-choice. She explained how she arrived at her position on the issue to NPR in 2010.
"I was the first one to discuss abortion, and it was very rough . . . I couldn’t even say the word abortion — I had to say, 'She had 14 appendectomies' . . . By making jokes about it, you brought it into a position where you could look at it and deal with it. It was no longer something that you couldn't discuss and had to whisper about. When you whisper about something, it’s too big and you can't get it under control and take control of it."
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