Gilead is Real - The War on Women and Abortion Part 3

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh. "Appeals court appears likely to restrict access to key abortion pill"

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NEW ORLEANS — A federal appeals court on Wednesday seemed prepared to limit access to a key abortion medication first approved more than two decades ago, expressing deep skepticism that the government followed the proper process when it loosened regulations to make the pill more readily available.

A panel of three judges, all of whom have previously supported other types of abortion restrictions, peppered lawyers for the government and the drug manufacturer with questions about why the Food and Drug Administration has allowed mifepristone to be prescribed by a medical professional other than a doctor and sent directly to patients by mail.

The judges also appeared to embrace the suggestion that restoring prior restrictions on mifepristone would mean fewer women would need emergency care after using medication to terminate a pregnancy. Serious side effects occur in less than 1 percent of such abortions.

Judge James C. Ho rejected the government’s argument that the court should not second-guess the expertise of the FDA, which first approved mifepristone in 2000. The medication is part of a two-drug regimen used in more than half of U.S. abortions, though the second drug — misoprostol — can also be used on its own to terminate a pregnancy.

“I don’t understand this theme that FDA can do no wrong,” Ho said. “We are allowed to look at the FDA just like we’re allowed to look at any agency. That’s the role of the courts.”

Judge Jennifer Elrod took the unusual step of chastising the drug company’s lawyer for pointed language in court filings that criticized an April ruling by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Texas that would outright suspend FDA approval of the drug.

Wednesday’s hearing at the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit was to consider an appeal of that ruling by lawyers for the Justice Department, representing the FDA, and the drug manufacturer Danco Laboratories. Revoking approval of mifepristone, they have said in court filings, would jeopardize access to other non-abortion drugs and more broadly impact medical research and innovation.

The judges randomly assigned to the case are Ho and Judge Cory T. Wilson — both nominated by President Donald Trump — and Elrod, a nominee of President George W. Bush. Regardless of how they rule, mifepristone will remain available under existing regulations until the case is resolved, probably by the Supreme Court.

The legal battle over abortion medication has intensified in the months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade’s constitutional right to abortion, a decision that spurred multiple states to further limit or ban the procedure. Lawmakers in North Carolina voted this week to significantly narrow the window for legal abortions in the state, with more restrictions expected to pass soon in Nebraska and South Carolina.

Antiabortion advocates behind the mifepristone lawsuit told the court that the FDA improperly cleared the medication for use in 2000, then later removed safeguards to expand access to the pill. Attorney Erin Hawley said the court should reconsider initial approval of the drug, arguing that looser regulations have fundamentally altered the patient experience. In the small percentage of cases in which the medication does not terminate a pregnancy, she said, the antiabortion doctors she represents are “cleaning up the mess that’s left.”

“This case is not about ending abortion, it’s about ending a particularly dangerous type of abortion,” said Hawley, senior counsel for the Christian conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.

Wilson seemed to share those concerns.

“What the FDA has done in making this more available and doing it by mail order and removing the doctor visits — as well as the requirement that the prescriber be a doctor — is you’ve made it much more likely that patients are going to go to emergency care,” he said.

Justice Department lawyer Sarah Harrington disagreed.

“I don’t think any of that is right and hasn’t been borne out by the evidence,” she said.

Lawyers for the government have emphasized that the FDA relied on dozens of studies involving thousands of patients before approving mifepristone, which has since been used by more than 5 million women. Courts should not “second guess FDA’s scientific judgments about the safety of a drug based on anecdotal allegations, speculative harm and flawed studies,” they said in court filings.

The lawsuit was brought by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, an association of antiabortion doctors and others, and filed in Amarillo, Tex., where Kacsmaryk — a Trump nominee with long-held antiabortion views — is the sole sitting judge.

In April, Kacsmaryk took the unprecedented step of suspending the FDA’s approval of the mifepristone, agreeing with the plaintiffs’ claims that the FDA did not sufficiently consider safety concerns. The language of his decision echoed terminology used by antiabortion activists, referring to abortion providers as “abortionists” and to fetuses and embryos as “unborn humans.”

During the hearing Wednesday, Elrod called out the lawyer for the drug company, Jessica Ellsworth, for lobbing what she described as personal attacks on Kacsmaryk in her briefs. Reading from Danco’s filing, the judge objected to the characterization of Kacsmaryk’s ruling as an “unprecedented judicial assault” and the product of a “relentless one-sided narrative.”

Those are comments, Elrod said, that “we normally don’t see from learned counsel.” The judge offered the lawyer an opportunity to recant.

Ellsworth responded that Danco was criticizing Kacsmaryk’s analysis in the case, not the judge himself. The remarks, she said, were not “intended as any kind of personal attack.”

In general, the lawyer for the antiabortion groups, Hawley, was questioned far less aggressively by the judges than the attorneys on the other side. Hawley spoke for extended stretches uninterrupted. At the end of her arguments, the judges did not have any additional questions for her, so she wrapped up without using all of her allotted time.

In an initial review of Kacsmaryk’s ruling, a separate three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit declined to suspend approval of mifepristone but reversed actions taken by the FDA since 2016 to loosen restrictions on how to access the medication. Those actions included extending its approved use through 10 weeks of pregnancy instead of seven and allowing patients to receive the drug through the mail.

The Supreme Court then temporarily blocked those restrictions from the appeals court, opting to leave the current FDA regulations for mifepristone in place while the litigation continues.

Much of the discussion Wednesday centered on the claim by the Justice Department and Danco that the challengers had no legal right — or standing — to file the lawsuit because they were not directly harmed by the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill.

The antiabortion doctors “do not prescribe mifepristone. They do not provide abortions. No specific doctor faces irreparable harm” because their claims “rest on cascading chains of speculation about potential future events,” Ellsworth said in a court filing.

Harrington said the antiabortion doctors’ “carefully worded” affidavits do not actually allege they have had to provide care that violates their religious beliefs or consciences.

But the judges pushed back hard on Harrington’s assertions, with one saying she was trying to “split words” to get the lawsuit thrown out. They seemed unlikely to agree that the challengers do not have standing, and therefore likely to reach the merits of the arguments against FDA approval.

The judges also touched briefly on Hawley’s argument that shipping abortion medication violates a 150-year-old law, the Comstock Act, that most legal experts considered obsolete. The law prohibits the mailing of any drug “intended for producing abortion.” The Biden administration has rejected that interpretation as outdated, and asserted in a recent legal memo that mailing mifepristone is permitted when the sender believes the drug will be used lawfully, in states where abortion is permitted.

Allowing the pill to be sent by mail has made it more difficult, however, for states to enforce abortion bans passed since the end of Roe — a point that Hawley made Wednesday.

The justices returned to “the people the power to protect women’s health, unborn life, and the integrity of the medical profession by regulating abortion,” she said in a court filing. “Yet, the considered judgments of states that have chosen to do so are rendered meaningless by FDA’s mail-order abortion scheme.”

The cases are FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and Danco Laboratories v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Republicans deploy new playbook for abortion bans, citing political backlash'

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Nebraska antiabortion groups and GOP lawmakers were stunned. In late April, their effort to ban most abortions was tanked by an unlikely person: 80-year-old Sen. Merv Riepe, a longtime Republican.

Instead, on Friday, Nebraska’s conservative legislature voted to ban abortions at 12 weeks of pregnancy — a threshold that significantly narrows the window for legal abortions but still allows the vast majority to occur.

A few days earlier, North Carolina Republicans used their legislative supermajority to enact a similar 12-week ban, calling it a “mainstream” approach that would be more broadly accepted than the stricter bans many conservatives had sought to pass. And in neighboring South Carolina, state Sen. Katrina Shealy (R) told The Washington Post that she and the other female GOP senators who blocked a near-total ban are planning to push for a 12-week ban on most abortions when the state Senate takes up a bill next week restricting abortion after roughly six weeks of pregnancy.

“We can’t live at the extremes,” North Carolina Sen. Amy Galey (R) said in an interview. “As a country, we can find a way to take a difficult issue and resolve it without a huge amount of acrimony and viciousness.”

Immediately after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Republican lawmakers were quick to embrace so-called “trigger” bans designed to take effect as soon as the decision was released, while others rushed to pass additional restrictions that would halt the procedure in their states, sometimes backing proposals that did not include exceptions for rape or incest.

Now, almost a year later, lawmakers in some Republican-led states have started coalescing behind bans that allow most abortions to continue — a reaction, some Republicans say, to the sustained political backlash to abortion restrictions that has been mounting since the landmark decision in June.

While the 12-week bans have so far only passed in two states — North Carolina and Nebraska — the proposal has also gained traction with some national antiabortion groups who say they’re supportive of restricting abortions as far as a state can, including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which has also been pushing for, at minimum, national limits on abortion at 15 weeks.

But the approach has drawn sharp criticism from others in the antiabortion movement, who argue the 12 or 15 week bans don’t do enough to stop what they see as widespread murder, allowing more than 90 percent of abortions to continue. Some Republican lawmakers and antiabortion advocates remain adamant that the only path forward is to aim to eradicate abortion completely nationwide.

How voters respond to these new bans could impact how abortion plays out as an issue in the 2024 presidential election. With little polling on the 12 week proposals, it’s unclear whether voters will buy Republican arguments that these kinds of bans are a “mainstream” compromise.

Abortion rights advocates are adamant that these measures are potentially just as harmful as their stricter counterparts, maintaining that voters will reject any attack on abortion rights.

“At Planned Parenthood our position is that any ban on abortion is going to harm people that could become pregnant,” said Olivia Cappello, state communications manager for Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “Whether it’s six weeks or 12 weeks, an abortion ban stops people from getting the care they need when they need it and interferes with their freedom to decide what is best for their bodies and their lives and futures.”

Public opinion

A majority of Americans want to keep abortion legal in all or most cases, several polls have shown in recent months.

Yet support for abortion limits increases as pregnancy progresses through the second trimester, which starts at 13 weeks. An April Fox News poll found 54 percent of registered voters nationally favored a law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy in their state with an exception for medical emergencies. In an AP-NORC poll, 57 percent of adults said abortion should be illegal in most or all cases in the second trimester, while a small majority — 53 percent — supported abortion rights up to 15 weeks. Many countries around the world — including most European nations — limit abortions around the beginning of the second trimester.

The debate over abortion has morphed in other ways since the justices fundamentally altered the landscape across the United States. Last summer, public backlash swiftly ensued over abortion bans that don’t include rape or incest exceptions — terrain least favorable to the GOP. Of the 13 “trigger” bans, only four included exceptions for both rape and incest, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

But that’s not the case for many of the bills passed this year restricting abortions. Measures in North Carolina, Nebraska, Florida, Wyoming and North Dakota all included exceptions for rape and incest in some form, though some are limited by gestational age. Abortion rights groups have expressed concerns that such policies don’t work well in practice.

This dynamic is in part because, before Roe was overturned, the laws were designed with the antiabortion movement and Republican primary voter in mind, said Mary Ziegler, a professor of law at the University of California at Davis.

“There are Republicans who are looking at this and saying we can’t just cater to the antiabortion and the primary voter because there’s a lot of voters now who care about abortion,” she said. “It may actually backfire on us.”

In the months since Roe was overturned, voters have repeatedly demonstrated support for abortion rights, striking down antiabortion amendments even in conservative states such as Kentucky and Kansas. The 2022 midterms, in which a number of Democrats won competitive races after making abortion rights a central issue, were widely viewed as a danger sign for Republicans.

North Carolina

Concerns about political backlash on abortion shaped the campaigns of a small group of moderate Republicans running for the legislature in North Carolina, a state where abortions are legal up until 20 weeks of pregnancy and that saw one of the largest spikes in abortions in the months after Roe fell.

Abortion had become a defining issue across the state ahead of the midterms, with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) inserting himself into several key races. He filmed ads that cast Republicans as “cruel and extreme” on the issue and warned they would vote to severely restrict abortion access in North Carolina.

While a plurality of Republicans in the North Carolina legislature supported a “heartbeat ban” on abortion after roughly six weeks of pregnancy, some moderates realized they would struggle to win their races if they took a hard line stance on abortion, according to a person familiar with internal discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to recall private conversations.

To counter the governor’s ads, one of the most heavily targeted Republicans, state Sen. Michael Lee, wrote an op-ed in the Wilmington Star News before the election voicing his support for abortion bans in the second and third trimesters, but not before.

“We must find common ground on this issue,” Lee wrote, adding that a consensus “can be found between the extremes while respecting the sanctity of life and allowing for common-sense restrictions and exemptions.”

When the legislature convened in January — before Rep. Tricia Cotham would switch her party affiliation to Republican and hand the GOP a veto-proof majority in both chambers — working groups assembled to find what Republicans in the state called a “middle way” on abortion.

At the beginning of the conversations, Galey said, some Republicans voiced support for a ban at conception while others preferred no additional restrictions at all. While everyone disliked the 12-week option “to a certain degree,” Galey said, eventually a critical number of Republicans came to accept it.

Many Republican hard-liners, as well as antiabortion groups in the state, initially were angry and frustrated, said Jason Williams, the executive director of the North Carolina Faith & Freedom Coalition, a statewide antiabortion organization. The 12-week option seemed like a cop-out, he said, allowing the vast majority of abortions to continue.

“Many of those who wanted a heartbeat bill were open to a compromise of 8 or 10 weeks,” said Williams. “Unfortunately, there wasn’t any movement from those who were firm on 12 weeks.”

At one point during the discussions in Raleigh, several Republican members suggested that North Carolina put the question to voters in a referendum — an idea that was swiftly rejected by antiabortion advocates, according to the person familiar with internal discussions.

An advocate for the 12-week ban pointed out their hypocrisy, recalled the person.

“You admit you don’t want that, because it’s not popular,” the advocate for the 12-week ban said. “But you want our members to vote for something that’s not popular.”

Ultimately, the antiabortion groups got on board — starting with Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, according to a person in the state who was familiar with the discussions. The group had put out polling in North Carolina, as well as in Nebraska, and supplied information on the impacts of abortion to state lawmakers and local antiabortion leaders, said Stephen Billy, the vice president of state affairs at SBA.

“Our focus is on being as aggressive as we can in finding consensus to protect as many babies and serve as many moms as possible as quickly as we can,” he said. “In Nebraska and in North Carolina, with their bills, that’s exactly what’s happening.”

Democrats have fiercely rejected the idea that the North Carolina legislation is a mainstream compromise, pointing out that other restrictions embedded in the bill, including an additional mandatory in-person consultation at an abortion clinic 72 hours before the procedure, will limit abortion long before the 12-week mark.

“The fine print requirements and restrictions will shut down clinics and make abortion completely unavailable to many women at any time — and that’s going to cause desperation and death,” Gov. Cooper said in an interview.

Republicans in North Carolina kept the 12-week proposal a secret until the last possible moment, in part to prevent Republican hard-liners from amending the bill to make it more restrictive, according to the person familiar with the internal discussions. Instead of introducing the measure as a new bill, as is typical, Republicans gutted a different piece of legislation and inserted the 46-page abortion proposal, allowing them to move straight to an up-or-down vote and pass the bill less than 48 hours after it was introduced.

Nebraska

In Nebraska — where lawmakers are technically nonpartisan but generally have a party affiliation — Democrats and abortion rights groups blasted conservatives for attaching an amendment containing a 12-week abortion ban to a gender-affirming care bill.

They described a feeling of whiplash when the one-chamber legislature adopted the amendment Tuesday evening.

“It was very emotional, it was very challenging, … it was also just really disheartening,” Andi Curry Grubb, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Nebraska, said in an interview, her voice breaking.

Just weeks ago, they thought they’d secured a major victory with Riepe’s decision to abstain from voting on the “heartbeat bill,” allowing abortions to continue through 22 weeks of pregnancy.

But key Republicans in the state saw the bill’s failure differently.

“It became our job then to negotiate,” said Sen. Ben Hansen, the state’s health chair who was one of the leaders of the negotiations and introduced the amendment. He added: “If we can save 300 babies a year in the state of Nebraska by moving it to 12 weeks, that’s important to us.”

After the initial “heartbeat” ban failed, Hansen began assessing whether any abortion restrictions could be brought back this year. Local antiabortion groups described “difficult” and “emotional” conversations about how early in pregnancy the state could realistically ban abortion. And Riepe, the holdout on the ban earlier in pregnancy, spoke at least three times — and exchanged numerous texts — with Gov. Jim Pillen (R), who he said was insistent on getting stricter abortion laws passed.

The governor has said he’d sign the bill. His office didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

On Tuesday, the day of the amendment vote, Riepe said the protests inside and outside the chamber were tense, unlike anything he’d seen in the state capital. Afterward, security escorted the members out of the building.

The senator understands he disappointed a lot of people, especially on the left. But he believes that he’s been clear from the start about where he stood on the issue.

“There’s one thing I’m stuck on,” Riepe recalled telling the governor. “I think 12 weeks is a reasonable number.”

 

[Audrey2]

6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Republicans deploy new playbook for abortion bans, citing political backlash'

 

This feels like a very strategic move to me. For quite a while I have said that Republicans really don't want to ban all abortions despite talking about it all the time because it appeals to a very loyal part of their base. There are voters that are always choosing Republican candidates with the hope that they will stop all abortions. If the Republicans actually do that though, these one issue voters may disappear or may even turn on the Republicans.

[GreyhoundFan]

"As S.C. abortion vote nears, GOP women rebuke the men: ‘It’s always about control’"

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COLUMBIA, S.C. — When the fight over the right to abortion fell to the states, it landed awkwardly in Senate Office 601, where two Republicans who share the same suite, receptionist and voice-mail box have campaigned all year against each other’s idea of “pro-life.”

On one side of the roughly 800-square-foot space is Sen. Rex Rice, 66, who said every pregnancy represented “God’s child” and pushed for a near-total ban on abortion in South Carolina.

On the other is Sen. Sandy Senn, 59, who, loudly enough for him to hear, slammed that approach as “all about controlling women.”

To her, “pro-life” means protecting women, too. So, with the Senate expected to vote as early as Tuesday on a bill that would ban most abortions after about six weeks, Senn criticized her colleague for refusing to support what she called the “reasonable” middle ground: outlawing the procedure after 12 weeks.

“I suspect his wife thinks what he’s doing is crazy, but I haven’t asked her,” Senn said one May afternoon, reclining behind her wooden desk. “Is he in there?”

The senators have been friends for seven years, ever since they were sworn in at the same time, and have vacationed together with their families in the Bahamas. Once, after Senn tangled with a prominent Democrat, Rice gifted her a pair of pink boxing gloves and a photo of a Chihuahua barking at a big dog, which reminded him of his 5-foot-3 suitemate taking on opponents who towered over her.

“It’s always interesting to me to watch the two- and three-pound dogs go after the big dogs,” he said. “The big dogs just don’t care.”

Today, the suitemates are locked in an uncomfortably personal stalemate — one that reflects broader discord between Republican lawmakers over how far to restrict abortion access now that Roe v. Wade has been struck down.

The tensions in Office 601 stem from an unusually stark gender divide that has emerged in the South Carolina State House as the Republican-dominated legislature keeps trying and failing to pass tighter abortion restrictions.

Senn, along with the two other Republican women in the Senate, has adopted rhetoric more typically used by Democrats to attack the antiabortion positions of her male colleagues.

Three times over the past eight months, as the chamber’s GOP leaders have sought to prohibit most procedures starting at conception, Senn — flanked by a bipartisan bloc of the Senate’s only women — has hustled to thwart what she views as attempts to “shackle women.” The group — three Republicans, an independent and a Democrat, who call themselves the “Sister Senators” — filibustered for three days last month to defeat a near-total ban.

“Even if we don’t agree with abortion, most of us agree with giving women some kind of escape hatch,” Senn said. “My male colleagues are taking the wrong approach. We’re going to lose people in the Republican Party.”

If Senn is successful, bright-red South Carolina, which currently prohibits abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy, could remain a destination for the procedure in the heavily restricted South. A 12-week ban would still permit the majority of abortions, though Democrats call the limit “extreme,” in part because many pregnancy complications, which could affect a woman’s decision, arise after that point.

Roe’s demise last summer initially triggered a six-week ban in South Carolina. After legal challenges, however, the state’s Supreme Court found it to be unconstitutional, kicking off internal GOP feuding that has remained unresolved.

Republican lawmakers in other conservative states have faced similar debates over the past year.

Under pressure from antiabortion activists, some have sought to virtually eliminate a practice they decry as murder. Others, noting that key swaths of voters have rejected dramatically rolling back abortion rights, are exploring less restrictive measures. North Carolina and Nebraska last week, for instance, enacted 12-week bans similar to the one Senn embraces.

She blamed Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey for leading the party “off a cliff on abortion” instead of being open to the 12-week “middle ground.” She pointed to polls showing that the majority of Americans think abortion in most cases should be legal.

Massey criticized Senn’s “overall” conduct.

“She firebombs,” he told The Washington Post. “She goes after people personally, and that has rubbed them the wrong way.”

Senn, a Charleston lawyer who raises chickens and owns nine guns, said she is focused on standing up for women. Many women don’t know they’re pregnant at six weeks, she said, giving them no time to make the best decision for their health. During one speech in April, she compared the all-male drive to strip women of “reasonable” reproductive agency to the dystopian world of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

“It’s always about control, plain and simple,” she said. “And in the Senate, the males all have control.”

As she consulted her online thesaurus for filibuster material to combat the looming ban attempt, Rice, the senator from Pickens County, argued on his end of Office 601 in favor of it.

If it were all up to him, he would like to pass a bill banning abortion with no exceptions. To him, allowing exceptions was the middle-ground compromise, and banning abortion at six weeks was better than keeping access through 22 weeks.

“Every child is God’s child,” he said, “whether we like it or not.”

Still, because their receptionist was on vacation, he wound up taking messages for one of his chief legislative adversaries of the moment.

“I answer my phone better than Sandy does,” Rice said.

Both of the senators left their doors open. Rice tried not to listen to what Senn was saying on her end — “unless someone sticks their head out the door and hollers at me.”

They had sparred over bills before. Both tried to keep politics separate from their personal lives — though the fight to define “pro-life” was, to each of them, intensely personal. Both had a Bible by their desks. Both asked God to guide them.

They praised each other as good people. “Good people can be antiquated,” Senn had remarked. They agreed that the Senate’s gender breakdown — five women and 41 men — was way out of balance. Neither said they enjoyed the stalemate that was entering its ninth month.

“I would hope the females are influenced by the males in their lives,” Rice said, “just like the males are influenced by the females in their lives.”

Rice’s wife, Ruth, 61, said she also saw every pregnancy as “God’s child.” Unlike her husband, however, she would not say when, exactly, the law should draw the line. They had not discussed the six-week ban, she said, to that degree of detail.

“I don’t want to take a stand,” she said, “because I’m not in somebody’s shoes.”

Ahead of the vote, Senn expected more clashing that would keep lawmakers stuck in the same place: no consensus on restricting abortion, no progress on a Republican priority.

“It’s been hard for me to look at and talk to a lot of people,” she said.

Some of those people gathered one day last week in the State House, including the majority leader, Massey, who was chatting with Rice.

Senn strode past them for a caffeine break with the Sister Senators. Republican Sen. Katrina Shealy was sipping black tea with two scoops of matcha powder and two pumps of mango dragon fruit.

“For ten damn dollars,” cracked Democratic Sen. Margie Bright Matthews, “for a damn lizard drink.”

They all laughed. The discussion then shifted to strategy. The fourth abortion showdown would begin before June, they figured, and it wasn’t a given that the women would stand together again. Matthews, the Democrat in the group, and Sen. Mia McLeod, the independent, have leaned toward protecting abortion access through about 24 weeks.

Shealy and Sen. Penry Gustafson, the other two Republicans in the group, meanwhile, had voted in February for an earlier version of the six-week ban.

“I’m calling myself a whole lot more educated than I was back then,” Shealy said.

“Six weeks, for me, that was my compromise,” Gustafson said, “knowing how many people wanted a total ban.”

Neither expected to vote for it again, though, after fresh amendments from the House made the bill, in their view, more extreme. They had relayed that message to Massey.

“I call Senator Massey probably four times a week,” Shealy told the women. “I call whoever I’m mad at and get it off, and he does listen to me.”

“He’s very condescending to some of us,” replied McLeod. “He’s a nasty piece of work to some of us.”

Massey did not respond to that characterization.

She would probably prepare to filibuster. As would Senn and Matthews.

“You know what I did because they don’t like us talking about vaginas?” said Matthews. “I talk about female …”

“Mutilation,” Senn said.

“Genital mutilation,” Matthews continued, “and why that was another form of culture of men mutilating women so they could control them.”

After Senn brought up “The Handmaid’s Tale,” she said, a parent upstate lobbied to pull it from school library shelves. Today, another cultural reference was coming to mind. Maybe the theme of her next speech: “Drinking the Kool-Aid.”

Some of her colleagues — like Rice — genuinely believe abortion is wrong at every stage, she said. Senn didn’t fault them for that. She called them “true believers.”

She suspected, though, that the others — perhaps the majority — felt pressured just to go along with something that, she thought, was ultimately toxic to the party.

 

[Ozlsn]

On 5/23/2023 at 11:12 AM, GreyhoundFan said:

“It’s always about control, plain and simple,” she said. “And in the Senate, the males all have control.”

Nice to see some Republican women realising that they, too are going to be affected by this.

[47of74]

Some private pilots are doing their part in helping women access reproductive care;

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Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, states have moved to restrict or ban abortion access. Groups and organizations have also popped up in that time to transport people seeking abortion access to states where it’s still legal in their given circumstance.

There is a growing group of volunteer private pilots flying people across state lines for abortion access and gender-affirming care. Illinois-based Elevated Access currently has more than 1,500 pilots registered with the organization

Pilots for Elevated Access are typically flying small, prop planes out of small municipal airports. They utilize these airports for good reason; the people they typically serve are already facing barriers to traveling to care.

Volunteers with Elevated Access only use their first names out of confidentiality. Their work with patients is also kept confidential. Fiona said that pilots who fly for them don’t know who they’re flying or why. It could be a patient, a provider, or another volunteer. The organization said this relieves passengers of having to explain why they’re traveling but also gives pilots some plausible deniability if faced with legal threats.

 

[fraurosena]

Good grief, what has the US come to that they're sentencing a doctor for performing an abortion on a 10-year-old incest victim?

 

[Smash!]

7 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Good grief, what has the US come to that they're sentencing a doctor for performing an abortion on a 10-year-old incest victim?

 

Why isn’t it time for the media to call the GOP what they have become: fascists. Why are journalists normalizing what’s going on? This isn’t normal. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Judge blocks South Carolina abortion ban so state high court can review"

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A South Carolina judge on Friday moved to pause the state’s six-week abortion ban until it can be reviewed by the state Supreme Court.

Judge Clifton Newman of the South Carolina Circuit Court granted a temporary injunction Friday morning, barely 24 hours after Gov. Henry McMaster (R) signed the measure into law.

Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, along with a South Carolina clinic and two of its doctors, immediately filed a lawsuit Thursday to block the ban that took immediate effect with McMaster’s signature.

Friday’s injunction means abortion access in South Carolina reverts back to being legal up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.

“The status quo should be maintained until the Supreme Court reviews its decision,” Newman said, according to the Associated Press. “It’s going to end up there.”

Planned Parenthood called the injunction a “welcome reprieve.”

“While we have a long fight ahead, we will not stop until our patients are again free to make their own decisions about their bodies and futures,” Jenny Black, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, said in a statement.

Shortly after news of the injunction, McMaster vowed in a statement to continue fighting for the law and said he hopes the Supreme Court “will take this matter up without delay.”

In a Thursday news release, McMaster said the state was “ready to defend this legislation against any challenges and are confident we will succeed.”

“The right to life must be preserved, and we will do everything we can to protect it,” McMaster said in the release.

The law, which the Republican-led South Carolina Senate passed by a vote of 27-19 on Tuesday, includes exceptions for the patient’s life and health, and for fatal fetal anomalies. It also permits abortion at up to 12 weeks in the case of rape or incest. Doctors who violate it would lose their license and face potential civil lawsuits, felony charges, a fine of up to $10,000 and two years in jail.

The bill is the state’s second recent six-week abortion ban. The first, which passed in 2021, was blocked under federal law but later took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down federal abortion protections from Roe v. Wade. That six-week ban was in effect barely a month and a half before the state Supreme Court temporarily blocked it. In January, the high court struck down the law, calling it “an unreasonable restriction upon a woman’s right to privacy.”

But the makeup of South Carolina’s Supreme Court has changed since it last reviewed a six-week abortion ban. In January, the court had a single female justice, Kaye Hearn, who wrote the lead opinion striking down the ban from 2021. It was Hearn’s last opinion from the bench before she hit the mandatory retirement age weeks later.

South Carolina is one of two states (the other is Virginia) where the legislature selects Supreme Court justices. Earlier this year, the legislature selected Republican Gary Hill as Hearn’s replacement, making the state’s highest court entirely male.

Sandy Senn, one of five women in the state Senate, was among the few Republicans to oppose the six-week ban. She previously told The Washington Post that it would alienate more moderate voters and criticized the measure as an example of the overwhelmingly male Senate exerting control over women. In a text message Friday, Senn said she expected the quick injunction but was less optimistic about what the state Supreme Court will do.

“As far as the Supreme Court’s ultimate ruling, given that we have now reverted to the only state in the nation with an all-male high bench the outcome is anybody’s guess,” Senn said. “Ultimately, the federal government needs to step in to ensure uniformity for women nationwide.”

It’s unclear whether the state’s high court will again find privacy rights a compelling reason to strike the current six-week abortion ban. Senn said that regardless of whatever legal theory the court may use, South Carolina voters strongly favor abortion access — mostly at the first trimester — a fact she said the “overwhelmingly White male legislators in the chamber” are aware of.

That is why she says they refuse to put the issue to voters.

“They know what the outcome would be; they cannot control the voters in the same way they wish to control women, so they voted against the many polls that have been conducted including their own poll of Republican voters,” Senn said. “They think they know better than their own electorate.”

 

[Dandruff]

Why aren't "life begins at conception" fundies, along with their politician puppets, celebrating the day Jesus was believed to be conceived vs. the day he was believed to be born?  Not kidding.

[Bethella]

17 hours ago, Dandruff said:

Why aren't "life begins at conception" fundies, along with their politician puppets, celebrating the day Jesus was believed to be conceived vs. the day he was believed to be born?  Not kidding.

I don’t know why modern fundies don’t celebrate it but it is recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation in the Catholic/Orthodox traditions. It’s on March 25, 9 months before Christmas and is the announcement by the archangel Gabriel to Mary that she would conceive and bear a son through a virgin birth. Gabriel told Mary to name her son Immanuel, meaning "God is with us"

The date March 25 was used as the beginning of the year starting in 525 with the development of the Anno Domini calendar system (although it took a while to be fully accepted).

[fraurosena]

Good grief.

 

[IrishCarrie]

On 5/28/2023 at 10:01 PM, Bethella said:

I don’t know why modern fundies don’t celebrate it but it is recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation in the Catholic/Orthodox traditions. It’s on March 25, 9 months before Christmas and is the announcement by the archangel Gabriel to Mary that she would conceive and bear a son through a virgin birth. Gabriel told Mary to name her son Immanuel, meaning "God is with us"

The date March 25 was used as the beginning of the year starting in 525 with the development of the Anno Domini calendar system (although it took a while to be fully accepted).

Thank you for this - I was raised Catholic and attended a Catholic school and every March 25th we were brought over to the church for Mass. It was hugely exciting because the boys' school was also there - not that we were allowed any more contact than a sideways glance, of course! 😂 

And I never knew why we went - I started in the school at four years old and left it aged seventeen and not once - TILL NOW! - did I ever know why we were made go to Mass that day!!!

Edited May 30, 2023 by IrishCarrie

[GreyhoundFan]

A surprise:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

So sad:

 

[Ozlsn]

On 5/30/2023 at 3:06 PM, fraurosena said:

Good grief.

 

It occurs to me that requiring proof is going to be a lot easier in the days of hard to detect image alteration etc. Then again they don't believe the actual proof and I'm sure they'll amend laws to define all money as belonging to the working party, and downsize child support etc... anything to make it harder.

[GreyhoundFan]

More Rethuglikan efforts to make women second class citizens:

 

[47of74]

And Iowa's Branch Trumpvidian AG wants to deny emergency contraceptives to sexual assault victims.

Quote

While Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner, Dr. Jacinda Bunch, has a responsibility to maintain professionalism when treating victims of sexual assault, she still considers their personal feelings in every case.

“You really, in a sense, compartmentalize your personal life from taking care of your patient,” she told TV-9. “We meet our patients on one of the worst days of their life. My job is to be empathetic, and provide the best medical care that I can.”

For now, that includes providing the morning after pill to victims of rape, some as young as teenagers.

As all of the state’s sexual assault nurse examiners await further guidance from the state, a representative with Attorney General Bird says she is “Carefully evaluating whether this is an appropriate use of public funds. Until that review is complete, payment of these pending claims will be delayed.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"America’s unlikeliest abortion clinic has opened in its reddest state"

Quote

CASPER, Wyo. — The new Wellspring Health Access clinic is unremarkable inside: Walls painted in soft hues, Ms. magazines in the waiting room, cabinets filled with medical supplies.

But the story behind those white cabinets is anything but ordinary. The original ones were destroyed in May 2022, when an arsonist torched the facility shortly before it was to begin seeing patients. The damage set back Wellspring’s opening by a year — and sent an unmistakable message about the hostile terrain outside what may be the unlikeliest abortion clinic in the country.

Since news of the Supreme Court’s pending reversal of Roe v. Wade leaked last spring, followed weeks later by the justices’ ruling, abortion in conservative states has been marked by retrenchment. Dozens of facilities stopped providing abortions, closed or moved to friendlier states because of bans or anticipated bans. Just one new clinic opened in a state targeting the procedure, according to research by professor Caitlin Myers of Middlebury College. That was Wellspring, which finally began offering surgical and medication abortions in late April.

Most of Wyoming is an abortion desert, and most lawmakers in America’s reddest state — having passed laws restricting nearly all abortions as well as the nation’s first explicit prohibition on abortion pills — want to finish the job. Many residents support their effort: Authorities say the 22-year-old woman accused of setting fire to Wellspring told them she opposed abortion. Casper’s mayor says he believes abortion providers will go to hell.

Yet with the state’s restrictions tied up in court, Wellspring’s small stucco building represents a dramatic abortion standoff and a stark expansion of abortion services in a region of wide-open range and sky.

Wyoming’s only other provider, 280 miles away in Jackson, offers just abortion pills. Wellspring’s four physicians already have seen patients from South Dakota, Utah and Nebraska, neighboring states with limited or no abortion services. The clinic serves a dozen patients a week on average. Nearly half receive abortions, the rest reproductive health care.

“You can have these events happening outside the clinic, but inside they don’t disturb our ability to see patients,” clinic founder Julie Burkhart said on a recent evening as a young woman from South Dakota, the last of the day’s patients, checked out at the reception desk.

On the rain-drenched sidewalk out front, about 10 protesters waved signs at passing cars. They said they were praying for the unborn — and for Wyoming’s bans to prevail. “I was surprised that this opened in Casper, because most people here, the vast majority, are pro-life,” said Jeanette Ward, who moved to Wyoming in 2021 from what she calls “fascist Illinois” and now serves as a Republican state representative.

Burkhart is no stranger to hostility. She was the spokesperson for the Kansas clinic run by physician George Tiller when he was fatally shot at his church by an antiabortion extremist in 2009. Burkhart said his murder made her briefly consider abandoning the work. Instead, she steeled her resolve to expand services in abortion deserts, reestablishing Tiller’s facility and later opening one in Oklahoma City. She also owns clinics in Illinois and Washington state.

She has encountered plenty of harassment and threats, but Casper was the first arson. “For me, it’s not just about Casper. It’s not just about Wyoming,” said Burkhart, who lives in Colorado but maintains close contact with the staff here and travels to Wyoming regularly. “It’s how do we continue to work to provide access to people where we can now, and how can we increase that access?”

Wellspring’s ability to operate is rooted in the hands-off brand of conservatism that characterized Wyoming politics before hard-liners began gaining influence. In 2011, lawmakers worried about the Affordable Care Act potentially mandating enrollment in an “Obamacare” plan approved a resolution that put a constitutional amendment to a public vote. It passed, giving adults the right to make their own health-care decisions.

That amendment now underpins legal challenges to the state’s bans by Wellspring and four co-plaintiffs — the Jackson abortion provider, a Wyoming nonprofit that helps to facilitate abortions and two Wyoming women. In court filings, the state has said its policy “is and has always been to criminalize abortion” and argues that abortion is not health care.

Bob Brechtel is a former Republican state lawmaker who co-sponsored the 2011 resolution that led to the amendment. “That was never the intention of it,” said Brechtel, who was demonstrating outside the clinic last week. “Abortion is not health care. It’s the killing of innocent life.”

In March, a state judge in Jackson issued a temporary restraining order on the ban, which makes most abortions a felony punishable by as much as five years in prison. Later this month, she is scheduled to consider a similar order for the medication abortion ban just before it is slated to take effect.

Burkhart began contemplating a local clinic at the behest of Christine Lichtenfels, a Wyomingite who heads Chelsea’s Fund, the organization involved in the court case. While the state allowed abortion up to viability with few restrictions, she explained, women often had to travel hundreds of miles for the procedure. In winter, snow-covered roads sometimes made that almost impossible.

“I’d been trying to inspire some other people to come to Wyoming,” said Lichtenfels, who lives 150 miles west of Casper in Lander. “The idea that [surgical] abortion is now available in Casper, it’s huge.”

The two settled on this city of 60,000 for its central location on Interstate 25, reliable airport and medical center. Using donor funding, Burkhart found a property that had previously housed a medical clinic and hired contractors to begin renovation. None wanted to display a sign outside.

The crews replaced the floors and repainted the walls, saving the sturdy oak cabinets for the new clinic’s use. They built an addition for a recovery room, where patients would rest in recliners after their abortions.

The protests began as the clinic neared its original opening date last spring. Then, around dawn on May 25, 2022, Burkhart got a call from one of the contractors. The building was on fire.

Security camera footage showed a woman in a hoodie breaking a window to enter, then pouring gasoline on the reception desk and floor. Lorna Green of Casper was arrested and charged with arson in March. She was indicted by a federal grand jury in May and has pleaded not guilty. A trial is set for July 24.

The blaze did $300,000 in damage, according to Burkhart. The clinic had to be stripped down to the studs and rebuilt over the next year.

The all-female staff was traumatized, Burkhart said. But no one quit.

Brittany Brown, a registered nurse, had eagerly applied for a job after reading an article about the clinic coming to Casper. After the leak of the Supreme Court’s abortion decision, she decided she had to respond. “I find our work to be important and sacred on some level,” she said. “Women have been taking care of each other for generations.”

The nonpartisan city council has mostly avoided debate over the clinic, though it has been a flash point. When the Oil City News posted an article about Wellspring’s April 20 opening on Facebook, Mayor Bruce Knell responded with an image of a fire. At a public meeting days later, he tearfully apologized for a comment he said was in “poor taste” and not meant to endorse arson, as several outraged residents charged. Two other council members defended the clinic.

Knell, who describes himself as a “literal Bibleist,” said in an interview that he had found the image by Googling “dancing in fire” on his cellphone — “because that’s what they’re going to be doing, in my opinion.” Even so, he’s not heeding calls for a city resolution condemning abortion.

“They are a legal, law-abiding business, so they have a right to be here,” he said. “We will allow this to play out in the courts. And I do think the pro-life folks will see a result that they’re happy with.”

As the clinic closed for the day last week, Brown finished up patient records on her laptop. She said she is not worried about the possibility of prosecution, despite threats by some antiabortion states against out-of-state providers. Some of her colleagues are concerned about retribution in the community, however. They stay quiet about their workplace. The physicians, who rotate in from outside of Wyoming, also keep a low profile.

“If someone wanted to get real salty about what I’m doing, I have a nursing license on the line,” Brown said. “I’m always making sure to mind my p’s and q’s.”

Legal repercussions are at times a topic of discussion with patients. Another South Dakota woman, who had come that same day for abortion medication, had opted instead for a surgical procedure so she would not return home pregnant or with pills, Burkhart said.

“We give the options,” she said. “We don’t want to scare people at all, but we want to be realistic.”

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Bid to ban abortions in Iowa after six weeks blocked by state Supreme Court"

Quote

Abortion in Iowa will remain legal until roughly 20 weeks of pregnancy after a deadlock on the state’s Supreme Court over whether to grant a request by Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) to reinstate a 2018 law that would have banned the procedure in most cases after six weeks.

With the split decision, announced Friday, a lower-court ruling that the state’s “fetal heartbeat law” is unconstitutional remains in effect.

Iowa is among a wave of Republican-led states that have sought to significantly curtail abortion rights after the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last year.

Separately Friday in Ohio, a divided state Supreme Court ruled that an election can be held in August on a GOP-driven ballot measure that, if passed, would make it more difficult to amend the state constitution. Democrats have argued that it is an attempt to quash voter efforts to enshrine abortion rights into state law.

In Iowa, the state’s high court deadlocked over the unusual process state leaders were taking to restrict abortion rights.

Reynolds signed the law five years ago. It has remained blocked by a 2019 district court ruling, but last year Reynolds asked the Supreme Court to take another look, given developments on abortion nationally and in the state.

In an opinion signed by the three justices opposing the move, Justice Thomas D. Waterman wrote that Reynolds was asking the court to “do something that has never happened in Iowa history.”

“In our view, it is legislating from the bench to take a statute that was moribund when it was enacted and has been enjoined for four years and then to put it into effect,” he wrote.

Waterman noted that state officials did not appeal the injunction blocking the law at the time it was announced.

The state’s high court has seven members, but one was recused from the case, creating the prospect of a tie.

Critics of Iowa’s 2018 law and others like it say it largely bans abortion because women often do not know they are pregnant when the restrictions take effect.

In a statement Friday, Reynolds harshly criticized the “lack of action by the Iowa Supreme Court” and vowed that “the fight is not over.”

She castigated the state’s high court for having “sided with a single judge in a single county who struck down Iowa’s legislation based on principles that now have been flat-out rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Republican legislative leaders vowed to pass new legislation with abortion restrictions.

“We feel strongly that the Heartbeat Bill is a good piece of legislation that would save the innocent lives of unborn children,” House Speaker Pat Grassley (R) said in a statement. “Going forward we will work together to pass legislation that will protect life, support new mothers, and promote strong families in Iowa.”

Meanwhile, Democrats in the state applauded the deadlock.

“I am thrilled that the Iowa Supreme Court will not stand in the way of Iowans who need abortion care, especially when our friends and neighbors already have to navigate so many barriers to health care,” Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Rita Hart said. “I know this is not the end of the discussion, but I am glad that for today, Iowans can breathe a sigh of relief that their right to make their own health-care decisions is protected under the law.”

In Ohio, the high court permitted an Aug. 8 election on State Issue 1, which seeks to raise the threshold required to amend the state’s constitution to 60 percent of the vote. A ballot initiative now only has to pass with a simple majority. The proposal also would impose more-stringent requirements on how signatures are gathered for ballot initiative campaigns.

The debate over the measure has become a proxy battle in recent months between Ohio Republicans, who control the state legislature, and Democrats who have argued that it is an attempt to make it more difficult to add abortion protections in the constitution.

An advocacy group sued Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) in a bid to block the election, arguing that it had been scheduled in violation of state election law. The high court voted 4-3 to let the election proceed.

In a separate ruling earlier this week, the court ordered the Ohio Ballot Board to rewrite what justices said was inaccurate and misleading language in the ballot measure.

The five-member board, chaired by LaRose, subsequently met to revise the language.

Ohio is among several states where lawmakers have been seeking to make it more difficult to pass citizen-led initiatives after liberal policies — from protecting abortion rights to expanding Medicaid to raising the minimum wage — won at the ballot box across the country. Efforts to raise the bar to amend state constitutions have cropped up during legislative sessions in recent years.

If such efforts prevail, it could throw a wrench into one of abortion rights groups’ key strategies for restoring access to the procedure in states where it’s banned. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, advocates have been exploring ballot measures to enshrine the procedure’s legality into state constitutions in at least a dozen states.

 

[47of74]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Bid to ban abortions in Iowa after six weeks blocked by state Supreme Court"

 

Course Covid Kimmy and her rubber stamp legislature are planning to get around this. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Because of course they did. The house GQP clowns get most of the attention, but the senate rethugs are quietly just as awful. 

 

[Zebedee]

The BBC just ran a profile of some absolute bitch, who became a forced birther at 15, when she was, for some absolutely inexplicable reason, volunteering at a crisis pregnancy centre (just what you want when desperate, some ignorant, arrogant know-it-all 15 year old right wing religious freak). Apparently, she had to watch a video of a 12 week old foetus being aborted and in distress. Do these people have no critical thinking whatsoever? I might not expect a 15 year old to be able to advise me on an unwanted pregnancy, but I *do* expect a 15 year old to have some critical thinking abilities. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65923956

[GreyhoundFan]

So.Freaking.True:

[Coconut Flan]

More Republicans vs women:

https://theconversation.com/a-year-after-supreme-courts-dobbs-decision-black-women-still-struggle-for-access-to-reproductive-health-care-206369

California says thank you for the tourism increase, but would prefer people didn't need this reason to visit.