The War On Abortion And Women's Rights

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, Ozlsn said:

I'm always surprised they aren't promoting contraception. You want to lower abortion rates? Best way to do it is through effective contraception.

But that would mean wimmins could have teh seks with anybody they wants! 

[smittykins]

Without consequences.

[GreyhoundFan]

A good op-ed from Ruth Marcus: "‘No decision of this Court is safe’: What’s at stake in the Texas abortion case"

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The only thing you need to understand about the Texas abortion law now before the Supreme Court are these words, from the Biden administration’s brief: “If Texas is right, no decision of this Court is safe.”

The legal issues are mind-numbingly complex: Under what circumstances the federal government can go to court to prevent citizens’ rights from being violated. The scope of the 11th Amendment’s protections for state sovereign immunity. Technical questions about standing to sue and the appropriate reach of injunctive relief.

But the fundamental question presented in the two related cases to be argued Monday boils down to something much easier to grasp: Must federal courts stand by, powerless to intervene, when a state not only enacts a flagrantly unconstitutional law but also deliberately rigs the system to prevent effective judicial review?

And that is what the brief filed Wednesday by acting U.S. solicitor general Brian H. Fletcher makes clear. The burning desire to eviscerate abortion rights launched this case, but even more is at stake.

As a group of constitutional law scholars wrote of the Texas law in their friend-of-the-court brief, “By attacking well-established constitutional rights through a scheme designed to evade judicial review, S.B. 8 represents a challenge to the rule of law, our system of constitutional government, and the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.”

Here’s why. The Supreme Court has ruled, and ruled again, that states cannot flatly prohibit abortions before the fetus is viable, at about 24 weeks. But the Texas law bars almost all abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, at about six weeks.

Then, the law removes state officials from enforcing the prohibition; instead, it outsources that job to private parties — antiabortion vigilantes. This could be anyone, from any state, without any connection to the individual seeking the abortion, filing suit anywhere in Texas, against anyone who helped obtain the abortion in any way, except the pregnant woman herself.

If their suits are successful, these bounty hunters are guaranteed an award of at least $10,000, plus legal fees. Doctors or others involved in the abortion could be subject to an unlimited number of suits — even if the abortion was legal at the time it was performed.

Since S.B. 8 went into effect two months ago, it has worked as intended, drastically reducing abortions in Texas. The law makes it too risky, and too potentially financially ruinous, for clinics to operate, so it hasn’t been tested in state court, and in any event a state suit wouldn’t serve to block the law beyond that individual case. Meanwhile, under rulings from the conservative federal appeals court that covers Texas, the federal courts have been closed off to constitutional challenges.

As the solicitor general’s brief summed it up, Texas purposely “sought to create a situation where pregnant women have no access to constitutionally protected abortion care and no mechanism whatsoever to challenge that obvious violation of their constitutional rights.”

The justices are hearing two efforts to block the law, one from Texas abortion providers, the other from the Biden administration. The immediate question isn’t whether the six-week ban is constitutional, but whether either of these parties has the right to go to federal court to have it blocked.

The answer must be yes — this kind of end run around constitutional rights cannot be allowed to stand. What if, as the abortion providers’ brief asks, states in the angry aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education had allowed private citizens to sue, and collect a bounty, on any student seeking to integrate a school? Or what if Texas empowered neighbors — or anyone else, for that matter — to seek injunctions against same-sex couples to stop them from getting married?

In response to all this, Texas offers up a Texas-sized serving of chutzpah. Two servings, actually.

First, the state says, letting federal courts hear challenges to S.B. 8 would amount to an unconstitutional violation of its sovereignty and an injury to federal-state relations. Texas set up a scheme to deliberately nullify federal constitutional rights — and now complains about state rights being infringed? Even Texas has got to be kidding.

Second, Texas, which at the appeals court had the good sense not to seriously defend the constitutionality of the six-week ban, now has the gall to do just that. “SB 8 is entirely consistent with Casey, whose test it expressly incorporates,” its brief asserts, referring to the 1992 case in which a closely divided court upheld the right to abortion. Texas’s statement is simply wrong. The court in Casey said that states may not adopt regulations short of bans that impose an “undue burden” on the ability to obtain an abortion.

“By incorporating the undue-burden defense,” the Texas law applies to “only those post-heartbeat abortions that are not protected under this Court’s current precedent,” the Texas brief says.

This is legal word salad, completely preposterous. Texas went to the trouble of passing, and defending, a ban on abortion after six weeks that isn’t a six-week ban at all? Tell that to Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Tex.), who crowed on signing the law in May that it “ensures that the life of every unborn child who has a heartbeat will be saved from the ravages of abortion.”

In any event, the burden imposed by the Texas law is undeniably undue: Thousands of women in the state have been denied their constitutional right to obtain abortions.

No first-year law student could write this stuff with a straight face. No Supreme Court justice should buy it.

Sadly, the reich-wing is so anxious to take away women's rights that they don't care if it causes lasting harm to the legitimacy of SCOTUS.

[Destiny]

If anyone wants to follow along, this account is live tweeting the goings on:

 

[Cartmann99]

I suggest having a drink or whatever before reading this excerpt.

A maternity ranch is born

Quote

She was a 34-year-old mother of two who wore her long hair in a ponytail and baseball cap and did not meet all the expectations that could come with the label White evangelical Christian. She said she could not bring herself to vote for Donald Trump in 2016, for instance, though she voted for him in the 2020 election. She hardly ever watched cable news. She was not convinced that the Texas law known as the heartbeat law — which bans almost all abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy — or any law, was necessarily the best way to end abortion.

What she did believe was that abortion had led to a “genocide of children.” She believed that the best path to ending it was not only to support women but to also help them to see themselves as God intended. And Aubrey believed, as she often said, that “belief requires action,” and in this way, she was a mainstream evangelical woman, one who saw herself as suited and maybe even destined for the moment at hand.

The moment was one preceded by a long and complicated history. The idea of providing a place for single, pregnant women harked to a time before abortion became legal and so-called “homes for unwed mothers” were often the only option for women — mostly White women — to give birth in secrecy and avoid social scandal. The homes were often run by institutions such as The Salvation Army, orders of Catholic nuns, and evangelical churches. They were often bleak places where women were assumed to need reform and were sometimes abused and shamed, the kind of subjugation that advocates of legal abortion aimed to end.

None of which Aubrey had in mind as she envisioned her own maternity ranch in almost utopian terms. To her, it would be a place of liberation and Christian development in accord with the beliefs she had refined at her church, one of the many popular megachurches in suburban Dallas that tended to be conservative in values, modern in style, with praise bands, coffee shops and names such as the Door and the Well.

Hers was called the Village Church, a congregation of roughly 3,500 people whose mission included advancing the idea of a divine social order the pastor often called “God’s beautiful design.” The question of how abortion fit into this order was intertwined with the question of how women fit in — and this was a matter that had become so fraught within the evangelical world that in 2017, her church issued its own 64-page statement on the subject with 218 footnotes and a five-page bibliography.

It affirmed that God created two genders, male and female, who were “equal in essence, dignity and value” while having “different yet complementary roles.” Men were meant to be “protectors” and “providers.” Women were meant to be “helpers” and “life givers.” In the church, this meant that the top leadership roles were reserved for men. In Christian marriage, which the church defined as being between a man and a woman, it meant that men were to lead. In politics, it meant a relentless focus on ending abortion, which the church viewed as not only murder but also a grotesque distortion of God’s plan for humanity.

[...]

Ten years into the marriage, there were times when Aubrey chafed at what she believed God required of her. She struggled with the concept of submitting to Bryan’s leadership, though his earnest and self-deprecating manner made it easier. She did not love being pregnant, especially after suffering an excruciating form of rheumatoid arthritis probably triggered by the birth of her first son. The condition left her so racked with pain that she would sometimes sit at the edge of her bed at night and cry, thinking, “I could kill myself, but then I’m leaving my husband and my son,” and understanding why women with less support than she had might choose to have an abortion. But the lesson she ultimately took from the episode was not about politics or God’s indifference, but rather “what God did to humble me.”

“I realized my life is not really mine,” she said.

To remind herself, she got a tattoo on her right forearm referencing a favorite line of a favorite hymn about “bowing in humble adoration.”

Follow the link above for the rest of it.

[Ozlsn]

So her vision is:

“If I can offer these moms and babies a safe, structured first year of life, of calm and stability — that can change whole generations,”

Without being too cynical here, what happens after that first year? I mean great that pro-life is now being extended to "kid can walk", but it does feel a lot like "probably can work too, chuck 'em out". Has she considered voting for measures that actually would contribute to a safer first (and second, and third..) year of life, like expanding Medicaid, maternity/parenting payments and leave, affordable housing, affordable and educational childcare, better foster care, raising minimum wage to a liveable level, etc etc. And how many of these women are likely to be from very low SES or non-white backgrounds?

Has she considered becoming a foster carer even - of course not, because it's not, it's never actually about the children.

How will they cope when the women have the temerity to be ungrateful? Angry? Traumatised? Bitter? Unrepentant?

I feel like the follow up article in a decade or so will have some level of "I didn't know what I was getting myself into", along with at least one domestic violence incident, a few revelations of abuse, some negative stories, and some women who found it a positive experience.

Edited November 18, 2021 by Ozlsn

[Cartmann99]

Today's arguments in the Mississippi abortion rights case:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A great op-ed: "Billie Jean King: My abortion story shows why the Supreme Court must save Roe v. Wade"

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Billie Jean King is a former No. 1-ranked tennis player and the author of “All In: An Autobiography.” She co-founded the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative, a nonprofit organization that seeks equality in the workplace.

Oral arguments before the Supreme Court this week in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization mark the court’s third major abortion case since 2016 — and just the latest effort to challenge the right of all women to decide whether to continue their pregnancy prior to viability. Most Americans today can’t remember a time when abortion was a felony in most states, even in instances of rape or incest, but I remember all too well. My own experience obtaining a legal abortion, two years before the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, illustrates why we must never roll back our hard-won reproductive rights.

In early 1971, I became pregnant. It was unexpected. I was 27 years old and the top-ranked women’s tennis player in the world. I was on the road constantly to help launch the world’s first professional all-women’s tour. In fact, I learned I was pregnant after almost throwing up on court during a match.

Oh dear God, I thought when the test came back positive. Now what do I do?

Telling the media I had the flu, I withdrew from a tournament, and my husband and I spent days talking. Although Larry and I were still friends and business partners, our marriage had been shaky for years. We agreed that a woman had the right to decide if and when she wanted to be pregnant. He said he would support whatever choice I made.

Ultimately, tennis was not the deciding factor. I knew that other players had returned to competition after taking time off for pregnancy and childbirth, including the champion Margaret Court. Twice. But our lives were so complicated and unpredictable that I couldn’t imagine bringing up a child in such chaos.

I was fortunate in several respects: I was able to determine my own future because we lived in California, one of the few states where abortion was legal, as long as the procedure was “therapeutic” and performed by a doctor in a hospital. I could also afford the fee, nearly $580, still a costly amount today.

Anyone seeking an abortion had to obtain approval from a hospital committee — that is, tell a panel of strangers why they believed their pregnancy would “gravely impair” their physical and mental health. Arguing to a dozen or so people I had never met why I qualified for an abortion remains one of the most degrading experiences of my life.

But there was still another indignity: The law required that my husband sign a consent form. Men remained in charge of not just financial matters but even the right to govern my own body.

And this is what it was like where abortion was legal. Those less fortunate than me were forced either to continue an unplanned pregnancy or to risk their health obtaining an illegal abortion — if they could find a provider.

I have never forgotten a 15-year-old I encountered in the waiting room before my procedure. I tried to comfort this terrified girl from Alabama, where abortion was illegal. She was pretty far along. It had taken her months to get to California, where she was staying with a relative, who made the appointment for her. I never saw her again, but I hope that she was able to finish school, earn a good living and have children if she so chose — all things that generations have been able to take for granted in the nearly 50 years since Roe became settled law.

My life’s work has been about equality for all. Nothing did more to advance women’s economic status than the right to abortion that came with Roe. According to a recent amicus brief signed by more than 150 leading economists, “for young women who experienced an unintended pregnancy, access to abortion increased the probability they finished college by nearly 20 percentage points.” And they were nearly 40 percent more likely to enter a professional occupation, the economists noted. That represents a lot of economic opportunity, given that 1 in 4 American women will have an abortion. Research shows that women of color, young women, women with low incomes, rural women and others facing discriminatory barriers to care are disproportionately affected by abortion bans and the restrictions that state legislatures across the South and Midwest keep passing.

The central premise of Roe, which Mississippi seeks to overturn, is about women’s right to make fundamental decisions about their lives, futures and families. If we lose the ability to control our bodies and our futures, so many of the gains women have made will be undone. At stake are not only indignities and inequities but the rights to self-determination and equal opportunity that would fall along with Roe.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"4 takeaways from the Supreme Court arguments on abortion"

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The debate over abortion is one of the longest-standing battles in modern American politics. And conservatives have reason to feel they’re within arm’s reach of winning it, with arguments Wednesday in front of the Supreme Court about a Mississippi abortion ban.

A conservative Supreme Court built up significantly by former president Donald Trump is considering whether a 15-week ban on most abortions in Mississippi should be upheld. If the law or some of it is upheld, abortion could quickly become illegal in as much as half the country.

The justices are expected to rule sometime this summer, but the oral arguments usually provide some clues about how the justices view the case.

While we wait for that, here are four takeaways from Wednesday’s arguments.

1. At least four conservative justices seem ready to overturn some abortion protections

That the court even agreed to hear this ban — lower courts have quickly knocked it down, as they have other state laws attempting to ban abortion so early in a pregnancy — suggested that some justices were willing to entertain curtailing the right to abortion in America.

The court usually only takes cases when there is a conflict in lower courts. And lower courts have all agreed that Mississippi’s 15-week ban is unconstitutional.

There is no federal law protecting abortion rights; it’s up to the states to govern abortions, but for now they have to do it guided by the Supreme Court’s protections to allow it up to halfway through a pregnancy.

Mississippi bans abortions months before the current standard set by the 1973 Roe v. Wade case, where the Supreme Court said abortion should be available until a fetus is viable to live outside the womb (that’s currently understood as being around 24 weeks).

Mississippi is effectively asking the court to nix that 50-year legal precedent, plus another legal precedent from the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey case, where the court said states can’t impose an “undue burden” on the ability of women to seek an abortion.

These legal precedents, said Mississippi Attorney General Scott Stewart, “haunt our country,” using strong language to open his arguments. “Nowhere else does the court recognize a right to end human life.”

It’s the most aggressive antiabortion argument before the court in years.

We’re reading the tea leaves here, but at least four justices seemed opened to making such a ground-shifting ruling on abortion. Justice Clarence Thomas was first out of the gate with questions elevating the right’s legal arguments. Justice Samuel Alito and Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett all asked softball questions to Mississippi.

The court only needs five votes to radically change abortion rights. If those four sided with Mississippi, it would be one vote from winning.

2. The court could decide on a middle ground to allow abortion bans earlier

Anything short of the court striking down the law in full would be a loss for abortion rights supporters.

Letting this law stand would have “profound damage to women’s liberty, equality and the rule of law,” argued Julie Rickelman of the Center for Reproductive Rights, an abortion rights group behind the lawsuit. She framed this as a fundamental freedom question: “Abortion has been critical for women’s equal participation in society.”

It does seem like there’s an option for a compromise, though: to let Roe v. Wade stand, protecting a woman’s right to abortion, but to allow states to ban abortion earlier — perhaps months before the current standard of when a fetus is deemed viable to live outside the womb. “Why would 15 weeks be an appropriate line?” asked Chief Justice John Roberts.

“Roberts indicated he may be open to a middle approach,” said Lisa Soronen, executive director of the State and Local Legal Center, which supports states and local governments in cases before the Supreme Court.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch also asked about a potential middle ground to let abortion protections stand but let states ban it earlier.

Those are two potential GOP-appointed justices who could determine things, if the other four do indeed side with Mississippi (which is no sure thing, it bears emphasizing).

But coming to any kind of compromise would be a sea change for abortion rights in America. The right to abortion before 24 weeks, argued liberal Justice Elena Kagan, “is part of the fabric of women’s existence in this country.”

If the justices allow some or all of the 15-week Mississippi law to stand, that could be reality in as much of half of the country.

3. The court is aware of the political pressure on it

Public polls show that the Supreme Court is increasingly unpopular, as Americans come to view it less as an independent, third branch of government and more as an extension of the ongoing political battles between Republicans and Democrats.

Liberal justices argued vociferously that if the court were to change abortion protections, it would erode public confidence in it even more — perhaps fatally so. Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that Mississippi’s state Senate leader said legislatures passed an unconstitutional ban specifically because the court was now more conservative, with three new justices put on it by Trump, who said he wanted to appoint people hostile to abortion rights.

“Will this institution survive the stench this creates in the public perception, that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” she asked. “If people believe this is all politics, how will we survive? How will this court survive?”

If the court overrules such entrenched legal precedent — known in legal terms as stare decisis — said Justice Stephen G. Breyer, “people are going to be ready to say, no, you’re just political, you’re just politicians.”

Roberts in particular has seemed reluctant to have the court make such far-reaching decisions, but he’s no longer a required vote for the conservative side of the court.

4. The ruling will probably come at a politically important moment

We may not know what the justices think about this case and a legal procedural question on a six-week abortion ban in Texas until next summer.

That is just a few months before the congressional midterm elections. Results are mixed about how Supreme Court battles motivate each side’s base, but there is a real question of whether Republicans, having achieved a decades-sought-after goal, could in effect be the dog that catches the car on abortion, writes The Fix’s Aaron Blake, who looked a public polling and asked whether it’s the left that will suddenly be motivated in elections if abortion rights are taken away.

If the court upholds parts of either law, expect abortion rights to topple across the nation. At least a dozen states have trigger laws that would automatically end most abortions, while some liberal states have laws in place that would protect rights.

At the congressional level, House Democrats voted to protect abortion rights under federal law this fall, but Republicans in the Senate would never let that through. It would take Democrats keeping their tenuous hold on power in Congress and agreeing to get rid of the filibuster to reinstate abortion rights nationally.

 

[Destiny]

In case anyone wants to read the goings-on today, this lawyer live tweeted the whole thing:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1466088430975156224.html

Related: I feel sick.

Edited December 1, 2021 by Destiny

[Cartmann99]

 

[Audrey2]

2 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

 

Amy, I'm calling bs. Even if these women live up to your fantasy and give their child up for adoption, they still will miss work and valuable working hours leading up to giving birth and in the immediate aftermath. While 6 weeks of maternity leave is allowed in most places by law, this is unpaid maternity leave. Are you really telling me that a fast food working woman is expected to go into the bathroom in the middle of her shift give birth and get back on the line so she doesn't lose any money and give her baby up for adoption? I am livid with your willful misunderstanding of the issues involved with a woman giving birth. And just to make things clear, you believe that if it's a choice between the woman's life and the baby's life, the woman gets to die, correct?

[Ozlsn]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

These legal precedents, said Mississippi Attorney General Scott Stewart, “haunt our country,” using strong language to open his arguments. “Nowhere else does the court recognize a right to end human life.”

Oh is the death penalty banned then?

[Destiny]

I'm even more nauseated today than I was yesterday. I would so very much like to be told I'm overreacting but alas, I'm pretty sure I'm wrong. This is everything I feared when the Orange Menace was elected. It was the first thing I said when I realised it was happening.

[GreyhoundFan]

Betty captures the idiocy of the handmaiden perfectly.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Supreme Court says Texas abortion providers may proceed with challenge of six-week ban, leaves law in effect for now"

Quote

The Supreme Court on Friday said that Texas abortion providers may sue to stop the state’s ban on most abortions after six weeks, but left the law in place for now.

The splintered decision allows the providers to return to a district judge who once blocked the law, saying it violated the constitutional right to abortion.

That restarts the legal process that has seen the law remain in effect since Sept. 1, when the Supreme Court refused to step in to block it.

Eight justices said the abortion providers may bring the challenge. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for himself and the court’s three liberals, said the district judge should act quickly.

“Given the ongoing chilling effect of the state law, the District Court should resolve this litigation and enter appropriate relief without delay,” Roberts wrote.

The decision was both a partial victory and a disappointment for abortion rights supporters. They had asked the court to block the law while the legal process continued, but have not found the necessary five votes.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that he would not have allowed the lawsuit to continue. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, on the other hand, was critical of the decision not to block the law, called S.B. 8.

“The Court should have put an end to this madness months ago, before S.B.8 first went into effect,” she wrote. “It failed to do so then, and it fails again today.”

While the case over Texas’s law is procedural, the Supreme Court since then has signaled it is ready to make dramatic changes in the judicial rules governing abortion rights. In debating a Mississippi law that bans almost all abortions after 15 weeks, some justices earlier this month indicated they are open to overturning Roe v. Wade, which for nearly 50 years has said there is a constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability.

In the Texas case, the court’s three liberal justices have already said they believe that the law is unconstitutional, and Roberts had joined their call to keep the law from taking effect until federal courts could look at it more closely.

But in a midnight ruling on Sept. 1, the court in a 5-to-4 vote allowed the law to be implemented.

The access to abortion in the state was immediately curtailed, and abortion providers said many who wanted the procedure were forced to leave the state.

The Texas cases raised complicated questions about legal procedure precisely because S.B. 8 was intended to avoid federal court review.

The question for the justices was whether the law could be challenged in federal court, where judges compelled to follow Supreme Court precedent have stopped other states from enacting similar bans on early abortions.

Texas officials said the challenges must come in Texas courts after the civil suits have been adjudicated, but the law sets up obstacles that could delay a final decision for years.

Texas calls S.B. 8 a “heartbeat” bill — it prohibits abortions after cardiac activity is noted in the embryo. There is no exception for rape or incest, and the abortion patient cannot be sued.

The law is enforced by private citizens rather than the state government. Any individual can sue anyone who aids or abets a prohibited abortion. Successful lawsuits would result in an award of at least $10,000 to the person who filed the complaint — at oral argument, some justices referred to the award as a “bounty.”

 

[AnywhereButHere]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/12/12/us/politics/newsom-texas-abortion-law-guns.amp.html

CA governor, Gavin Newsom is throwing down the gauntlet to the Supreme Court. Let’s see what they do with this. They don’t have any problem with hypocrisy, so I don’t imagine it will really be a shock…

Quote

Angered by the U.S. Supreme Court decision to continue allowing private citizens to sue Texas abortion providers, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California on Saturday called for a similar law giving ordinary residents legal standing to file lawsuits against purveyors of restricted firearms.

“SCOTUS is letting private citizens in Texas sue to stop abortion?!” Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, tweeted. “If that’s the precedent, then we’ll let Californians sue those who put ghost guns and assault weapons on our streets. If TX can ban abortion and endanger lives, CA can ban deadly weapons of war and save lives.”

 

Edited December 12, 2021 by AnywhereButHere

[GreyhoundFan]

In rare good news on the women's healthcare front, the FDA reduced one of the barriers to medical abortions. Of course, TX has already outlawed women there from receiving the pills via mail. "FDA eliminates key restriction on abortion pill as Supreme Court weighs case that challenges Roe v. Wade"

Quote

The Biden administration on Thursday ended a long-standing restriction on a medication used to terminate early stage pregnancies, even as politicians across the United States intensified efforts that represent the most serious challenge to abortion rights in decades.

The elimination of the rule by the Food and Drug Administration means abortion pills can be prescribed through telehealth consultations with providers and mailed to patients in states where permitted by law. Previously, the pills could not be mailed, though that regulation had been temporarily suspended by the FDA.

In large swaths of the nation, however, strict state rules will dampen the impact. Several states ban sending abortion pills by mail and impose other restrictions.

The medication, mifepristone, was approved by the FDA in 2000 for what’s known as medication abortion. It is used with a second drug, misoprostol. The FDA required patients to pick up mifepristone in person at a hospital, clinic or medical office. There is no FDA requirement that the medication, also known as RU-486, be taken in a clinical setting, and most patients take it at home.

In April, the FDA waived the in-person dispensing requirement during the pandemic, saying research showed the action did not raise “serious safety concerns.” It then launched a scientific review to see whether restrictions on mifepristone should be lifted permanently, with Thursday as the deadline.

The agency, writing to a medical group that had sued the FDA over the rule, said it was dropping the in-person dispensing requirement “to minimize the burden on the health care delivery system” and “to ensure that the benefits of the drug outweigh the risks.” The FDA did not give an effective date for the change.

The FDA decision comes as the battle over abortion rights in the United States heats up, with conservative legislatures in states such as Texas passing laws sharply restricting abortion access. The Supreme Court is considering whether to uphold a Mississippi law that violates a key precedent set in Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision establishing abortion as a fundamental right protected by the Constitution. The court’s decision on the politically charged issue could have far-reaching implications for reproductive health and congressional elections next year and the presidential contest in 2024.

The FDA left in place a requirement that prescribers register with the manufacturers, buy mifepristone ahead of time and dispense the medication themselves — something that requires extra work and, abortion rights advocates say, discourages some physicians from prescribing the drug. The agency also kept a requirement that patients sign an additional consent form when receiving the drug and that dispensing pharmacies be certified.

Abortion rights groups, while praising the FDA change on in-person dispensing, expressed disappointment that the agency did not get rid of the other restrictions. Antiabortion groups denounced the decision as jeopardizing safety.

Mifepristone is used to end pregnancies in more than 60 other countries, according to the FDA, including in at least 14 nations in Europe.

The two-drug combination for medication abortion consists of mifepristone, a drug that blocks the hormone progesterone, which is needed for pregnancy, and misoprostol, which empties the uterus. The medication is approved as safe and effective for use in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, although it is sometimes used “off label” after that.

Mifepristone, known by the brand name Mifeprex, is made by Danco Laboratories. A generic version is made by GenBioPro.

In 2017, 339,640 patients received medication abortions — about 39 percent of all abortions that year, according to data collected by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research center based in New York and Washington that supports abortion rights. The FDA estimates that 3.7 million women took the medication between 2000 and 2018.

Coverage by health insurance varies widely. Many health plans that cover surgical abortion also pay for abortion drugs, according to Danco. Some states restrict private plan coverage of surgical and medication abortions, while a few states require private insurers to cover them. Medicaid rarely covers the drug; the Hyde Amendment bars using federal dollars for abortion except in cases of rape, incest or when a mother’s life is in danger. Some states use their own money to cover abortion medication through Medicaid, but others do not pay for it even when a pregnancy results from rape or incest.

Abortion rights advocates called the FDA’s lifting of restrictions long overdue — and right on time.

“With Roe v. Wade hanging by a thread, it is especially urgent that the federal government do everything in its power to expand access to this medication,” said Julia Kaye, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the FDA over the restrictions on behalf of abortion providers and medical groups.

Kaye said there is no reason to treat mifepristone differently than other prescription drugs and that the in-person pickup requirement imposed a significant burden.

“Women have to arrange for transportation and child care, take off work,” Kaye said. The change “will allow many patients to access care earlier with fewer burdens and costs.”

Antiabortion groups decried the FDA step.

“The further along in the pregnancy that you use the pills, the greater the complications, the greater the failure rate and then the greater opportunity to get infected or end up in the emergency room,” said Susan Liebel, state director for the Susan B. Anthony List, an antiabortion group.

Mifepristone may be less effective later in pregnancy, but it is highly effective if used within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy as authorized by regulators. The risk of infection after taking mifepristone is very low, according to the FDA.

Liebel and other antiabortion activists argued that an in-person visit with a physician is essential because some rare conditions can result in complications after a medication abortion, and those conditions may not be discovered during a telehealth consultation. They say ultrasounds could detect extremely rare ectopic pregnancies, in which the fertilized egg implants outside of the uterus, which can be life-threatening.

In 2019, the American Association of ProLife Obstetricians and Gynecologists petitioned the FDA to strengthen the safety rules and to beef up reporting requirements for complications.

Donna Harrison, chief executive officer of the group, said the FDA does not have an accurate view of complication rates. “So to say that distribution without medical supervision is safe — that is ridiculous,” she said.

But a recent study that reviewed medication abortions in Canada after mifepristone became available with a normal prescription in 2017 showed that adverse events and complications remained stable, compared with the period when mifepristone was available only under restriction. Groups including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association called for the end of restrictions on the drug.

The FDA says that adverse events after taking the medication are rare. Among the estimated 3.7 million patients who took the pill between 2000 and 2018, there have been 24 deaths, with two linked to ectopic pregnancies, according to data collected by the FDA. The agency determined that those deaths cannot be causally attributed to mifepristone because of other health conditions and concerns. The agency also reported 412 infections, with 69 qualifying as severe, among patients who took mifepristone through 2018.

Loosening the federal restrictions will not change abortion access in many states with stricter regulations on the pills. Nineteen states have banned receiving the drugs through telehealth appointments, making the relaxed FDA rules irrelevant in places including Alabama, Arizona and Missouri. Some states impose other limitations on medication abortion, including allowing only physicians to prescribe the drug and mandating that patients take the pills under a doctor’s supervision rather than at home.

As federal officials have moved to ease restrictions on the drug, many states have tightened access. At least 16 states have proposed new restrictions on medication abortions this year, said Elizabeth Nash, state policy analyst for the Guttmacher Institute.

“State legislatures have been watching very carefully what happens at the federal level,” Nash said.

The highest-profile limitations were enacted in Texas, where lawmakers made it a felony to provide abortion pills after seven weeks of pregnancy and outlawed sending the drugs through the mail. Texas also banned nearly all abortion within the state by making any form of abortion illegal after about six weeks of pregnancy, though that law is being challenged in the courts.

The differing rules have the potential to widen disparities in abortion access, Nash said.

“Access looks very different depending on where you live,” Nash said. “Abortion access will continue to be very limited in states in the South, in the Plains and in the Midwest, and more accessible in states along the West Coast and the Northeast. … That’s problematic in and of itself, and could become an even bigger divide.”

When mifepristone was approved by the FDA, the agency imposed safety rules because there was limited clinical data from the United States, according to Jane E. Henney, who was agency commissioner at the time.

In a 2019 opinion article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Henney and Helene D. Gayle, a public health expert who co-chaired a National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine review of medication and surgical abortion, urged the FDA to drop the restrictions as outmoded.

The federal restrictions have been the target of legal action for years. In 2017, the ACLU, on behalf of a group of health providers, filed a legal challenge saying the safety requirements were unnecessary. In 2020, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and another group sued the agency to compel it to waive the in-person dispensing requirement during the pandemic. Acting on that suit, a federal judge in 2020 agreed the rule was unduly burdensome and barred the FDA from enforcing it. But in January 2021, the Supreme Court agreed with the Trump administration, which reinstated the rule.

Democrats in Congress have been pressing the FDA for years to get rid of the restrictions on mifepristone.

“Needless restrictions are making it harder for women to access the care they need,” Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said in a statement in August, when more than 70 House members called on the FDA to act.

Restrictive state laws are spurring an increase in some areas of what’s known as “self-managed abortions” in which patients buy illegal medication on the Internet and terminate pregnancies without interacting with the health-care system.

While some see this as a dangerous trend, others say the situation is sharply improved from decades earlier — because of the abortion pills.

Abigail Aiken, assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, said she is often asked whether the country is headed to “back-alley abortions and infections” if Roe v. Wade is struck down.

“One of the things we have that we didn’t have in the ’60s and ’70s is access to abortion pills that are very safe, very effective if you have the right instructions,” Aiken said. “Self management is a safety net. And it’s also an ability to take your health care into your own hands when the state legislature is trying to block access.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Because of course: "Texas’s six-week abortion ban remains in effect after federal appeals court ruling"

Quote

The nation’s most restrictive abortion law remains in effect in Texas after a federal appeals court on Monday rejected a request from abortion providers to immediately return their legal challenge to a trial court judge who had previously blocked the measure.

In a 2-to-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit temporarily transferred the case to the Texas Supreme Court, a step requested by state officials that could leave the dispute in limbo for months.

The court’s majority said its decision was “consistent” with the Supreme Court’s ruling last month and necessary to avoid “creating needless friction” with the state court over interpretation of the Texas law.

Abortion providers had warned the 5th Circuit that any diversion from the district court in Austin would continue to restrict access to the procedure after about six weeks into pregnancy, when many women do not yet realize they are pregnant.

The latest development follows a U.S. Supreme Court decision that left the ban in place while allowing providers to challenge the law’s unusual enforcement structure. The high court has twice refused to block the Texas law, which makes no exception for rape or incest and is at odds with the landmark Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing a right to abortion before viability, usually around 23 weeks.

In effect since Sept. 1, the law has forced Texans to cross state lines to terminate their pregnancies after the six-week mark.

The dissenting judge, Stephen A. Higginson, said Monday that his colleagues were second-guessing the Supreme Court and allowing Texas officials to re-litigate an issue they had already lost.

“This further, second-guessing redundancy, without time limit, deepens my concern that justice delayed is justice denied, here impeding relief ordered by the Supreme Court,” wrote Higginson, a nominee of President Barack Obama.

The Supreme Court is separately considering a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks. The court’s conservative justices signaled at oral argument that they were open to overturning Roe, the nearly 50-year old decision.

Future of abortion rights depends on a Supreme Court for which compromise seems elusive

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who wrote the majority opinion in the Texas case, sent the case back to the 5th Circuit as requested by Attorney General Ken Paxton (R). Texas officials then asked the 5th Circuit to transfer the case temporarily to the Texas Supreme Court to interpret a provision of state law before the case is sent to the district court.

The Texas law was designed to avoid judicial scrutiny by empowering private citizens, instead of state officials, to enforce the ban. Any member of the public can sue any person who performs an abortion or helps someone get an illegal abortion.

In its Dec. 10 opinion, the Supreme Court said the legal challenge could continue only against Texas licensing officials who oversee nurses, physicians and pharmacists.

Texas officials said the state’s high court must first determine whether those licensing officials in fact have the enforcement power the U.S. Supreme Court suggested to discipline medical professionals who violate the six-week abortion ban. Paxton told the 5th Circuit that state officials believe the law prevents licensing officials from enforcing the ban either directly or indirectly, and that the justices did not definitively resolve whether abortion providers have legal grounds to sue.

The 5th Circuit agreed, saying it must defer to the state court’s definition.

“This court reasonably seeks the Texas Supreme Court’s final word on the matter,” wrote Judge Edith H. Jones, a nominee of President Ronald Reagan, who was joined by Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, a nominee of President Donald Trump.

Abortion providers say the move to state court is just a delay tactic to leave the case in limbo and out of the hands of U.S. District Judge Robert L. Pitman in Austin.

In a statement Monday, Julie Murray, an attorney with Planned Parenthood Federation of America said, “People in Texas have been stripped of their constitutional right to abortion for more than four months now — and pregnant Texans are needlessly suffering with no end in sight. We call on the U.S. Supreme Court to enforce its order and send this case back to the district court where it belongs.”

In October, Pitman blocked enforcement of the law, which he characterized as an “unprecedented and aggressive scheme to deprive its citizens of a significant and well-established constitutional right.” Less than 48 hours later, the 5th Circuit reinstated the ban.

At oral argument this month, Jones suggested that the Texas case may not be resolved before the Supreme Court rules in the Mississippi matter and asked whether the 5th Circuit should just wait to rule until then.

What happens, she asked the lawyer for abortion providers, if the Supreme Court “as many expect says something about Roe v. Wade that implies that [the law’s] prohibition on abortions after heartbeat may be enforceable?”

“Maybe we ought to just sit on this until the end of June,” she said referring to the traditional end of the Supreme Court’s term.

Marc Hearron, the lawyer for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said waiting until then would be “completely inconsistent” with the Supreme Court’s expedited order.

He referred to the dissent from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who said, “Given the ongoing chilling effect of the state law, the district court should resolve this litigation and enter appropriate relief without delay.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"California said it would be a ‘sanctuary’ for reproductive rights. It just took a big first step."

Quote

It was the first legal alert announced by the California Department of Justice — and the first guidance of its kind in the nation.

On Jan. 6, Robert Bonta, the state’s attorney general, announced that a person carrying a fetus cannot be charged with murder for miscarriage or stillbirths.

The legal alert, meant to clarify the California DOJ’s view on “select questions of law,” Bonta said, was issued to all district attorneys, police chiefs and sheriffs and clarified that a state law on fetal murder only applies to third parties and cannot be used against a pregnant person whose fetus dies.

Pregnancy loss, even in instances where a person’s actions may have contributed to the death of the fetus or embryo, “should be met with an outreached hand, not handcuffs and murder charges,” said the state’s top prosecutor.

The announcement relates directly to two recent cases out of Kings County, Calif., where in the past four years the district attorney’s office has charged two women with murder for using methamphetamines during pregnancy, arguing that their drug use led to the stillbirths.

California’s fetal homicide law only applies to third parties, said Bonta, and states a clear exception to any act “solicited, aided, abetted or consented to by the mother of the fetus.”

The law’s architect, a Republican state assemblyman, said in a 1992 sworn affidavit that lawmakers did not intend “to make punishable as murder conduct by a pregnant woman that resulted in the death of her fetus."

While the legal guidance applied to a specific statute of California law, Bonta told The Lily, “We need to be absolutely clear-eyed about the moment that we’re in now, nationally.”

“We are committed to providing the strongest protections to individuals in California for reproductive freedom and access to reproductive care,” California’s top prosecutor said. “Preventing misuse of murder statutes to penalize pregnancy loss ... is one important step in that effort.”

This past December, California lawmakers laid out a proposal that would make the state a sanctuary for “reproductive freedom,” including the right to seek an abortion. Among the ideas put forward was to fund abortions for low-income individuals coming from out of state to end their pregnancies.

Antiabortion activists have strongly criticized the plan. “A ‘sanctuary’ where children are taken to be killed,” Lila Rose, the California-based president of the antiabortion group Live Action, wrote on Twitter. “More like a slaughter house than a sanctuary.”

The announcement came amid increasing uncertainty about the future of Roe v. Wade, which guarantees the constitutional right to an abortion. The landmark case is facing its strongest legal challenge in decades with Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. Mississippi has explicitly asked that its case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, be used to overturn Roe.

A number of states, including Arkansas, Idaho, North Dakota and Texas, have instituted trigger laws that would automatically ban abortion in the first and second trimesters if Roe falls. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that 26 states — more than half the country — are “certain or likely” to ban abortion in such a scenario. If that happens, more people will flock to states like California to end their pregnancies, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights.

At a time when states are moving further apart on abortion access, abortion rights advocates say prosecutions like those in Kings County are an increasing point of concern, in part because they could be applied to cases in which the pregnant person seeks an abortion.

Bonta’s announcement is an important step in making sure that no one is punished for the outcome of their pregnancy, whether they intended to end it or not, said Lynn Paltrow, founder and executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), whose attorneys have represented the defendants in the Kings County cases.

In this environment, any criminalization of adverse pregnancy outcomes, including miscarriages and stillbirths, is a threat to reproductive rights, she said.

Bonta’s announcement, while addressing one specific California statue, is “very broad in terms of its message,” said Paltrow: “Pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes should not be addressed with the criminal law system.”

Kings County Executive Assistant District Attorney Philip Esbenshade told the Associated Press that the cases are not “in any way” about abortion or reproductive rights. (The office did not respond to an additional request for comment.)

Reproductive rights advocates have long been concerned about laws criminalizing pregnancy loss.

Samantha Lee, a staff attorney at NAPW, said criminal charges because of adverse pregnancy outcomes are rooted in a “longtime stigma associated with miscarriage.”

Lee represented Chelsea Becker, who was charged by the Kings County district attorney in 2019 with murder after giving birth to a stillborn baby. Kings County District Attorney Keith Fagundes argued that toxic levels of methamphetamines caused the death of the fetus. Becker spent more than a year in jail because of a $2 million bail, which was set to prevent “the prospect of [Ms. Becker] becoming impregnated” again.

Becker’s murder charge was dropped in May 2021, after a judge found that prosecutors had not presented sufficient evidence that Becker took drugs knowing it could kill her baby.

The charges Becker faced are “based on the idea that we can guarantee a healthy pregnancy. If your pregnancy isn’t healthy, that’s somehow your failure,” argued Lee. “That’s simply not true.”

Some medical studies have shown links between drug use, including of methamphetamines, and adverse pregnancy outcomes, including pregnancy loss. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say pregnant people should not use tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, illegal drugs or prescription medications for nonmedical reasons.

The Kaiser Family Foundation noted in a recent policy brief that, “more often than not, the cause of a pregnancy loss is unknown even after thorough evaluation.”

“Most stillbirths are caused by genetic abnormalities, problems with the placenta, fetal growth restriction or infection,” stated the report.

And while some substance abuse can be a risk factor for pregnancy loss, the reports adds, “risk factors do not cause pregnancy loss, thus a pregnant person with one or more of these risk factors should not be faulted for their pregnancy loss.”

ACOG also discourages providers from reporting pregnant people with substance abuse disorders: “The use of the legal system to address perinatal alcohol and substance abuse is inappropriate,” its guidance reads.

Most of the cases criminalizing a pregnancy outcome involve some form of drug and alcohol use, said Paltrow, but they aren’t the only ones. In 2010, an Iowa prosecutor brought attempted feticide charges against a woman who fell down a flight of stairs after an upsetting call with her estranged husband. In Utah, a woman was charged with murdering one of her near-term twins after refusing a Caesarean section.

Reproductive justice advocates often point out the racial disparities in pregnancy loss: In Mississippi, for example, Black women were found to be twice as likely as White women to deliver a stillbirth. NAPW notes that the vast majority of charges based on one’s pregnancy are brought against poor women and women of color.

Farah Diaz-Tello, senior counsel and legal director for the advocacy group If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice, said the people who are charged with crimes against their pregnancies reflect “the population that is already over-policed and over-surveilled.”

“They are also the least likely to be able to access resources they would need to defend themselves,” she said. “And, perversely, more likely to experience adverse pregnancy outcomes because of the marginalization they’re experiencing.”

As abortion restrictions get more acute around the country, Lee thinks more people have started paying attention to these laws.

She noted that there is no real way to differentiate between self-managed abortion — when people terminate their pregnancies outside of a formal clinic settings — and miscarriages or stillbirths.

Paltrow pointed out that most of NAPW’s cases involve women who delivered healthy babies but were still criminalized for their conduct during and after pregnancy.

“If you can lock somebody up for having given birth to a healthy baby,” she said, “what do people think is going to happen when Roe v. Wade is overturned?”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the antiabortion group Susan B. Anthony List, said in a recent interview with the New Yorker that she is against punishing women for seeking or getting abortions.

If abortion is deemed illegal, said Dannenfelser, “my view, and the view of the entire movement — without any exception that I’m aware of — is that the doctor, the one who has been planning to break the law, is the guilty party. The law is enforced against that person, not the woman.”

But some conservative lawmakers do not appear to share this belief. Last year, Texas state Rep. Bryan Slaton (R) filed legislation aimed at people who get abortions, along with their medical providers. If found guilty of ending their pregnancies, they could get the death penalty.

“It’s time Republicans make it clear that we actually think abortion is murder,” he said, according to the Texas Tribune.

But, Slaton also said, he did not think his bill would “put a single person in jail.”

“All my bill does,” he said, “is say that an unborn child is the same as a born child and should be treated the same by the laws.”

Texas lawmakers did not advance Slaton’s bill last year.

Michele B. Goodwin, a Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California at Irvine and author of “Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood,” applauded California’s recent guidance.

“It is terrific that there is an effort to move away from toxic criminalization of people who are pregnant, for their behavior or conduct during their pregnancies,” she said. “This kind of intervention is long overdue.”

Goodwin has tracked cases like those in Kings County for 20 years. These prosecutions are rooted in the idea that embryos and fetuses have a right to personhood, she said.

These kinds of cases took off in the 1980s and ’90s during the crack epidemic, she added, when the media and others fueled panic that women using crack cocaine were giving birth to babies addicted to crack (these claims, primarily targeting Black women, were later determined to be unfounded).

“Personhood” — or a fetus’s right to life — also undergirds other laws that overrule the pregnant person’s autonomy, said Goodwin. She listed pregnancy exclusions laws as one such example, which require doctors to ignore the wishes of pregnant people who wish to end life-sustaining care, so that they might bring their pregnancies to term. As of 2020, 35 states had such laws.

“It would be a mistake to see [controlling the lives of pregnant people] as only within the realm of abortion,” said Goodwin.

Bonta said he hopes that other states will follow California’s lead.

The attorney general said he “would be shocked if there weren’t numerous other states that have similar statutes to ours in California, where the actual conduct of the mother cannot lead to a charge of murder.”

“Where that’s true, I think they should declare it and join us,” he said.

As for his state, Bonta vowed: “We’ll see a lot more from California in this regard.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh. "Supreme Court denies abortion providers’ request to return Texas case to judge who blocked state’s six-week ban"

Quote

The Supreme Court denied a request from abortion providers Thursday to send Texas’s restrictive abortion law back to a district judge who had once stopped it, and dissenting liberal justices said the court was complicit in allowing an “unconstitutional chill on abortion care.”

The court’s one-sentence order denying the request was the latest legal maneuver on the law called S.B. 8, which bans abortions in the state at about six weeks of pregnancy and sets up an enforcement for private individuals, rather than state officials. It has bitterly divided the Supreme Court.

“This case is a disaster for the rule of law and a grave disservice to women in Texas, who have a right to control their own bodies,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “I will not stand by silently as a state continues to nullify this constitutional guarantee.”

Her dissent was joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan.

The Supreme Court has been split over the Texas law since September, when the court on a 5-to-4 vote allowed it to go into effect while legal challenges continued. Patients seeking abortions after that have had to travel to other states.

After a hearing in November, the court in December again left the law in place, but provided a narrow path for providers to challenge in federal court what is the nation’s most restrictive law on the procedure. It identified a handful of state officials who could presumably play a role in enforcing S.B. 8, and said a suit could properly proceed against them.

As is common, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which covers Texas. But instead of returning it to a federal judge in Austin who had previously stopped the law, the appeals court agreed with a request from Texas to ask the state supreme court to clarify a matter of state law: whether those identified officials really had such an enforcement power.

That could mean months of delay, with the law remaining in place.

Abortion providers said such a move would be a direct rebuttal of what the Supreme Court had said in December.

Eight of the nine justices said litigation could proceed against the officials, and four said they expected the case to go back to the district judge and be dealt with quickly.

“Given the ongoing chilling effect of the state law, the district court should resolve this litigation and enter appropriate relief without delay,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for himself and Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan.

Roberts, who has voted with the liberals previously to stop the law while it is being challenged, did not join Sotomayor’s dissent or one written by Breyer,

“The Court of Appeals ignored our judgment,” Breyer wrote, adding, “As a result, an unconstitutional 6-week abortion ban remains in effect in Texas — as it has for over four months.”

Sotomayor’s dissent was unsparing. She noted that one judge on the appeals court panel “raised the notion that because this Court is considering a challenge to Roe v. Wade, the panel could ‘just sit on this until the end of June’ rather than fulfill its obligation to apply existing precedent.” She was referring to Judge Edith H. Jones, appointed to the 5th Circuit by President Ronald Reagan in 1985.

The court has heard arguments in a Mississippi case that explicitly asks the court to overturn Roe’s guarantee of a constitutional right to abortion, but Sotomayor noted the 1973 decision remains the law.

“Because our precedents are clear that Texas cannot directly ban abortion before viability, the state legislature enacted a convoluted law that instills terror in those who assist women exercising their rights between 6 and 24 weeks,” she wrote. “State officials knew that the fear and confusion caused by this legal-procedural labyrinth would restrict citizens from accessing constitutionally protected medical care, providers from offering it, and federal courts from restoring it. The dilatory tactics to which this Court accedes today are consistent with, and part of, this scheme.”

The abortion providers’ request to the court was a long shot; Sotomayor acknowledged they were asking for “extraordinary” relief. As often happens in emergency requests, the majority did not provide a reason for denying the petition.

Sotomayor contended the relief was warranted, and the court should have been clear Texas and the appeals court had not obeyed the Supreme Court’s decision.

“Texas wagered that this Court did not mean what little it said in [the December ruling] or, at least, that this Court would not stand behind those words, meager as they were,” Sotomayor wrote. “That bet has paid off. Despite this Court’s protestations over the ‘extraordinary solicitude’ it gave this case and the narrowness of any dispute, it accepts yet another dilatory tactic by Texas.”

The order came in In Re Whole Woman’s Health.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Look at this from NH:

 

Um, so they can force the woman to go through with the pregnancy, but only have to pay until the birth. Yeah, that seems fair. /s

[NotQuiteMotY]

24 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Look at this from NH:

 

Um, so they can force the woman to go through with the pregnancy, but only have to pay until the birth. Yeah, that seems fair. /s

And of course if she were trying to get that abortion because she was trying to get away from an abusive relationship, there's absolutely no risk in forcing her to come in contact with her abuser and have his child!

[Audrey2]

46 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Look at this from NH:

 

Um, so they can force the woman to go through with the pregnancy, but only have to pay until the birth. Yeah, that seems fair. /s

So then, since the idea of abortion distresses the father so much, he could take the baby home and raise it by himself (unless he was the abuser). I get really tired of these forced birth but as soon as the baby enters the world the woman is on her own people.

And I swear, if I lived in one of these states and it was an option at all I would choose other as my gender and write in incubator, since they don't see me as a person but an incubator that breathes and has legs.

Edited January 21, 2022 by Audrey2

[Cartmann99]

Videos are NSFW because of language.

 

Rest of thread under the spoiler:

Spoiler