The War On Abortion And Women's Rights

[GreyhoundFan]

4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

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

I remember Nancy Reagan was loudly anti-stem cell research until St. Ronnie was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Then, suddenly, it was a good thing. Typical R hypocrisy. 

[Alisamer]

7 hours ago, fraurosena said:

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

And you know full well that a good many of them would take their pregnant teen daughters to get an abortion if they needed one. "but she just made a mistake" and  "she has such a bright future..."

I'd still like to know the number of abortions Trump has paid for in his life. I'm positive the number is very much NOT zero. 

[Jana814]

51 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

I'd still like to know the number of abortions Trump has paid for in his life. I'm positive the number is very much NOT zero. 

I agree with this. I think he wanted his current wife to have one, but she refused. 

[thoughtful]

55 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

I'd still like to know the number of abortions Trump has paid for in his life. I'm positive the number is very much NOT zero. 

Well, the number he forced, coerced or wanted women to have is probably very high, but paid for? Maybe not so much.

 

[smittykins]

7 hours ago, Jana814 said:

I agree with this. I think he wanted his current wife to have one, but she refused. 

Didn’t he supposedly want Tiffany aborted?

[Cartmann99]

28 minutes ago, smittykins said:

Didn’t he supposedly want Tiffany aborted?

That's what I remember.

[Jana814]

1 hour ago, smittykins said:

Didn’t he supposedly want Tiffany aborted?

He did. Not sure if it’s true or not. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. 

[GreyhoundFan]

It's a sad day: "Texas’s six-week abortion ban takes effect, after Supreme Court doesn’t act to block it"

Quote

A Texas law that bans most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy went into effect Wednesday, as a midnight deadline for the Supreme Court to stop it came and went without action.

The court could still grant a request from abortion providers to halt the law, one of the nation’s most restrictive. But both the statute’s proponents and opponents had expected word from the high court before the statute went into effect Sept. 1

The law effectively eliminates the guarantee in Roe v. Wade and subsequent Supreme Court decisions that women have a right to end their pregnancies before viability, abortion providers said, and that states may not impose undue burdens on that decision.

The Texas law “unquestionably contravenes this Court’s precedent … with abortions after six weeks banned throughout Texas — something that has never been allowed to occur in any other state of the nation in the decades since Roe,” said a brief filed by abortion providers and their allies.

Those precedents have been cited by federal judges across the country to halt six-week bans in other states before they took effect. The lawsuits that stopped those laws targeted government officials who would enforce the bans.

But the Texas law was designed to make it more difficult for abortion rights advocates to win such pre-enforcement injunctions. The statute empowers individuals, instead of state government officials, to bring legal action against those who help women seeking a prohibited abortion.

Lawyers for abortion providers told the Supreme Court that the statute, known by its bill number, S.B. 8, would “immediately and catastrophically reduce abortion access” in Texas and probably force more clinics to close. The law is unconstitutional, they say, because it conflicts with the court precedents that prevent states from banning abortion before a fetus would be viable outside the womb, usually around 22 to 24 weeks.

About 85 to 90 percent of people who obtain abortions in Texas are at least six weeks into pregnancy — many women don’t realize they are pregnant that soon — meaning this law would prohibit nearly all abortions in the state.

“Patients will have to travel out of state — in the middle of a pandemic — to receive constitutionally guaranteed health care. And many will not have the means to do so,” Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), said in a statement. “It’s cruel, unconscionable, and unlawful.”

In response Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said the Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction to act against the law at this point, and that any legal challenges would have to wait until someone actually brought a civil action against an abortion provider or someone who aids the woman.

“This Court cannot expunge the law itself. Rather, it can enjoin only enforcement of the law,” he wrote in his brief to the court. But in the Texas case, he noted, government officials “explicitly do not enforce the law.”

The abortion providers, Paxton wrote, “have not shown that they will be personally harmed by a bill that may never be enforced against them by anyone.”

Republican-led legislatures in other states have passed similar six-week measures they refer to as “heartbeat bills,” because they say that is when a doctor can first detect a fetal heartbeat — a description doctors opposed to the legislation say is medically inaccurate.

Abortion providers said Texas never addressed the constitutionality of its law — Roe is not even mentioned in Paxton’s brief.

Texas argues “that federal courts are powerless to prevent a patently unconstitutional state law from taking effect,” said the filing by CRR, Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union, among others. “They maintain that the only way for applicants to challenge S.B. 8’s constitutionality is to violate the law; get sued in state court by any number of claimants, no matter how large; and raise constitutional defenses.”

Abortion providers and advocacy groups initially challenged the law in July. Because the measure depends on lawsuits filed by private citizens, the groups targeted state court judges and county clerks in their challenge, to try to prevent them from accepting paperwork required to sue those who assist women in getting abortions.

Mark Lee Dickson, the director of Right to Life of East Texas, who has encouraged people to bring the suits and offered to recommend lawyers, is also named as a defendant. His lawyer, Jonathan F. Mitchell, told the justices on Tuesday that abortion providers cannot demonstrate that the injunction they are seeking will “prevent the irreparable harms that they allege.”

Individuals who are sued under the ban could be required to pay the person who brought the lawsuit at least $10,000 for each abortion the defendant was involved in. Critics say the law places a “bounty” on the heads of those who assist with abortions.

In August, a District Court judge in Austin allowed the case challenging the law to proceed and scheduled a hearing for Monday to consider whether to block the law. But the Texas-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit called off the hearing and halted the proceedings.

The Supreme Court has agreed to review a Mississippi ban on almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Abortion opponents are hoping that the court’s conservative majority will use that case to overturn Roe.

In Texas on Tuesday, abortion providers were preparing for their state’s law to take effect. At the Texas Equal Access Fund, a shaken staff worked long hours to provide financial assistance and emotional support to as many women seeking abortions as possible, and had begun sending women across state lines.

“We are just in total limbo. Can we help people today but risk being sued tomorrow if the ban holds?” said Nikiya Natale, a lawyer for the fund, which also runs a call line to help women navigate barriers to abortion and access support networks.

Abortion opponents “know it’s unconstitutional but they just want to bog clinics down in paperwork and lawsuits,” she said. “Its cruel because it’s a population which is already isolated and in crisis.”

Inside College Heights Baptist Church in West Texas, Dickson told a crowd that people should “fear God more than the ACLU.” In addition to backing the Texas law, he has worked for years to create “Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn,” persuading dozens of towns in rural parts of the state to create similar abortion bans.

“An abortion clinic in Waskom, Texas, is not an Austin problem or a Washington problem, it’s a town problem,” Dickson said Tuesday night, hours before the state law took effect. “Who wants their city to be the gateway of abortions?”

At noon in Austin, a small group of antiabortion advocates had gathered at the entrance of Whole Woman’s Health, a clinic that is leading the legal challenge to the law. The protesters stand in the same spot every Tuesday, smiling and waving at each car that comes to the clinic.

They were “hopeful” no court would block the ban, said Heather Gardner, the executive director of Central Texas Coalition for Life, an antiabortion group. The organization has prepared a flier on the ban, which it plans to start distributing at clinics on Wednesday. The flier explains that the new law “penalizes physicians from performing or inducing an abortion once a heartbeat is detected.”

Although Gardner said she does not expect to file lawsuits to enforce the ban, her organization would advise people who come to her to report an illegal abortion.

“We would do what we could to see what legal action could be taken,” Gardner said. “We wouldn’t want to let that go, because they need to be held accountable.

 

[WiseGirl]

 

[Jana814]

I was very disgusted when I saw what Texas had done. 

Edited September 1, 2021 by Jana814

[GreyhoundFan]

This is true:

[GreyhoundFan]

More under spoiler:

Spoiler

 

[WiseGirl]

 

[WiseGirl]

Excellent.

 

[Audrey2]

I'm just curious to see who the first politician will be to be sued for suggesting, aiding or abetting an abortion and how many more will follow.

[Cartmann99]

6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Inside College Heights Baptist Church in West Texas, Dickson told a crowd that people should “fear God more than the ACLU.” In addition to backing the Texas law, he has worked for years to create “Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn,” persuading dozens of towns in rural parts of the state to create similar abortion bans.

My rabidly pro-life mayor is obsessed with getting our city on this list. He threw a hissy fit when City Council told him that he was going about his goal in the wrong way. His backup plan to bring it before the voters was also shot down as we are past the date to add anything to the November ballot.

[Ozlsn]

14 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

In addition to backing the Texas law, he has worked for years to create “Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn,” persuading dozens of towns in rural parts of the state to create similar abortion bans.

I would be so tempted to open orphanages in those towns. 

[Howl]

Texan here, living in the capitol city.  The Texas legislature meets in alternate years -- this is the WORST year for retrograde laws in my memory and I'm 73. 

Beside the abortion ban -- which will create an insane hellscape for women who miscarry and have to prove they weren't trying to abort * (please see clarification below) -- no one now needs a permit to carry a gun, teachers are banned from teaching critical race theory but A-OK to teach white washed history. 

*ETA:  Abortions are outlawed after 6 weeks.  Details below from Heather Cox Richardson on facebook, 

Quote

 S.B. 8 puts ordinary people in charge of law enforcement. Anyone—at all—can sue any individual who “aids or abets,” or even intends to abet, an abortion in Texas after six weeks. Women seeking abortion themselves are exempt, but anyone who advises them (including a spouse), gives them a ride, provides counseling, staffs a clinic, and so on, can be sued by any random stranger. If the plaintiff wins, they pocket $10,000 plus court costs, and the clinic that provided the procedure is closed down. If the defendant doesn’t defend themselves, the court must find them guilty. And if the defendant wins, they get…nothing. Not even attorney’s fees.

My understanding is that people assisting a woman to go out of state for the procedure are not subject to this insanely draconian law. 

 

Edited September 2, 2021 by Howl

[Destiny]

I will give Texas this: it's a creative way to get what they want: forced birth. Evil and horrible, but creative.

 

Seriously though, creativity aside, I can't imagine who thought this was a good idea. Separately from the OMFG GROSS and invasive and evil problem, I can't imagine that this isn't going to end up hopelessly bogging down the courts.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Destiny

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[WiseGirl]

 

[Destiny]

Unroll: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1432895863509196800.html

Why we need safe and legal abortion.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Destiny

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a good video.

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[Destiny]

11 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

 

I'm sure she is very disappointed. She may even graduate to concerned.

Fuck Aunt Susan, and Aunt Amy too while we're at it. I will NEVER forgive McConnell for putting Aunt Amy on the court.

Edited September 3, 2021 by Destiny