The War On Abortion And Women's Rights

[smittykins]

Like when they claim “Pregnancy due to rape only occurs *insert infinitesimal number here*.”  It only has to happen ONCE.

[Ozlsn]

On 3/24/2021 at 8:09 AM, klein_roeschen said:

It's because the knowledge of side effects of pregnancy isn't widespread. I had good sex education at school that covered the different ways to prevent a pregnancy and sti's and abortion. I had human anatomy several times in biology at school where the basics of how a pregnancy starts. But never there where the side effects of pregnancy spoken about. It's widespread knowlegde that you have some morning sickness in the first trimester, but hyperemesis gravidarum? That pregnancy is a mayor factor in developing osteoporosis in later life? Incontince by weakened pelvic floor muscles and tearing during labor? Or more grave side effects like preeclamsia? Even when talking about therapeutic abortions, it's almost always because the fetus has a condition incompatible with live, but seldom the mother. It's like it's expected that a pregnant woman would lay down her life for the child in her womb and the less she knows about what can go wrong the better. It's disgusting.

I had a high risk pregnancy, and my mother's group are women I met while our children were in NICU. Several of my friends nearly died during pregnancy (along with their child) - at least three that I can think of offhand have been warned not to get pregnant again as they will likely not survive. Even some of my friends who had "routine" pregnancies and deliveries have ongoing issues. 

Up until very recently childbirth was one of the most dangerous things a woman could do - and even though it is safer it is not, nor will it ever be, risk free. I wish these people would focus their energy into promoting availability of contraception; into education; into making all pregnancies loved and wanted ones. I wish they would focus on the children and adults who are living in poverty, and work towards a more equitable society.

But that would require a longer commitment, a lot of hard graft and far fewer warm fuzzy feelings.

[Smash!]

I read an article about a couple with the woman having an ectopic pregnancy. Even with the existing laws the first hospital they went to wouldn‘t perform the necessary abortion to save this woman's life. They had to go to a second one and she nearly died.

It‘s so fucking disgusting and I‘m livid no one even wants to address the man and his dick. As far as I know it takes two to conceive a child and I know a lot of guys who want to have sex without a condom. But it’s the women whose life is ruined in case a pregnancy occurs.

I have to say I get more and more uncomfortable discussing all the fundamentalist families here. They are the ones who help voting those despicable people into office and not only support those awful laws but also actively work against democracy. I don’t want to give them clicks, I don’t want to waste a single thought about any of them anymore.

[47of74]

And will that fuck Pat Grassley or other legislative Refucklicans listen?  Oh hell no.

Quote

Fewer than one-third of Iowans now support the Legislature’s push for an amendment that says the state constitution does not secure a right to abortion, according to a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll.  

Support for the proposal has dipped slightly from 33% last spring to 31% this year, the poll found. Opposition has also risen, with 58% of Iowans now saying they’re opposed, up from 54% a year ago. The remaining 11% of respondents are not sure.  

The Republican-controlled Iowa Legislature is working this year to approve the amendment. It would change what abortion opponents say is an overreach by the Iowa Supreme Court in a 2018 decision that found there is a fundamental right to abortion in the Iowa Constitution. Those who support a legal right to abortion oppose the amendment, saying it could lead to extreme abortion restrictions. 

To be presented to voters, both chambers of the Legislature must pass the same wording before the end of the 2022 session, then must do so a second time by the end of the 2024 session. If the amendment clears both of those hurdles, it will go on Iowans’ ballots in November 2024. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm so angry about this that I'm shaking: "A Minnesota man can’t be charged with rape because the woman chose to drink beforehand, court rules"

Quote

After a 20-year-old woman took five shots of vodka and a prescription pill, she said she was standing outside a Minneapolis bar in May 2017 when a man invited her and a friend to a party. She agreed but soon found out there was no gathering, she later testified.

She “blacked out” instead, waking up on a couch and found that the man she had just met was allegedly sexually assaulting her, according to court records.

Almost four years later, the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously ruled this week that Francios Momolu Khalil, 24, cannot be found guilty of rape because the woman got drunk voluntarily beforehand. The decision Wednesday overturned Khalil’s prior conviction of third-degree criminal sexual conduct, which had been upheld by an appeals court, and granted him the right to a new trial.

The ruling also poured fuel on an effort in the Minnesota legislature to expand the state’s definition of “mentally incapacitated” to include voluntary intoxication so that defendants such as Khalil can be convicted of more serious offenses.

At issue in Khalil’s case was a state law that says a person is only considered “mentally incapacitated” and incapable of consenting to sex if they are intoxicated on substances “administered to that person without the person’s agreement,” like if someone spikes a punch bowl at a party. In Khalil’s case, Justice Paul Thissen wrote in an opinion, no one disputes that the woman chose to become drunk.

“If the legislature’s intended meaning is clear from the text of the statute, we apply that meaning and not what we may wish the law was or what we think the law should be,” Thissen wrote.

Khalil has been incarcerated since his sentencing in 2019. His attorney in the lower court said he expects his client to be released soon.

“When you have a 6-to-0 unanimous decision, that tells you that the courts have recognized what I was telling the district court judge all along: You cannot add your own elements to the law,” said the attorney, Will Walker. “Otherwise, nobody would ever have a fair trial.”

Khalil’s attorney in the Minnesota Supreme Court case declined to comment on the ruling.

On the evening of the alleged assault, the woman went to a bar in Minneapolis’s Dinkytown neighborhood with a friend, but the bouncer refused to let her in because she was drunk, according to court records. That’s when Khalil and two other men allegedly approached the woman and her friend and invited them to a party.

Khalil drove the women to a house in northern Minneapolis, prosecutors allege. The friend later testified that the woman immediately lay down on the couch and fell asleep.

When the woman woke up and saw that Khalil was allegedly raping her, she told him she didn’t want to have sex, court records say.

“But you’re so hot and you turn me on,” he allegedly replied.

The woman then lost consciousness and woke up between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. with her shorts around her ankles, she testified. She and her friend left the house in a Lyft vehicle, and the woman went to a hospital to have a rape kit done later that day. She reported the case to Minneapolis police four days later, according to court records.

Minnesota is among a majority of states that treat intoxication as a barrier to consent only if victims became drunk against their will. As of 2016, intoxication provisions in 40 states did not include situations in which someone chose to consume drugs or alcohol, according to Brooklyn Law Review.

Definitions of rape have generally been expanding in recent decades, said Jill Hasday, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who has written about the history of marital rape. Courts that used to require women to prove that they displayed “utmost resistance” to unwanted sexual activity now apply what Hasday characterized as a more realistic understanding of how consent typically happens.

Minnesota rape survivors, advocates and dozens of legislators see the state’s voluntary intoxication defense as a loophole that still needs to be filled. Some legislators put forth a bill in 2019 to make voluntary drunkenness grounds for a felony rape charge, but the legislature instead convened a working group to study the issue. The bipartisan bill in the Minnesota House of Representatives emerged from that group’s report on possible changes to the law.

Under the existing statute, Khalil’s case could be charged as fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct, a gross misdemeanor, according to the court ruling. State Rep. Kelly Moller (D), a co-sponsor of the bill and a prosecutor, said that charge does not go far enough.

“I’ve heard from prosecutors that even charging this as a fifth-degree gross misdemeanor is almost insulting to the victim,” she said, “because it’s such a lesser crime and it doesn’t encompass what the victim actually experienced.”

Moller said she often hears from prosecutors and victims about sexual assaults that cannot be prosecuted because the victim had chosen to consume drugs or alcohol before the attack. At a state House committee hearing in February, a woman testified that when she was raped in 2019, prosecutors told her they could not pursue her case because she had chosen to drink cocktails before she lost consciousness on the day of the attack.

Of the nearly 10 million U.S. women who have been raped while intoxicated, according to background in the court opinion, Moller said most become drunk by choice. She pointed to Khalil’s case to argue that some alleged offenders seek to prey on people in that kind of condition.

If Moller’s bill succeeds in making voluntary drunkenness grounds for a rape charge, prosecutors will still have to explore the defendant’s knowledge of the victim’s state of mind.

“The state still has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knew or should have known that the victim was intoxicated to the degree incapable of providing consent,” Moller said. “And that burden is high.”

 

[Ozlsn]

6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

“The state still has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knew or should have known that the victim was intoxicated to the degree incapable of providing consent,” Moller said. “And that burden is high.”

I feel this should be applied across the criminal code. If you are mugged while drunk can you prove you did not consent to your wallet being taken? Can you prove that the accused knew that you were intoxicated and that you were not consenting to them taking your money? If the accused believed in good faith that you wanted them to have your wallet can you prove otherwise? If you voluntarily consumed alcohol or drugs before your wallet was stolen then surely you were implying consent to your money being taken, right? If you didn't want your money taken you obviously would have stayed sober 

I swear rape is the only crime where the victim is actively not believed and on top of that active excuses for the perpetrator are found. I would really like to see a he said/she said theft case defended the same way. 

[thoughtful]

6 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

I feel this should be applied across the criminal code. If you are mugged while drunk can you prove you did not consent to your wallet being taken?

This was my first thought, as well.

"Gee, mister, you were passed out due to drinks you voluntarily consumed. Why would you be upset that I took your wallet, your jewelry and your shoes, shaved your head, and shot you full of heroin?"

 

[Xan]

Why stop at robbery?  "Sure.  I shot the guy but he was drunk.  If he hadn't been drinking, he'd have been able to run away."

It's the patriarchal stuff all over again.  The woman was at the wrong place at the wrong time.  She was wearing the wrong kind of clothes.  She shouldn't have had alcohol.  And, anyway, it's not as if something was taken from her.  Women are made to be used this way.  

The disheartening thing to me is that we keep fighting these battles over and over again.  I remember when we were finally able to get birth control pills without being married or having parental consent.  I actually had a friend in college who got pregnant and went the coat hanger route.  She almost died.  And now, 50 years later, we're still trying to keep abortion legal, can't get an equal rights amendment passed, and aren't taken seriously when we claim sexual abuse.  I'm beyond disgusted.

[thoughtful]

1 hour ago, Xan said:

Why stop at robbery?  "Sure.  I shot the guy but he was drunk.  If he hadn't been drinking, he'd have been able to run away."

Well, I was trying to keep within the argument of something a person might have chosen to do if they were conscious.

Although, come to think of it, people do commit suicide. So, yeah, it could be "Before he passed out, he seemed sad. I figured he wanted me to kill him."

1 hour ago, Xan said:

The disheartening thing to me is that we keep fighting these battles over and over again.

It's disheartening, and believe me, I understand. I saw huge changes in the people around me when it came to shaking off sexism, racism, and bias about sexuality, between my childhood and young adult years. I had hopes, in the 1970s, that things would continue in that direction.

But I have long since resigned myself to the fact that there are some things about which good people will have to be vigilant for some, maybe many, more generations. Oppression based on gender, ethnicity, sexuality or religion comes back again and again. Maybe we will be able to weed it out forever, someday, but that day hasn't come yet.

[GreyhoundFan]

"States passed 28 antiabortion bills in 4 days. Here’s what to know about the surge in legislation."

Quote

In Oklahoma and Idaho, state lawmakers just banned most abortions at the first sign of a fetal heartbeat.

In Arizona, a new law bars patients from seeking an abortion for genetic abnormalities.

In Montana, providers can no longer perform abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, while abortion pills, available via mail in other states, must be taken with a doctor present.

They are all part of an unprecedented storm of activity fueled by conservative legislators and aimed at restricting abortion access for millions of Americans. In a four-day span from April 26 to 29, 28 new restrictions were signed into law in seven states, the most antiabortion legislation to become law in a single week in more than a decade, according to a new analysis from the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research center that supports abortion rights.

As of April 29, the report found, there had been 536 abortion restrictions put forward across 46 states since January, with 61 of those bills being enacted.

The volume of bills being proposed is historic, representing a new high water mark of antiabortion legislation, said Elizabeth Nash, who analyzes state policy for the Guttmacher Institute and co-authored the analysis.

Following the institute’s report, Susan B. Anthony List, an antiabortion advocacy group, applauded the surge of restrictions.

“The unprecedented surge of pro-life activity in state legislatures this year proves life is winning in America,” SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement, adding, “The states are sending an unmistakable message to pro-abortion Democrats nationwide — and to the Supreme Court — that the pro-life movement will never rest until unborn children and their mothers are protected in the law.”

There have been more bills opposing abortion over the past decade than in any time since the 1973 landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, which guarantees a woman’s right to an abortion. What makes 2021 unique is the variations on restrictions, Nash explained.

Before 2019, state legislatures tacked on requirements to legal abortions that made the procedure harder to access — mandating abortion counseling and waiting periods, for example, or restricting the kinds of facilities that could provide abortion services.

But 2019 marked a change in tactics: States began banning abortions outright.

Nash said she finds the mix “striking.”

Lawmakers, she said, are responding to the 2020 Supreme Court ruling in June Medical Services v. Russo, which narrowly struck down a Louisiana law that would have left the state with only two doctors who could perform abortions. Nash, alongside some legal scholars, saw in Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s opinion a suggestion that other kinds of restrictions could be found constitutional.

Since then, with the addition of Justice Amy Coney Barrett late last year, the court has gotten more conservative. The bans on abortions after six weeks — also known as “heartbeat” bills ― seem designed to kick-start direct challenges to abortion rights, Nash said, while other restrictions are aimed at taking effect immediately.

Such bills, even when they do not pass, can confuse patients, who may not be aware of which laws are in effect and which are not, Nash said. But the restrictions that do get enacted — banning abortion coverage in health plans or 72-hour waiting periods — can be enough to deter those seeking abortion care.

“Any one restriction can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for any patient,” Nash said. “There are all sorts of restrictions that, when you put them together — particularly when you put them together — it can be incredibly difficult to access services.”

That has been the case in Florida, said Amy Weintraub, a program director at Progress Florida, a left-leaning advocacy group. While Florida legislators haven’t passed any new bills against abortion this year, restrictions in other states have driven up the cost of abortion services across the South, and a growing number of people must rely on abortion funds to help pay for their procedures.

She pointed to the Tampa Bay Abortion Fund, which recently noted on its Facebook page that the number of people seeking help accessing abortion care rose from 75 in 2019 to 249 in just the first four months of this year.

According to Weintraub, who cited conversations with abortion funds and providers, an increasing number of people from neighboring states have traveled to Florida to get care because it’s so difficult to access it in their home state.

“They are all talking about the uptick in patients who are coming to us from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee,” she said.

As far as bans go, Weintraub said it feels as if Florida’s abortion rights advocates “escaped by the skin of our teeth.”

Nash said she anticipates more legislation from Louisiana, Missouri and Montana. Texas also has a “very full agenda” on abortion over the next few weeks, she added, including a fetal-heartbeat bill that would also allow anyone in Texas to sue any abortion provider believed to have violated state guidelines for abortion care, as well as any person who “aids and abets” in the service, reports San Antonio’s Spectrum News.

Additional bills in the state include a law banning pill-induced abortions at seven weeks (the Food and Drug Administration says abortion pills are safe until 10 weeks) and a law that would immediately ban nearly all abortions after six weeks in the state if Roe v. Wade is overturned, including in cases of rape or incest, writes the Texas Tribune.

Jeanne Mancini, the president of March for Life, an antiabortion advocacy group, said this kind of state-level approach will continue. “We expect this important work in the states to continue so long as our laws fail to protect the dignity and worth of every human person, but the actions of the current administration on abortion certainly provide the pro-life movement additional motivation,” she said.

This was echoed by Mallory Quigley, an executive at Susan B. Anthony List. Conservative legislators anticipated that the Biden administration will expand access, but they also know “there is a ticking clock until [the Supreme Court] has to address abortion issues.”

Quigley said antiabortion activists are particularly heartened by the progress of “discrimination” bills — legislation that prevents people from terminating a pregnancy based on genetic abnormalities in the fetus. She pointed to one such Ohio law recently upheld by a federal appeals court.

“This is really exciting for pro-life advocates who are looking at the change in the lower courts; who are looking to elicit a response from the Supreme Court,” she said.

Kamyon Conner, executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, which provides financial support to those seeking abortions, said allowing civil suits would be an unprecedented move to punish abortion providers and advocates. She said such suits could hinge on infractions such as not waiting the full 24 hours required between a consultation and the abortion.

“I see this as a way for them to not only attack abortion providers in a new way but to be able to attack abortion funds, which used to be a little bit off the radar,” Conner said. Not only could abortion funders be sued under the Texas bill, but so could escorts who walk patients into abortion clinics, or friends and family members who drive their loved ones to get an abortion.

Conner fears the bill not only will be signed into law but will become a blueprint for other states to follow.

“Texas is like a landmark place for abortion access,” Conner said. “Roe v Wade came out of Texas.”

During a debate at the Texas Capitol last week, state Sen. Bryan Hughes (R), author of the bill that would ban abortions after six weeks, argued that bill would “protect our most vulnerable Texans when the heartbeat is present,” Spectrum News reported.

According to one exchange documented by the Texas Tribune, when one Texas Democrat said there was “no way” that the state’s pre-Roe statutes were still enforceable, Chelsey Youman, an executive with the antiabortion group the Human Coalition, countered, “Perhaps we’ll find out from the new makeup of the Supreme Court soon.” The Human Coalition did not respond to an interview request for this report.

The proposals highlight how “fragile and limited” abortion is in Texas, Conner said.

“Roe doesn’t do what people think it does,” she said. “Honestly, Roe has been chipped away at in our state.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh. "Supreme Court to review Mississippi abortion law that advocates see as a path to diminish Roe v. Wade"

Quote

The Supreme Court on Monday said it will review a restrictive Mississippi abortion law that opponents of the procedure say provides a clear path to diminish Roe v. Wade’s establishment of the right of women to choose an abortion.

Abortion opponents for months have urged the court’s conservatives to seize the chance to reexamine the 1973 precedent. Mississippi is one among many Republican-led states that have passed restrictions that conflict with the court’s precedents protecting a woman’s right to choose before fetal viability.

In accepting the case, the court said it would examine whether “all pre-viability prohibitions on abortion are unconstitutional.” That has been a key component of the court’s jurisprudence.

The Mississippi law would ban almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. But both a district judge and a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit said that could not be squared with decades of Supreme Court precedents.

“In an unbroken line dating to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s abortion cases have established (and affirmed, and re-affirmed) a woman’s right to choose an abortion before viability,” Judge Patrick Higginbotham wrote for the appeals court. “States may regulate abortion procedures prior to viability so long as they do not impose an undue burden on the woman’s right but they may not ban abortions.”

Mississippi already bans abortions after 20 weeks, and it has also passed legislation that would ban most abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, or near six weeks. Lower courts declined to let that law, or the 15-week ban passed in 2018, take effect.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves wrote in a 2018 ruling that the Mississippi legislature’s “professed interest in ‘women’s health’ is pure gaslighting.”

“The State chose to pass a law it knew was unconstitutional to endorse a decades-long campaign, fueled by national interest groups, to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade,” Reeves wrote.

The state argued that because the clinic challenging the law offered abortions only up to 16 weeks, the law was not affecting many women. The harm to the state, it said, was “requiring it to permit inhumane abortion procedures which cause a fetus to experience pain — a factor the Supreme Court has never explicitly addressed.”

But the Center for Reproductive Rights, representing the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, said the law was simply not allowed by Roe or the court’s 1992 decision affirming the abortion right, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

“Before viability, it is for the pregnant person, and not the state, to make the ultimate decision whether to continue a pregnancy” the center said in its brief to the Supreme Court.

“A pre-viability abortion ban unquestionably contravenes this fundamental tenet of the Court’s abortion jurisprudence.”

Antiabortion activists are hoping that a changed Supreme Court will alter that jurisprudence. President Donald Trump said overturning Roe was a priority when he chose three justices: Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Kavanaugh and Barrett could be particularly important, because they replaced two justices who had protected abortion rights, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, respectively.

Until the Supreme Court acts, it is likely that lower courts will continue to strike down the restrictive laws, even if reluctantly.

That was evident in the 5th Circuit’s decision. Even though the panel was unanimous in striking the Mississippi law, Circuit Judge James Ho wrote separately to criticize Reeves’s opinion.

The decision, Ho wrote, “displays an alarming disrespect for the millions of Americans who believe that babies deserve legal protection during pregnancy as well as after birth, and that abortion is the immoral, tragic, and violent taking of innocent human life.”

The case is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

So true:

[Cartmann99]

Texas' new abortion law isn't just dangerous — it's incredibly hypocritical

Quote

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday signed into law one of the most extreme abortion bans in the country, prohibiting abortions starting from six weeks after a woman’s missed period. The bill also incentivizes any Texan to sue anyone who provides an abortion or helps a woman get an abortion after that point for up to $10,000.

Texas already has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, particularly among Black women, and that’s been exacerbated by the fact that Abbott won’t expand Medicaid.

The self-described “pro-life” governor scribbled his name on this legislation just one day after banning local government entities, including public schools, from enforcing Covid-19 mask mandates. So even in schools where many children have not received the vaccine yet, and which have decided for themselves that a mask requirement continues to make sense in a continuing deadly pandemic, will not be able to enforce that rule.

Ironically, after signing the executive order, Abbott tweeted: “Texans, not gov’t, should decide their best health practices.”

That’s exactly what reproductive rights advocates have been saying for years. But Abbott apparently means to apply the principle to everyone except pregnant women.

Nothing about Abbott or his Republican colleagues in Texas — aside from their apparent concern for fetuses — suggests particular respect for life, but that’s been especially obvious over the past year. Texas refused Medicaid expansion in the middle of a pandemic last year, as tens of thousands of Texans died from Covid-19, effectively denying 1.5 million people in the state access to affordable health coverage. Abbott lifted the statewide mask mandate and reopened nonessential businesses at 100 percent capacity in early March, long before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended doing so.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"This 17-year-old needs an abortion in Texas. First, she has to make her case in court."

Quote

SAN ANTONIO — D chose black leggings and a zip-up hoodie because it’s the kind of outfit that blends in anywhere.

She could go to the gym to work out, like she’d told her parents when she left the house — or she could go to the gym to sit in the parking lot with her laptop on her knees, petitioning a judge to let her have an abortion.

The 17-year-old arrived at the San Antonio strip mall 30 minutes before her hearing in January, pulling into a space far enough from the gym doors to avoid attention, but close enough that she wouldn’t feel alone.

D reached for “A Woman’s Right to Know,” the antiabortion booklet the court expected her to study. Her least favorite page, about the risks and complications associated with abortion, was striped with pink highlighter. Preparing for today, she’d skipped over the medical terms — hemorrhaging, perforation — highlighting only the words that were familiar: Heavy bleeding. A hole in the uterus. Increased risk of infertility.

D was terrified to have an abortion, but she couldn’t show it. If she seemed scared, even just a little bit, she thought, the judge might decide she couldn’t do this on her own.

Texas is one of 21 states that requires minors to obtain consent from at least one parent before they can have an abortion. To circumvent parental approval, minors have to go to court. They must prove they’re hiding their pregnancy for a good reason — and that they’re mature enough, and informed enough, to make this decision on their own. Because of her situation, The Lily agreed to identify D, now 18, only by her first initial.

The parental consent law is one of dozens of antiabortion laws that have passed in Texas. This session, state legislators introduced the “Texas Heartbeat Act” just over a month after D’s January hearing, a measure that would ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest. Texas is often seen as a testing ground for new varieties of antiabortion legislation — and this particular bill includes a provision unlike anything introduced in state legislatures so far: Any person in the country could sue someone who helps a Texan access abortion after the six-week limit, which could force abortion funds and independent clinics across the state to close. The governor signed the bill on Wednesday.

While the law will almost certainly be overturned in the courts, it signals the legislature’s deep and intensifying commitment to limit abortion access — a move that is mirrored in states across the country. When D heard about the six-week ban, she cried. The judicial-bypass process, allowing minors to access abortion without parental consent, can take up to a month.

She found out she was pregnant at five and a half weeks.

D took her first pregnancy test just after midnight on a Friday. Her best friend was over. They’d been watching a scary movie and eating Chinese takeout when D mentioned her period was a week late.

If D wanted to take a pregnancy test, her friend said, she would take one, too. They drove to a 24-hour Walgreens, then back to D’s house, shutting themselves in a bathroom a few doors down from where D’s parents slept.

“I can’t look,” D said when the two-minute window was up, handing the stick to her friend facedown. “You do it.”

At 12:47 a.m., D texted her boyfriend: “I’m pregnant.”

Twenty minutes went by.

“Bro answer pls. Idk what to do. I need you to answer.”

Twenty-three more minutes.

“I can’t sleep.”

D would have to wait until he woke up in the morning. She lay in bed, thinking about what her parents would say if they found out. Her family is Catholic, she said, with crosses hanging above every doorway. D has a framed picture of the Virgin Mary above her bed. If her father learned she got pregnant at 17, D said, she suspected she might have to find another place to live.

“You can always have an abortion,” D’s sister said when they met up the next day.

D hadn’t allowed herself to think about that option, she said, remembering everything her priest said in Sunday Mass: People who have abortions go to hell.

Two years older than D and a newly minted college feminist, her sister never listened to any of that: If D wanted to have an abortion, she promised to do whatever she could to help.

At first, the situation seemed hopeless. Because existing Texas law bans abortion after 20 weeks gestation, D had to find a lawyer and file her paperwork as soon as possible. But she didn’t know any lawyers, and she had no money to pay for one.

Then she got a text from a friend, one of the three she told about her pregnancy: Had D heard about an organization called Jane’s Due Process? An advertisement had popped up on her Snapchat stories, the friend said. It looked like they helped minors in Texas who needed an abortion but couldn’t tell their parents.

D immediately called the hotline and spoke to an advocate who laid out the process. They would get a hearing date on Zoom in a few weeks. There would be a lawyer, a judge and a court reporter. D would tell them her name was Jane Doe.

“At that point I was like, ‘Yeah, maybe I can do this,’” D said.

Jane’s Due Process is the kind of organization that would be targeted with lawsuits if the new bill takes effect, said executive director Rosann Mariappuram — and potentially forced to shut down.

While she was waiting for her hearing, D struggled to hide her pregnancy from her parents. Her mom noticed every little change: Why had she suddenly stopped eating scrambled eggs for breakfast? She wanted to know why D looked so tired, so pale.

“I had to keep my cool, like, ‘What do you mean?’” D said.

D picked up her study materials for the hearing at her sonogram appointment, stashing them in her backpack, nestled between worksheets and readings for school: the one place she assumed her parents would never think to look. She studied “A Woman’s Right to Know" after everyone else in the house went to sleep. Distributed by the state health department through abortion clinics, Democratic lawmakers say the booklet is “a propaganda piece" full of medically inaccurate information.

D was told the judge would expect her to know it cold.

Lying on her bed, she’d also review a list of questions from her lawyer.

Some were easy: How old are you? Do you go to school? Do you work? Do you have a bank account?

Others were harder: What would your parents do if you told them?

“I can’t talk to my parents about that,” she’d whisper to herself, rehearsing what she’d say. “They would kick me out. They wouldn’t talk to me. I would feel alone and I wouldn’t have nowhere to go.”

Even when she was alone, she said, she rarely made it through the answers without crying. What if that happened in court, she wondered: Would the judge think she was too young? Too unstable?

As the hearing got closer, D wished she was allowed to be a little scared. She did feel mature enough to make this decision, she said. But she was also a 17-year-old faced with a life-changing choice, asking for the opportunity to undergo surgery alone — and she wanted her mom.

D’s hearing was scheduled for the end of January, about three weeks after she found out she was pregnant. Just as she’d feared, D started to cry when the judge asked why she needed judicial bypass. But the judge was kind, she said. As soon as D finished talking, she approved her request.

At eight and a half weeks pregnant, D had an abortion.

While she would have preferred the abortion pill, she said, she’d opted for surgery: The frequent trips to the bathroom expected with the pill might have made her parents suspicious. That morning, she told her parents she was going to work.

D doesn’t remember much from the procedure, she said. A nurse asked her to take off her pants and underwear. The paper crinkled as she scooted down the bed and slid her feet into the stirrups. She put on her headphones — selecting a playlist her boyfriend had made for her — and allowed her mind to drift.

Four months later, D sat in the same car where she was granted her abortion, watching on a laptop as a group of Texas legislators passed the six-week abortion ban.

“Once the heartbeat is detected, that life is protected,” said state Rep. Shelby Slawson (R), the bill’s sponsor. Other legislators cheered and leaped to their feet.

“What makes them think they have a right to tell you what to do and what not to do?” D said, staring at the screen. She couldn’t believe the bill was introduced by a woman.

She gripped the steering wheel to stop her hands from shaking.

“I feel scared for other girls.”

A senior in high school, D has spent a lot of time imagining what her future might look like.

“I want to finish school. I want to travel. I want to enjoy myself,” she said. “I really want to go to Rome.” She wants a big family too, she said — at least five kids, once she has the money to support them.

More than anything, she said, she hopes that one day, years from now, she can tell her mom what happened when she was 17.

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[Ozlsn]

Ok, so by outlawing birth control this essentially puts the full responsibility for any pregnancies back on the man, right? So he'll be 100% responsible for all pregnancy, birth, and raising children costs, right?

Yeah I know - but I would love to see that tacked on to that godawful bill.

Edited to add: being responsible for the costs also does not automatically infer any parental rights - they could always go the UK route and let the woman choose whether the father is included on the birth certificate if they are not married at the time of the child's birth. 

Edited June 26, 2021 by Ozlsn
Adding more

[Smash!]

26 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

Edited to add: being responsible for the costs also does not automatically infer any parental rights - they could always go the UK route and let the woman choose whether the father is included on the birth certificate if they are not married at the time of the child's birth. 

I didn’t know there were countries where an unmarried woman has to include the father in the birth certificate of her child? 

Heck where I live if a woman is not married to the father of her child the child gets her last name. There is paperwork you can file to change it but you have to take action.

[Ozlsn]

15 minutes ago, Smash! said:

I didn’t know there were countries where an unmarried woman has to include the father in the birth certificate of her child? 

Heck where I live if a woman is not married to the father of her child the child gets her last name. There is paperwork you can file to change it but you have to take action.

Here the woman needs to declare who the father of the child is, or sign a statutory declaration that she cannot determine who the father is. "The birth registration statement notes that if applicants are unable to provide any details of the other parent, they are required to provide a statutory declaration stating why the parent’s details and/or signature are missing, and what attempts have been made to obtain them."

There are exemptions around issues like family violence - I have taken the quote above from the Law Reform Commission's document which took submissions regarding the registration of births in Victoria. The current status is informed by:

"3.79The competing interests identified were characterised as a question of a balance of rights, either perceived or actual, among three parties:

-the right of the father to be included on, and sign, the birth registration statement, and by doing so, have his parentage formally acknowledged

-the right of the child to know who his/her parents are

-the right of the mother to be free from the fear of reprisal or violence, or not to be forced to acknowledge the father of a child conceived through an assault"

(Personally I think the rights of the child and mother should be placed above the right of the father in that list - one of those has a lot less potential risk to the individual than the other two.)

As to surnames - I don't think there are any restrictions on what surname is chosen, providing the name falls within the established guidelines. Parental surnames(s), brand new, combination - all good.

[Audrey2]

I just saw this story on Yahoo, and it comes to the same conclusion that I do. As the Republicans continue to limit abortion, their next fight will focus on making birth control harder and more expensive to access. 

The Anti–Birth Control Movement Is the New Anti-Abortion Movement

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/anti-birth-control-movement-anti-151307686.html

Spoiler

Republicans have started to blur the lines between birth control and abortion in the hopes of making it harder for American women to get both birth control and abortions. And nowhere is this clearer than in the Missouri statehouse, where lawmakers decided that they really needed to restrict Medicaid coverage of birth control and payments to Planned Parenthood. Yes, as the Kansas City Star reported, lawmakers there spent hours last week in a discussion that “resembled a remedial sex education course.” It was a tricky play, attacking birth control as a way to attack abortion, and it didn’t work…this time.

“What’s been happening in Missouri last week should serve as a warning sign for what’s to come,” says Alexis McGill Johnson, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “We’re already hearing members of the U.S. Congress spread the same falsehoods we’ve seen in Missouri, conflating medications that prevent pregnancy—birth control and emergency contraception—with medications that end pregnancy.” McGill makes a valuable point—that what happened in Missouri is not isolated, and in many ways it’s part of a Republican playbook for the future. Just ask women in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi, where abortion access is so limited that women have to drive hundreds of miles to end a pregnancy. We’re already two Americas, and the conservative Supreme Court hasn’t even had a chance to get their hands on abortion. That will take place in October when they hear the Mississippi abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which will determine the constitutionality of pre-viability prohibitions.

The war on choice rages on, but the alarming development is that it seems to be more and more focused on birth control. This is particularly disturbing because most of us feel that the legitimacy of birth control relies on solid settled precedent. But ever since Obamacare was passed, Republicans cottoned on to the fact that if they can tie birth control to abortion, then publicly funded insurance might not have to pay for birth control. Because of the Hyde Amendment, federally funded health care providers cannot, except in rare circumstances, offer coverage for abortion. So if birth control equals abortion…

As outlandish as this equating seems, you can already see its consequences playing out. Just look to QAnon congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who doesn’t think that Plan B—the safe and effective early-contraception pill that prevents women from becoming pregnant within 72 hours of having intercourse—should be covered for veterans by the Department of Veteran Affairs. Yes, Greene told Congress on Thursday that, “contraception stops a woman from becoming pregnant. The Plan B pill kills a baby in the womb once a woman is already pregnant.” This isn’t true. Plan B stops a woman from ovulating and thus prevents her from getting pregnant. A generous interpretation of this nonsense is that Greene has confused Plan B with the abortion pills misoprostol and mifepristone. But there’s also a possibility that this is part of an organized assault on birth control from the Republican Party of Gilead. More and more we see these coordinated attacks coming from both elected Republicans and their messaging arm, Fox News.

“Anti–birth control sentiment has been building for over a decade,” says Robin Marty, the author of The New Handbook for Post-Roe America. “The groundwork was laid in 2010, when the Tea Party fought Obamacare by saying IUDs, Plan B, and contraception itself were, as they called it, the biggest expansion of abortion in the nation.”

Marty continued, explaining the groundwork Trump laid. “The reason this is no longer undercover is because of the Supreme Court decision in Hobby Lobby.” The Hobby Lobby verdict allowed employers to refuse to pay for birth-control coverage for their employees due to religious reasons. The Trump administration, Marty says, “set the groundwork for the idea that doctors or pharmacists can decline to treat people because of religious beliefs. And now we have a Supreme Court that will rubber-stamp both those decisions.” The irony is that thrice-married adulterer Donald J. Trump, the man who used to be pro-choice, created this atmosphere.

“The moment abortion advocates have always warned about is here,” says Renee Bracey Sherman, executive director of We Testify, an organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions. “It’s always been here. Politicians who are anti-abortion are also anti–birth control and anti-queer and anti-Black because at the end of the day, they only support a way of life in which they—wealthy white people—are in charge and they are the sole dictators of when, how, and with whom we have sex, procreate, and build our families. It’s about maintaining white patriarchal power and control. It always has been. And anything that allows people to determine their own futures—such as birth control and abortion—is a threat to that.”

Look, Republicans are smart(ish), so they’re not going to take away your birth control pills, they’re just going to continue to blur the line between abortion and birth control. And do you know why that is? Because abortion was never about life for these Republicans. These were the people who argued that your grandmother should be willing to die for the Dow Jones Industrial Average when it came to COVID lockdowns. These are the people who believe in the death penalty. No, this isn’t about life, this is about power. Republicans want to blur the line between birth control and abortion because they want the power to control what happens to women’s bodies.

 

I consider this part of their larger game plan of returning the US to the perceived 1950's, where sex outside of marriage was a scary roll of the dice, and women's economic and life choices were reduced by multiple pregnancies. You can:t easily leave a man if you can't hold a job because of new babies coming every couple of years and you can't afford child care for your children.

 

 

 

Edited July 1, 2021 by Audrey2

[fraurosena]

On 7/1/2021 at 7:09 PM, Audrey2 said:

I just saw this story on Yahoo, and it comes to the same conclusion that I do. As the Republicans continue to limit abortion, their next fight will focus on making birth control harder and more expensive to access. 

The Anti–Birth Control Movement Is the New Anti-Abortion Movement

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/anti-birth-control-movement-anti-151307686.html

  Reveal hidden contents

Republicans have started to blur the lines between birth control and abortion in the hopes of making it harder for American women to get both birth control and abortions. And nowhere is this clearer than in the Missouri statehouse, where lawmakers decided that they really needed to restrict Medicaid coverage of birth control and payments to Planned Parenthood. Yes, as the Kansas City Star reported, lawmakers there spent hours last week in a discussion that “resembled a remedial sex education course.” It was a tricky play, attacking birth control as a way to attack abortion, and it didn’t work…this time.

“What’s been happening in Missouri last week should serve as a warning sign for what’s to come,” says Alexis McGill Johnson, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “We’re already hearing members of the U.S. Congress spread the same falsehoods we’ve seen in Missouri, conflating medications that prevent pregnancy—birth control and emergency contraception—with medications that end pregnancy.” McGill makes a valuable point—that what happened in Missouri is not isolated, and in many ways it’s part of a Republican playbook for the future. Just ask women in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi, where abortion access is so limited that women have to drive hundreds of miles to end a pregnancy. We’re already two Americas, and the conservative Supreme Court hasn’t even had a chance to get their hands on abortion. That will take place in October when they hear the Mississippi abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which will determine the constitutionality of pre-viability prohibitions.

The war on choice rages on, but the alarming development is that it seems to be more and more focused on birth control. This is particularly disturbing because most of us feel that the legitimacy of birth control relies on solid settled precedent. But ever since Obamacare was passed, Republicans cottoned on to the fact that if they can tie birth control to abortion, then publicly funded insurance might not have to pay for birth control. Because of the Hyde Amendment, federally funded health care providers cannot, except in rare circumstances, offer coverage for abortion. So if birth control equals abortion…

As outlandish as this equating seems, you can already see its consequences playing out. Just look to QAnon congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who doesn’t think that Plan B—the safe and effective early-contraception pill that prevents women from becoming pregnant within 72 hours of having intercourse—should be covered for veterans by the Department of Veteran Affairs. Yes, Greene told Congress on Thursday that, “contraception stops a woman from becoming pregnant. The Plan B pill kills a baby in the womb once a woman is already pregnant.” This isn’t true. Plan B stops a woman from ovulating and thus prevents her from getting pregnant. A generous interpretation of this nonsense is that Greene has confused Plan B with the abortion pills misoprostol and mifepristone. But there’s also a possibility that this is part of an organized assault on birth control from the Republican Party of Gilead. More and more we see these coordinated attacks coming from both elected Republicans and their messaging arm, Fox News.

“Anti–birth control sentiment has been building for over a decade,” says Robin Marty, the author of The New Handbook for Post-Roe America. “The groundwork was laid in 2010, when the Tea Party fought Obamacare by saying IUDs, Plan B, and contraception itself were, as they called it, the biggest expansion of abortion in the nation.”

Marty continued, explaining the groundwork Trump laid. “The reason this is no longer undercover is because of the Supreme Court decision in Hobby Lobby.” The Hobby Lobby verdict allowed employers to refuse to pay for birth-control coverage for their employees due to religious reasons. The Trump administration, Marty says, “set the groundwork for the idea that doctors or pharmacists can decline to treat people because of religious beliefs. And now we have a Supreme Court that will rubber-stamp both those decisions.” The irony is that thrice-married adulterer Donald J. Trump, the man who used to be pro-choice, created this atmosphere.

“The moment abortion advocates have always warned about is here,” says Renee Bracey Sherman, executive director of We Testify, an organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions. “It’s always been here. Politicians who are anti-abortion are also anti–birth control and anti-queer and anti-Black because at the end of the day, they only support a way of life in which they—wealthy white people—are in charge and they are the sole dictators of when, how, and with whom we have sex, procreate, and build our families. It’s about maintaining white patriarchal power and control. It always has been. And anything that allows people to determine their own futures—such as birth control and abortion—is a threat to that.”

Look, Republicans are smart(ish), so they’re not going to take away your birth control pills, they’re just going to continue to blur the line between abortion and birth control. And do you know why that is? Because abortion was never about life for these Republicans. These were the people who argued that your grandmother should be willing to die for the Dow Jones Industrial Average when it came to COVID lockdowns. These are the people who believe in the death penalty. No, this isn’t about life, this is about power. Republicans want to blur the line between birth control and abortion because they want the power to control what happens to women’s bodies.

 

I consider this part of their larger game plan of returning the US to the perceived 1950's, where sex outside of marriage was a scary roll of the dice, and women's economic and life choices were reduced by multiple pregnancies. You can:t easily leave a man if you can't hold a job because of new babies coming every couple of years and you can't afford child care for your children.

 

 

 

They're not trying for perceived 1950's. They're aiming for Gilead.

[Xan]

On 7/1/2021 at 1:09 PM, Audrey2 said:

I just saw this story on Yahoo, and it comes to the same conclusion that I do. As the Republicans continue to limit abortion, their next fight will focus on making birth control harder and more expensive to access. 

The Anti–Birth Control Movement Is the New Anti-Abortion Movement

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/anti-birth-control-movement-anti-151307686.html

  Reveal hidden contents

Republicans have started to blur the lines between birth control and abortion in the hopes of making it harder for American women to get both birth control and abortions. And nowhere is this clearer than in the Missouri statehouse, where lawmakers decided that they really needed to restrict Medicaid coverage of birth control and payments to Planned Parenthood. Yes, as the Kansas City Star reported, lawmakers there spent hours last week in a discussion that “resembled a remedial sex education course.” It was a tricky play, attacking birth control as a way to attack abortion, and it didn’t work…this time.

“What’s been happening in Missouri last week should serve as a warning sign for what’s to come,” says Alexis McGill Johnson, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “We’re already hearing members of the U.S. Congress spread the same falsehoods we’ve seen in Missouri, conflating medications that prevent pregnancy—birth control and emergency contraception—with medications that end pregnancy.” McGill makes a valuable point—that what happened in Missouri is not isolated, and in many ways it’s part of a Republican playbook for the future. Just ask women in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi, where abortion access is so limited that women have to drive hundreds of miles to end a pregnancy. We’re already two Americas, and the conservative Supreme Court hasn’t even had a chance to get their hands on abortion. That will take place in October when they hear the Mississippi abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which will determine the constitutionality of pre-viability prohibitions.

The war on choice rages on, but the alarming development is that it seems to be more and more focused on birth control. This is particularly disturbing because most of us feel that the legitimacy of birth control relies on solid settled precedent. But ever since Obamacare was passed, Republicans cottoned on to the fact that if they can tie birth control to abortion, then publicly funded insurance might not have to pay for birth control. Because of the Hyde Amendment, federally funded health care providers cannot, except in rare circumstances, offer coverage for abortion. So if birth control equals abortion…

As outlandish as this equating seems, you can already see its consequences playing out. Just look to QAnon congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who doesn’t think that Plan B—the safe and effective early-contraception pill that prevents women from becoming pregnant within 72 hours of having intercourse—should be covered for veterans by the Department of Veteran Affairs. Yes, Greene told Congress on Thursday that, “contraception stops a woman from becoming pregnant. The Plan B pill kills a baby in the womb once a woman is already pregnant.” This isn’t true. Plan B stops a woman from ovulating and thus prevents her from getting pregnant. A generous interpretation of this nonsense is that Greene has confused Plan B with the abortion pills misoprostol and mifepristone. But there’s also a possibility that this is part of an organized assault on birth control from the Republican Party of Gilead. More and more we see these coordinated attacks coming from both elected Republicans and their messaging arm, Fox News.

“Anti–birth control sentiment has been building for over a decade,” says Robin Marty, the author of The New Handbook for Post-Roe America. “The groundwork was laid in 2010, when the Tea Party fought Obamacare by saying IUDs, Plan B, and contraception itself were, as they called it, the biggest expansion of abortion in the nation.”

Marty continued, explaining the groundwork Trump laid. “The reason this is no longer undercover is because of the Supreme Court decision in Hobby Lobby.” The Hobby Lobby verdict allowed employers to refuse to pay for birth-control coverage for their employees due to religious reasons. The Trump administration, Marty says, “set the groundwork for the idea that doctors or pharmacists can decline to treat people because of religious beliefs. And now we have a Supreme Court that will rubber-stamp both those decisions.” The irony is that thrice-married adulterer Donald J. Trump, the man who used to be pro-choice, created this atmosphere.

“The moment abortion advocates have always warned about is here,” says Renee Bracey Sherman, executive director of We Testify, an organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions. “It’s always been here. Politicians who are anti-abortion are also anti–birth control and anti-queer and anti-Black because at the end of the day, they only support a way of life in which they—wealthy white people—are in charge and they are the sole dictators of when, how, and with whom we have sex, procreate, and build our families. It’s about maintaining white patriarchal power and control. It always has been. And anything that allows people to determine their own futures—such as birth control and abortion—is a threat to that.”

Look, Republicans are smart(ish), so they’re not going to take away your birth control pills, they’re just going to continue to blur the line between abortion and birth control. And do you know why that is? Because abortion was never about life for these Republicans. These were the people who argued that your grandmother should be willing to die for the Dow Jones Industrial Average when it came to COVID lockdowns. These are the people who believe in the death penalty. No, this isn’t about life, this is about power. Republicans want to blur the line between birth control and abortion because they want the power to control what happens to women’s bodies.

 

I consider this part of their larger game plan of returning the US to the perceived 1950's, where sex outside of marriage was a scary roll of the dice, and women's economic and life choices were reduced by multiple pregnancies. You can:t easily leave a man if you can't hold a job because of new babies coming every couple of years and you can't afford child care for your children.

That was always the plan.  You can't be a white male and expect to stay in charge if you let the non-white people vote and if you let women work.  The best way to keep women out of leadership is to make sure they can't control their own bodies.  Keep 'em pregnant and they have to stay home and in the kitchen.  

It's always been about control.  Eliminating abortion was just the easiest way to start down the path.  

[Cartmann99]

Trio of Senate Republicans urges Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade

Quote

Three conservative Senate Republicans on Monday filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn its landmark precedents that protect the constitutional right to abortion.

In a 33-page brief, Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) asked the court to use a Mississippi case to be reviewed next term as a vehicle to overturn Roe v. Wade and related rulings. Calling the status quo “untenable,” the senators said the legal doctrine on abortion that emerged over roughly the past five decades since Roe was decided in 1973 has given judges excessive discretion and proven unworkable. 

“Roe and Casey should be overruled, and the question of abortion legislation should be returned to the states,” they wrote, referring also to the court’s 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. 

“Where a legal doctrine has repeatedly failed to offer clarity — where it has proved unworkable in the past and will likely engender unpredictable consequences in the future — its existence constitutes an open invitation to judges to interpret it according to their own policy preferences, usurping the constitutional prerogatives of the legislature,” the senators wrote. 

The filing comes after Mississippi’s attorney general urged the justices last week in a brief to overrule Roe when the justices review Mississippi’s ban on virtually all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Court precedent tracing back to Roe prohibits states from banning abortion before fetal viability, which occurs around 24 weeks, and from placing an "undue burden" on abortion access. The Mississippi law at issue next term creates only narrow exceptions from its 15-week ban on elective abortions. 

The state's appeal comes after losing two rounds in the lower courts. In 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit held that Mississippi's restriction was an unconstitutional ban on a woman’s right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy before fetal viability. 

Anti-abortion advocates are hoping for a sympathetic audience with a Supreme Court bench that includes six conservative justices — three of them appointed by former President Trump.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Texas can ban standard procedure used during second-trimester abortions, federal court rules"

Quote

Texas can ban the abortion procedure most commonly used to end second-trimester pregnancies, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The decision was hailed as a major victory by antiabortion advocates, even as doctors warned it could leave women less safe.

And it comes as the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments in another case, whether Mississippi can ban abortions after 15 weeks. The decision in that case could have far-reaching implications, further curbing the constitutional right granted under 1973’s landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.

The Texas ruling on Wednesday could also end up in front of the Supreme Court, law experts predicted. It revolved around a procedure known as dilation and evacuation, or D&E.

D&E is a standard medical procedure and safest form of abortion after approximately 15 weeks of pregnancy, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), which added that it results in fewer complications for women.

But many Republican lawmakers, who refer to the procedure as “dismemberment abortions,” oppose it because doctors must first stop the heartbeat of a fetus and then remove pieces of fetal tissue.

Kimberlyn Schwartz, director of media and communications with Texas Right to Life, said in a statement that “anyone can see the cruelty of dismemberment abortions, ripping a child’s body apart while her heart is still beating.”

Since 91 percent of abortions nationally are performed before 15 weeks, Wednesday’s ruling won’t impact the majority of abortion procedures.

Several other states have attempted to ban D&E, including Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio and Oklahoma. But those laws have all been struck down, at least in part, by the courts.

The Texas ban on D&Es was passed by the state legislature in 2017. The law makes the procedure illegal; doctors who perform a D&E procedure could be fined or face two years in prison.

The legislation was challenged in court nearly as soon as it was passed. Last October, the measure was struck down by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which wrote that the measure “unduly burdens a woman’s constitutional protected right” to an abortion.

But the full 5th Circuit, acting on an appeal from Texas, reheard the case in front of all 17 judges in an en banc review. In that rehearing, nine judges ruled in favor of the ban, five dissented and three were recused.

Appellate Judge James Dennis wrote in his dissent that the law would force women to unnecessarily undergo “painful, invasive, expensive, and in some cases experimental additional treatments” that pose “significantly elevated risks to the women’s health.”

Under the Texas law, doctors can only terminate second-trimester pregnancies using alternative methods. But experts say those other methods are less safe than D&E, posing serious health risks such as infection, uterine perforation or death.

“Doctors will be forced, by ill-advised, unscientifically motivated policy, to provide lesser care to patients,” ACOG said in a statement.

“Texas has been hellbent on legislating abortion out of existence, and it is galling that a federal court would uphold a law that so clearly defies decades of Supreme Court precedent,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Texas has enacted 26 abortion restrictions in the past decade, including a restriction on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, which is being challenged in court.

While other states have passed similar “heartbeat laws,” the Texas legislation does not create a state ban of the procedure. Instead, it allows abortion providers who perform abortions after six weeks could be sued, along with anyone who helps a woman access the abortion. They can seek up to $10,000 per defendant.

The Texas Tribune reports that supporters of the bill hope this provision will trip up legal challenges to the legislation, since the state is not enforcing an official ban.

It allows abortions in the case of a medical emergency, but not in cases of rape or incest.

“Our creator endowed us with the right to life, and yet millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said at the signing ceremony, which was broadcast live on Facebook. “In Texas we work to save those lives.”

Women in Texas are banned from using telehealth to see their provider for a medication abortion, which means patients not only have to physically come into a clinic for care, but also most have to make two trips.

Marcela Howell, founder and president of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, said in a statement that Black women already face barriers to accessing reproductive health care, the kinds that can delay abortion care until the second trimester.

“As Black women and pregnant people, our fight has never been about the right to abortion care, it has been about surmounting the federal and state barriers that prevent us from accessing that care,” Howell said.

But Elissa Graves, legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative group that filed a friend of the court brief, supporting the ban, called Wednesday’s law the right thing to do for pregnant women. And, “both humane and constitutional.”

“Texas has the right to respect the life of unborn children, and it did so when it chose to strictly limit the gruesome procedure of dismemberment abortions,” Graves said.

 

[fraurosena]

6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Texas can ban standard procedure used during second-trimester abortions, federal court rules"

 

Yep, repugs are anti-abortion— but push the use of Regeneron, which was developed using embryonic tissue…