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

[Ozlsn]

14 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Dude is a dentist, so presumably he took at least some biology classes. And he and his wife have four kids.

 

I'm starting to think as well as a citizenship exam and basic IQ test, a 3 hour exam on basic biology should be a requirement for public offic.

[WiseGirl]

Whoops wrong thread. Carry on.

Edited August 12, 2022 by WiseGirl
Need coffee

[GreyhoundFan]

"Most abortions are done at home. Antiabortion groups are taking aim."

Quote

Two top antiabortion groups have crafted and successfully lobbied for state legislation to ban or further restrict the predominant way pregnancies are ended in the United States — via drugs taken at home, often facilitated by a network of abortion rights groups.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, 14 states now ban or partially ban the use of those drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, which are used in more than half of all abortions.

But the drugs remain widely available, with multiple groups working to help provide them even to women in states with abortion bans. Students for Life of America and National Right to Life Committee, which have played leading roles in crafting antiabortion laws, hope to change that with new legislation.

The groups are pursuing a variety of tactics, from bills that would ban the abortion-inducing drugs altogether to others that would allow family members to sue medication providers or attempt to shut down the nonprofit groups that help women obtain and safely use the drugs.

Their strategy reflects the reality that abortion access today looks vastly different from that of the pre-Roe world, one without easy access to abortion medications from out-of-state or overseas pharmacies.

“We knew we couldn’t just go back to pre-Roe laws,” said James Bopp Jr., attorney for National Right to Life. “We knew new approaches were needed.”

Both organizations have long opposed medication abortions, but Students for Life’s legislative efforts did not gain traction until 2021, when seven states passed bills modeled after legislation crafted by the group to create legal barriers to the medications. In some cases the laws also banned them from college health clinics. A new wave of these proposals are expected to be introduced — or reintroduced — in statehouses across the country when most legislatures reconvene in January.

National Right to Life, meanwhile, released a “model law,” a week before the overturn of Roe v. Wade that seeks to outlaw a coalition of nonprofit groups that assist women with self-managed abortions. Last month, Republican lawmakers in South Carolina became the first to introduce the legislation.

The efforts illustrate how the antiabortion battlefront now reaches beyond traditional bills seeking criminal penalties for doctors who provide surgical abortions in hospitals or clinics, instead targeting organizations that assist women with mail-order abortion prescriptions and safety protocols for self-managed abortions.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, also said the strategy has expanded because the use of abortion medication is expanding. The Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research organization that supports abortion rights, found the drugs were used in 54 percent of abortions in 2020 — a doubling from 2012 to 2013. These numbers are expected to rise as more states pass abortion restrictions and more women turn to drugs sent by mail.

“Reversing Roe, shutting down these dangerous brick-and-mortar facilities, while very important is simply a fight. It’s not the entire battle,” Hawkins said, adding that medication abortions are “the new frontier of abortion.”

Abortion advocates said these state-level battles will have an outsize impact on poor women in rural areas, especially those in states where abortions are illegal, because they do not have the means to travel to faraway clinics.

“It continues this expansion of the criminal apparatus to address all things related to bodily autonomy with respect to women and people with the capacity for pregnancy,” said Dana Sussman, an attorney and acting director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer predicted in June that antiabortion groups would take a similar tack with the overturn of Roe v. Wade. “After this decision, some States may block women from traveling out of State to obtain abortions, or even from receiving abortion medications from out of State,” Breyer wrote in his dissent to the ruling. “Some may criminalize efforts, including provision of information or funding, to help women gain access to other States’ abortion services.”

In anticipation of the Supreme Court decision, Students for Life sent numerous emails in 2021 and 2022 to state lawmakers — obtained by The Washington Post — offering to help them craft antiabortion bills and legislative campaigns. They also told lawmakers that student volunteers were “chomping at the bit” to lobby on their behalf for “hard-hitting legislation” they agreed to sponsor.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, has pledged to ensure access to abortion medication. But administration officials are still wrestling with how to deliver on that promise beyond the president’s July 8 executive order that seeks to protect access. Some Democrats, like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, have asked the president to assert federal authority over the U.S. mail system to specify that no one will be prosecuted for prescribing or receiving the drugs through the Postal Service.

Antiabortion groups have repeatedly said their measures will not subject people who have used medication abortions to criminal or civil penalties. “The pro-life movement has not and will not prosecute the women,” Hawkins said.

However, a 17-year-old Nebraska teenager was criminally charged in July for allegedly performing a medication abortion at her home, in violation of a state law banning pregnancy terminations after 20 weeks. Prosecutors say she will be tried as an adult. Her mother is also facing charges.

Even when women are not the subject of criminal probes, abortion rights groups say they are still invariably placed at the center of police investigations and civil court battles because they become key witnesses.

“We can look to the time before Roe when it typically wasn’t a crime for the person who had the abortion, but they were frequently seized and interrogated,” said Farah Diaz-Tello, senior counsel and legal director of If/When/How, a legal reproductive justice nonprofit. “They were exposed to all of these things that are dehumanizing and humiliating, so it is just an ancillary point that they will not be the subject of a criminal investigation.”

Closing the coalitions

The Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone in 2000 to end an early pregnancy. The medication, now authorized for the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, causes the uterine lining to detach, and is typically used with a second drug, misoprostol, which clears the contents of the uterus.

Even before Roe fell, some states targeted women who used the drugs.

Idaho authorities in 2011 arrested and interrogated Jennie Linn McCormack, 32, after she told a friend about ordering mifepristone online and taking it to successfully end a 20- to 23-week pregnancy at home, charging her under a state law forbidding abortions after 20 weeks that also banned self-managed abortions.

McCormack, who did not respond to requests for comment, became front-page news in the local newspaper, although charges were later dropped and the law — crafted by National Right to Life — was struck down. “She was fired from her dry cleaning job because customers recognized her and they didn’t want someone like her touching their clothes,” said Richard Hearn, McCormack’s attorney.

After President Donald Trump’s election — with abortion rights newly under threat — an aggressive coalition of groups began helping women like McCormack navigate the process of terminating a pregnancy at home and getting the necessary drugs. Those groups have multiplied and united in recent years, said Erin Matson, co-founder of Reproaction, who helped organize a formal coalition this year called Abortion on Our Own Terms.

In response, top antiabortion groups have pushed to shut down those groups. National Right to Life calls the coalition an “organized criminal enterprise” in the summary of its model legislation, which seeks to outlaw groups that share information on how to self-administer abortion pills.

Bopp acknowledges that criminal prosecutions under the law might prove difficult, due in part to a pledge that dozens of prosecutors across the nation have taken to not to pursue cases against those helping women to end pregnancies. Legal experts say the bill also seeks to criminalize activity — educating women about medication abortions — that is protected by the First Amendment. But Bopp’s bill also includes a provision allowing lawsuits against the groups by intimate partners and family members of women who perform medication abortions.

Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity, says the laws are meant to create a “chilling effect” on the groups. “Part of the intention of this law is to sow fear. It is meant to make groups like URGE and the groups that we partner with afraid to do right by our communities,” she said.

Bopp agreed that the threat of a civil lawsuits can shut down abortion operations. After Texas enacted a six-week abortion law last year, which allowed people to sue anyone who assists a women in securing an illegal abortion, clinics across the state shuttered.

“It worked without anyone even having to bring a civil action,” Bopp said of the Texas law. “It stopped abortion.”

Targeting the drugs

Students for Life is taking a different tack in efforts to limit or outlaw medication abortion — crafting and backing bills that restrict access to the drugs themselves.

Among the seven bills the group has successfully lobbied to pass, each requires women to see a physician in person to receive the medications rather than receiving them through the mail. The mandates vary from state-to-state, but most require a physical examination, a test to determine the blood type of the baby, an ultrasound to determine the stage of the pregnancy, a disclosure of safety risks and a follow-up examination after the procedure. In many of the states, the medications could only be used in a limited set of circumstances, like in Oklahoma where its use is restricted to ending early pregnancies that resulted from rape or incest — or if the woman’s life is in danger.

Telehealth appointments for the procedure are also prohibited under the bills.

In some cases, doctors are required to tell their patients that they can potentially reverse the effects of mifepristone and stop the abortion process — something that the American Medication Association has said is “a claim wholly unsupported by the best, most reliable scientific evidence.”

“So many states in the abortion arena have been playing with misinformation like this, relying on the antiabortion movement instead of medical professionals and what the science shows,” said Wendy E. Parmet, co-director of Northeastern University’s Center for Health Policy & Law. “Some states have required physicians say it causes breast cancer — which is also false.”

The ultimate goal of Students for Life is to block access to drugs entirely. The group is seeking criminal sanctions for the physicians and organizations that “manufacture, distribute, prescribe, dispense, sell or transfer” the drugs in the state.

If passed, the laws would be most effective in blocking prescriptions made by doctors in states where abortion is still legal — typically through telehealth appointments — to patients who reside in states where medication abortions are banned in all circumstances.

Experts say it is unlikely that law enforcement would be allowed to enter a state to arrest a doctor where they have no jurisdiction. However, state medical boards could penalize doctors — including revocation of their medical licenses — if they determined they are not licensed to practice medicine with someone who resides outside their state.

“It’s not as bad as going to prison, but it’s certainly something that no doctors want to have to do — be in a position where they are having to defend their license,” said Hearn, McCormack’s attorney, who is also a physician.

Antiabortion advocates would have an even more difficult time targeting overseas physicians and pharmacists who prescribe and mail the medications into the United States.

Aid Access, which is based in Austria and typically uses pharmacies in India, provides this service, asking only for a $110 donation. Women who can’t afford that pay significantly less, and sometimes nothing at all.

Legal experts said that since states don’t have the authority to ask foreign countries for extradition, the federal government would have to get involved and foreign countries would have to agree.

“As a practical matter, people order medications from outside of the United States all the time — and it’s not technically lawful,” said Diaz-Tello, the legal director of If/When/How. “Imagine trying to interdict the vast number of medications that come into the country everyday.”

The Trump administration unsuccessfully attempted in 2019 to shut down Aid Access’s work in the United States. Instead, as the threat to abortion access within the United States grows, women are increasingly turning to the organization for help.

A University of Texas study published in February found that in the weeks after Texas passed its six-week abortion ban, Aid Access received nearly 38 requests a day from Texas women — up from nearly 11 requests a day. Requests also increased slightly in 49 other states during this same time period.

“Time and time again, when you outlaw something, you see a shift because the demand hasn’t changed. Self-managed abortions were bound to rise,” said Abigail R.A. Aiken, the lead author of the study.

Students for Life is also using provocative language on social media, on its website and in media interviews, calling medication abortions “the new back alley abortion.”

“They are literally willing to expose women to injury, infertility and death,” said Hawkins, the group’s president, who asserts that medication abortions are more dangerous than surgical abortions.

However, studies cited by antiabortion groups and abortion rights groups alike show that when pregnant people take the combined regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol at 10 weeks or earlier in their pregnancy, it is safe and effective between 95 to 97 percent of the time with the remaining pregnancies requiring some intervention in a medical setting to complete the abortion.

The World Health Organization also said in March that medication abortions are safe at 12 or weeks or less of pregnancy in its new abortion care guideline. And the FDA last year removed the requirement that mifepristone be dispensed in person at a clinic, medical office or hospital, saying it can be safely sent through the mail.

 

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

11 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Most abortions are done at home. Antiabortion groups are taking aim."

 

If only these people spent 25% of the time and effort they dedicate to invading privacy and controlling bodies to finding ways to help the poor, the ill, the needy, the hungry, the tortured and terrorized, the beaten, the elderly, the pregnant women and children without resources, the people in need of education, and all the marginalized they could do so much for their communities. They might even find it far more fulfilling than being nasty busybodies who want to judge others in order to feel better about their own lives that have not turned out to be what they expected (mostly because they thought they were Jesus’ favorites and cannot understand why people they think are “sinners” are allowed to not only breathe the same air but are *gasp* able to live good, satisfying lives.) 

[Xan]

42 minutes ago, AlmostSavedAtTacoBell said:

If only these people spent 25% of the time and effort they dedicate to invading privacy and controlling bodies to finding ways to help the poor, the ill, the needy, the hungry, the tortured and terrorized, the beaten, the elderly, the pregnant women and children without resources, the people in need of education, and all the marginalized they could do so much for their communities.

They can't, though.  They want help themselves.  They think they're the victims and they've waited so long to be saved or to win the lottery or to be discovered as America's next top talent that they don't see there are people who are worse off than they are.  They're angry that they haven't risen to the top of the ladder and they're consumed with the unfairness of it all.  

The only hope I see is on a case by case basis.  I know some of these folks and, if there's a local tragedy like a house fire or a kid with cancer, they'll give and help out.  But helping people who they don't know or can't see up close?  No way.

[GreyhoundFan]

This makes me so angry:

[GreyhoundFan]

[SPHASH]

14 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'm sorry but I hate Lori Alexander 

[GreyhoundFan]

I have no words to describe how horrified I am at this: "Louisiana hospital denies abortion for fetus without a skull"

Quote

At the beginning of July, Nancy Davis started feeling nauseous. The Baton Rouge resident considered COVID-19 or the flu, then decided to take a pregnancy test just in case. She saw the two blue lines denoting a positive test and ran to the living room to tell her boyfriend. They were both elated.

But their happiness was short-lived. At the first ultrasound, at Woman’s Hospital, the largest birthing center in Louisiana, the technician looked troubled and left the room. A woman in a white coat entered. Davis knew that wasn’t good.

The doctor pointed to the top of the head. There was no skull, she told Davis, an unsurvivable condition. The doctor tried to comfort her, saying this was one of the conditions that qualifies as an exception under the state’s abortion laws. Davis, about 10 weeks into her pregnancy, was still heartbroken.

“There was nothing I would have preferred more than to have this baby,” said Davis, 36. Instead, she prepared herself to pay an estimated $5,000 for an abortion at the hospital.

But that’s not what happened. Even after doctors at the hospital said they would provide an abortion once she got the diagnosis of acrania, a rare and fatal condition, from a specialist, the hospital called to tell her it would not be able to do it, she said. The hospital directed her to a Florida abortion clinic instead, or to carry the baby to term.

'Medically futile'

Davis' predicament illustrates the gray area in Louisiana's new abortion law and the administrative regulations that attempt to explain it to medical professionals and the public. They all but forbid abortion, except to save the life of the mother or when the fetus is "medically futile," according to a list of conditions issued by the state. 

Acrania does not appear on the state’s list of accepted conditions for abortion. But the state also has a broad exception for any “profound and irremediable congenital or chromosomal anomaly existing in the unborn child that is incompatible with sustaining life after birth in reasonable medical judgment.”

Two physicians must sign off on the anomaly. But Woman’s still said it would not perform the abortion. 

“In the absence of additional guidance, we must look at each patient’s individual circumstances and remain in compliance with all current state laws to the best of our ability,” said Caroline Isemann, a hospital spokesperson, in a statement.

That's not how some doctors have interpreted the law.

'They just won't function'

“Acrania, to me, is synonymous with anencephaly, and it’s on the list,” said Dr. Cecilia Gambala, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at Tulane University School of Medicine, referring to another brain and spine defect. “There is no skull.”

Gambala said that even if hospital attorneys were uncomfortable with giving the go-ahead for an abortion based on the acrania diagnosis, they could use the broad exception that the state allows for when a fetus is incompatible with life. And acrania, in Gambala's opinion, meets that description. 

"Babies can be born alive, they just won't function," Gambala said. "Their heart might be beating, they can breathe, but they have no brain tissue to actually develop as far as comprehending what's happening or reacting to anything."

Guidance needed

Cases like this will become more common until there is more clarity surrounding the law, whether from legislation, additional guidance from the state Health Department or litigation, said Matthew Brown, a New Orleans-based attorney specializing in health care law. 

“The problem is very specific,” Brown said. “And that’s why the law doesn’t address it.” 

Brown said the hospital may view the fetus as currently viable because acrania is not immediately fatal and there is still a heartbeat. It also doesn’t immediately endanger the life of the mother, even though the health risks and psychological risks are significant as the pregnancy continues.

Other hospitals may see the situation differently. Until there is more clarity, scenarios like this will continue to play out, he said. 

"Any pregnant woman at this point, even the ones [who] are hoping for a healthy child and planning to give birth, is facing additional uncertainty about how they're going to be cared for under bad circumstances because of this law," Brown said.

After seeing a maternal fetal medicine specialist, Davis starting researching the condition on her own. She found devastating images of infants and fetuses who looked like they were missing parts of their heads. She read that babies with acrania are stillborn or die shortly after birth, just like her doctors told her.

“I haven’t run across a case where these babies live,” Davis said.

Time is running out 

The nearest abortion clinic that can take Davis is an eight-hour drive, and would require a week's stay because she needs a consultation before the procedure.

“I can’t just get up and shoot out; I have kids,” said Davis, who has a 13-year-old and a 1-year-old and no transportation, after a hit-and-run wreck totaled her car a few months back.

Florida also bans abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy, and Davis is now nearing 14 weeks. The next-closest state, North Carolina, is a 15-hour drive.

In desperation, Davis visited Care Pregnancy Clinic, a pregnancy crisis center that discourages abortions, on Flannery Road. Staff gave her information on how to bury the baby and said their prayers were with her.

“It makes me feel horrible, like I’m alone in this,” Davis said. “It makes me feel like they just threw me to the wolves.”

After being told to go to Florida, Davis said she wanted other people to know how laws decided in the Louisiana Legislature play out in real life.

“I never in a million years thought it would affect me like this,” she said. “It seems like Louisiana is the hardest place right now to get that done. They don't even wanna say that word.”

 

[47of74]

A Canadian man got snipped a few months before the extreme court did their damage but is using social media to persuade other men to get snipped as well.

 

[AnywhereButHere]

On 8/16/2022 at 5:59 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

This makes me so angry:

But she’s fully mature enough to carry that pregnancy to term and possibly raise a child. What in the goddamn, fucking hell is going on in the jumbled ass synapses that pass for brain matter in the heads of the shitweasels in charge of Florida that allows them to make this dumbass decision make sense? 
 

Excuse me - I’m a little angry…

[NotQuiteMotY]

22 hours ago, 47of74 said:

A Canadian man got snipped a few months before the extreme court did their damage but is using social media to persuade other men to get snipped as well.

 

Good luck. Urologists are getting completely booked up, and gynecologists who perform tubals aren't far behind.

[GreyhoundFan]

Tudor needs to just shut up.

 

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Tudor needs to just shut up.

 

How does she know? Has she been a 14 year old victim of rape who was impregnated then forced to carry a baby? Where are all these studies of 14 year old rape victims impregnated by rapists who are forced to carry the babies who are reporting feeling healed by bonding with the baby? I would really like to see the stats on those victims vs. the ones who DON’T find it “healing” and worse, are further traumatized (not to mention physically going through a pregnancy which is hard on a body even in a wanted situation). And for all those supposed healed up bonded victims- how many had follow up checks in a month, six months, a year to see how she was faring now having to care for a baby before she could get her driver’s license and trying to navigate her freshman then sophomore year of high school? Sure, other girls get homecoming corsages but she has a baby so she’s all healed from being raped! Heck, nobody judges her or makes fun of her - they all understand that she has a rape healing baby because high school kids are totally supportive and not at all mean. No way will her grades suffer because all rape healing babies know that mommy needs to study so they are quiet and take care of themselves during study time. They also sleep through the night so mommy can go to school refreshed every day. There is also the absolutely free rape healing baby daycare that provides top notch care while mommy is in school. Transportation, baby needs, doctor appointments that don’t interfere with school, hospitalization during birth- all free. Rape healing babies never ever get sick so mommy won’t miss any school including when giving birth. She’ll have that baby during PE (where she’ll be given an excused absence) and instantly heal in time for algebra. 
 

This fucking bitch makes having to carry a rapist’s baby easier than getting a gerbil. 

On 8/18/2022 at 11:16 AM, GreyhoundFan said:

I have no words to describe how horrified I am at this: "Louisiana hospital denies abortion for fetus without a skull"

 

Her story just shows that the cruelty is the point. There is absolutely no justification to make her or the baby suffer so horribly. Not one person who is anti-abortion would sign up to adopt that baby and take on the responsibilities for the baby- financially, medically, and most of all emotionally until the poor baby inevitably dies but they want to deny both the mother- who wanted her child- and the child the humane and while still agonizing for her, far less painful end. It’s just cruel. 

[SilverBeach]

I was channel surfing the other day, and stumbled upon a movie "Rain Without Thunder"  from 1992. Upon reading the plot summary, and proceeding to watch, I was absolutely chilled. The movie was prescient to be made 30 years ago, when it was roundly ignored despite some name-brand actors like Linda Hunt and Jeff Daniels. I won't give away the entire plot, but suffice it to say that with the reversal of Roe, we aren't very far from some of these states enacting Fetal Kidnapping laws and the creation of maternal prisons just like in the movie. Horrifying.

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

1 hour ago, SilverBeach said:

I was channel surfing the other day, and stumbled upon a movie "Rain Without Thunder"  from 1992. Upon reading the plot summary, and proceeding to watch, I was absolutely chilled. The movie was prescient to be made 30 years ago, when it was roundly ignored despite some name-brand actors like Linda Hunt and Jeff Daniels. I won't give away the entire plot, but suffice it to say that with the reversal of Roe, we aren't very far from some of these states enacting Fetal Kidnapping laws and the creation of maternal prisons just like in the movie. Horrifying.

The books “The Red Clocks”and “Vox” (be sure to get the newer one as there is an older one with a different plot) have plot lines with, respectively, a post-overturned Roe United States and an even more dystopian US. But I try to cling to the hope that the majority of the country is against outlawing abortion and has no desire for Gilead so things will get better. If not, I do hope our allies will decide they need to protect the people and invade. I wish I was kidding. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Not 1925: Texas’ law banning abortion dates to before the Civil War"

(CW: graphic description of non medical abortion)

Quote

When Mollie Smith learned she was pregnant by her former school teacher, the 20-year-old was “mentally depressed and despondent.” She asked the man who impregnated her to help her seek an abortion.

It was 1897. Options were limited in the rural region of Texas where she lived, along the Red River that would, two decades later, come to form the Oklahoma state line. So Smith’s former teacher got a blacksmith to make a “metallic instrument,” which he used to open her vagina to allow him to insert a 7-inch metal rod inside of her womb.

“She stated that this operation gave her pain, and that for a short time she felt sick and faint, but it soon passed off,” according to court records. Smith also drank a compound of cotton root and oil of rue, and a month later, delivered a stillborn fetus.

At the time, Texas was under a near-total abortion ban that outlawed performing or “furnishing the means for” an abortion, except to save the life of the pregnant patient, punishable by up to five years in the penitentiary.

The law had been on the books for as long as Texas had books, dating back to the creation of the state’s penal code in 1857. It remained in effect, largely unchanged but only intermittently enforced, for the next 116 years until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

Now, after a reversal from the same court at the end of June, this frontier-era statute is once again the law of the land, leading to a near-total termination of abortion in Texas. Clinics have closed, and citing the vagueness of the law, abortion funds have even stopped paying for the procedure over state lines — state lines which, in some cases, didn’t even exist when the laws were first written.

The laws, often called the “pre-Roe statutes,” are also sometimes mistermed the “1925 laws,” which refers to the year that Texas recodified the statute while reorganizing its penal code.

But the laws actually appeared much earlier, during the brief period when Texas had joined the United States but not yet left for the Confederacy. It was a moment when many states were passing similar restrictions, motivated by a declining white birth rate and encouraged by a nascent medical profession trying to take control of childbirth and reproduction.

How these 165-year-old statutes that have been suspended for five decades will be used in 2022 remains to be seen, said South Texas College of Law professor Charles “Rocky” Rhodes.

“This was legislation that wasn’t really designed for the types of situations that we’re being presented with today,” he said. “It’s just not very clear … to try to figure out what they meant back then.”

Spanish origins

The origin of abortion restrictions in Texas starts much earlier — and in a much different place — than much of the rest of the country.

British common law, which governed the early United States, allowed abortion up to “quickening” or the point 15 to 20 weeks into pregnancy when a fetus can first be felt moving in the womb.

But Texas originated as a Spanish colony and then became part of independent Mexico, both of which prohibited abortion. For its decade of existence, the Republic of Texas “just continued on with that,” said Lina-Maria Murillo, a historian at the University of Iowa who has studied abortion laws in Texas and Mexico.

“Texas is special … because it experiences so many different legal systems in a matter of decades,” Murillo said. “And the abortion question really brings into stark relief that moment of turmoil of Texas and its position vis a vis the United States.”

Despite the longstanding legal restrictions on abortion, Texans still found ways to control their reproductive destinies, historians say. In the absence of pregnancy tests or advanced understanding of menstrual cycles, how these practices aligned with the abortion law wasn’t always clear-cut.

“There were no period trackers at the time, and so they would take a potion or a brew, and they would take it to so-called ‘bring on their menses,’” said reproductive health historian Rebecca Kluchin. “It could be to regulate their menstruation or it could be to terminate a pregnancy … it was just really blurry.”

Abortion providers were rarely, if ever, criminalized in this period, in part because the information about whether and how long a woman was pregnant rested entirely with the woman herself.

“You can see cases where someone swears an abortion [happened] on a woman,” Kluchin said. “And … her representative — because she can’t speak in court — would just say she was never pregnant, and never quickened, and very clearly she’s not now, and the law finds for her.”

By the time Texas joined the United States in 1846, though, the former British colonies were moving in the direction of their Spanish counterparts when it came to criminalizing abortion.

Texas’ fledgling medical industry

Texas’ abortion statute, filed in the state’s first penal code under “offences against the persons or individuals,” came with two to five years of prison time for performing or furnishing the means for an abortion. The law exempted abortions performed “by medical advice” to save the life of the pregnant patient.

It was codified at a moment when the medical establishment in Texas was starting to take shape and assert itself politically.

In 1852, a group of physicians placed an ad in the Texas State Gazette calling a meeting of all those “desirous of promoting the advancement and improvement, as well as elevating the standard of our profession within this State.”

At the time, the medical profession in the United States was almost entirely unregulated. Any man — with any level of education or experience — could call himself a doctor and charge for medical remedies of varying usefulness. Texas had no medical schools, although several prominent Texans were educated in other states before returning home.

Thirty-five of those trained physicians — referred to as the “regulars” — attended that first meeting in Austin in 1852 and, by the next year, succeeded in getting the Legislature to authorize the creation of the Medical Association of Texas.

They were all men; Texas would not admit the first “lady applicant” until 1887. And with the Civil War looming, according to a history of the Texas Medical Association, “practically all Texas physicians were loyal to the Confederacy.”

The nascent group wanted to institute educational requirements and standards of care to root out “quack” doctors. They also wanted to start making real money. Doctors were generally paid by the case, and since they weren’t particularly well-respected, they weren’t called on that often.

“But women were having babies every two years,” Kluchin said. “So doctors are trying to push in on midwives, in terms of childbirth, but midwives also tended to be the healers in their communities.”

Nationally, doctors started a campaign against midwives, Kluchin said, painting them as dirty, uneducated and dangerous to pregnant women.

“But these are health care providers who have a ton of knowledge and deep experience, and they tend to have better outcomes in terms of obstetrics than doctors,” Kluchin said. “Doctors come in in the 1850s with forceps and anesthesia promising an easier birth, but there’s no regulations.”

Midwives were also the keepers of knowledge about how to terminate a pregnancy. This is part of why state laws regulating abortion often had an exception to save the life of the pregnant patient — as determined by a doctor.

Texas’ efforts to regulate both childbirth and abortion coincided with a national effort started by a Boston doctor named Horatio Storer. Storer and the American Medical Association pushed states to tighten their abortion laws, citing concerns over “unborn life” and women shirking their responsibilities as wives and mothers, said Mary Ziegler, a legal historian focusing on abortion at Florida State University College of Law.

Storer’s other main argument — both explicit and implicit — focused on rising immigration and declining white birth rates. Birth rates in the U.S. plummeted during the 19th century from about seven children per woman to less than four, with white women making up the steepest declines.

“The thought was that with the abortion laws as they stood, the racial stock of the U.S. was going to decline,” Ziegler said. “Because the wrong people were going to be having more kids and the right people were going to be having fewer kids.”

In Texas, a slave state with a large Mexican population, these racial concerns were front and center. Murillo posits that maintaining white birth rates was seen at that time as an essential part of maintaining white power in the state.

“They’re sort of wrestling with this population question at this moment,” Murillo said. “And it becomes even more so once they become part of the Confederacy in 1861, just [four] years after they established the penal code.”

Early legal battles

Unlike in current times, Texas’ 1850s abortion ban didn’t spark much of a backlash.

“People just kept having abortions,” Ziegler said. “To the extent there was a protest, it was just people ignoring the law.”

Texas was still largely rural and law enforcement was informal and sparse. There wasn’t much effort to proactively identify and root out people who were performing or helping people access abortions.

“These laws weren’t so much preventative as they were disciplinary,” Murillo said. “This is about making an example, especially an example of white women and … disciplining white fertility.”

The laws were most often used in cases in which the women died, like a case from the early 1900s near Fort Worth. Two doctors were called to treat a woman who was “suffering from hemorrhages from the womb which was greatly distended, the discharged matter being quite offensive,” according to court records.

Amid her screams of pain, the woman admitted that she’d had an abortion. The doctors refused to treat her until she told them who had helped her terminate her pregnancy. Eventually, she gave the name of a doctor who had “used instruments and tried to take it away.”

The doctor who elicited this deathbed confession told law enforcement that “he did not think she was dying at the time, and he further said that her cries were caused by the pain she was suffering rather than from any calm, deliberate belief that death was impending.”

The doctor she accused was convicted, though an appeals court later overturned the ruling on several grounds, including the inadmissibility of her dying declaration.

Court cases like these were the venue through which the nuances of the law were sorted out over the course of decades. In 1907, after that case and other legal challenges, the Legislature voted to add a definition of abortion to the law, declaring that the “fact that Article 641 of the Penal Code, which relates to the offense of abortion, does not define said offense, and is therefore inoperative, creates an emergency.”

In several cases from the turn of the century, the court ruled conclusively that the person who undergoes an abortion cannot be criminally charged as either the principal or accomplice.

An appeals court ruled that while Mollie Smith, the 20-year-old impregnated by her former teacher, “may be culpable morally, under our law she is not indictable for an abortion committed on herself.”

Smith’s case offers a foreshadow of how the law may be prosecuted in the modern era of medication abortion; the man who provided her with medication to terminate the pregnancy tried to argue in court that he was just an accomplice to her misconduct.

“Appellant seems to think, because he merely procured the drug, handed it to her and advised her to take it, and did not actually assist her or force her to take it, therefore he did not ‘administer’ it to her,” the appeals court wrote. “There is good authority sustaining the proposition that to deliver a drug, poison or medicine to another for the purpose of being used for abortion is to administer the same.”

1857 statutes today

At times, illegal abortion operated in plain sight in Texas, largely unchecked — and sometimes even aided — by law enforcement, Murillo said. But at other points, she said, the crackdowns would be swift and severe.

“It’s sort of ebbed and flowed with the politics of moralizing,” Murillo said.

But in the 1960s, the tide started moving in the opposite direction. Feminist activists, in Texas and across the country, began speaking out against abortion bans that had, in many cases, sat unexamined for decades. In 1970, two young women lawyers brought a lawsuit challenging the Texas statutes on constitutional grounds, and in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with them.

Roe v. Wade blocked not just Texas’ statute but all state abortion bans, instead instituting a constitutional protection for abortion up to the point of viability, usually around 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy.

The Texas attorney general said in a 1974 advisory that the laws “are no longer of any effect. … Therefore, there are now no laws in this State regulating abortion, per se.” In 2004, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the laws had “at least, been repealed by implication.”

Unable to be enforced, the laws were, effectively, moot and were even moved out of the criminal code, into the civil statutes, when the state codified a new penal code in 1973. But they were never formally repealed, and in 2021, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade looming, the Texas Legislature started laying the groundwork to bring these zombie statutes back from the dead.

At the same time, lawmakers prepared for a more modern post-Roe future by passing a trigger law to automatically set in place an abortion ban 30 days after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its judgment overturning Roe v. Wade. That law explicitly protects a pregnant person from prosecution and allows for abortions in narrow cases to save the life of the pregnant patient. Unlike the 1857 law, it does not criminalize anyone who assists in or furnishes the means for a prohibited abortion.

But in late June, when the high court ruled on abortion, Attorney General Ken Paxton immediately issued an advisory, saying “abortion providers could be criminally liable for providing abortions starting today” under the pre-Roe statutes.

Clinics stopped providing abortions, and nonprofits that fund abortions stopped paying for procedures out of state, fearful that the law’s reference to “furnishing the means” for an abortion could be used against them.

A group of abortion clinics attempted to challenge the law in court, and even got a Houston judge to agree that they were no longer in effect.

But the Texas Supreme Court disagreed, meaning these laws — created on the eve of the Civil War, in the days of quack doctors and blacksmith implements — are again governing abortion access in modern-day Texas, at least for now.

Until the state Supreme Court says otherwise, these laws will remain in effect even when the trigger law goes into effect Aug. 25, creating a murky legal landscape that will likely have to be sorted out in court.

In the five decades that these laws have been unenforceable, abortion has emerged as a central political hatchet, dividing the country along party and state lines. Now, the country has split in two, with some states promising to protect abortion access as aggressively as others promise to stop it entirely.

Texas’ most virulent anti-abortion lawmakers have made it clear that they intend to try to stop any Texan from getting an abortion anywhere in the country. The Freedom Caucus, made up of conservative state House members, has sent cease-and-desist letters to top law firms and abortion funds, threatening them with legal action if they help people leave the state to get abortions.

It’s not yet clear how and whether they will actually be able to criminalize out-of-state abortions, said Rhodes, the law professor. The answers to these — and many other — legal questions swirling around Texas’ abortion laws lie on the other side of a test case, which is not a risk most people are willing to take.

“They’re hoping that they’re going to be able to keep most of these questions from ever being resolved by courts by just having people comply,” Rhodes said. “Because they’re scared of the risk of what occurs if they don’t comply.”

To find a recent example of a time when politicians wanted to see such morally divisive state laws enforced in other states that were politically opposed to them, Rhodes said, you have to look back to the same era when these abortion laws were first written — when slave states were pushing the federal government to pass the Fugitive Slave Act and other legislation to enforce slavery laws in free states.

“There are parallels,” Rhodes said. “We’re dealing with these questions of extraterritorial application of state laws that we just haven’t really dealt with on this kind of systematic level in a long time in the United States.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"More trigger bans loom as 1 in 3 women lose most abortion access post-Roe"

Quote

Two months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, about 20.9 million women have lost access to nearly all elective abortions in their home states, and a slate of strict new trigger laws expected to take effect in the coming days will shut out even more.

Texas, Tennessee and Idaho all have existing restrictions on abortion, but the laws slated to begin Thursday will either outlaw the procedure entirely or heighten penalties for doctors who perform an abortion, contributing to a seismic shift in who can access abortion in their home states.

At least 11 other states have banned most abortions, prohibiting the procedure with narrow exceptions from the time of conception or after fetal cardiac activity is detected, at about six weeks of pregnancy, with legislation known as “heartbeat” laws. Five more states have similar bans temporarily blocked by the courts. If those injunctions are lifted, abortion could soon be inaccessible for millions more — in total, 36 percent of U.S. women between the ages of 15 and 44 would be largely unable to obtain an elective abortion in the state where they live.

The rapid pace of change has shocked even the closest observers.

“I just thought there would be a little more time to help providers and patients cope with these changes,” said Elizabeth Nash, who tracks abortion legislation in the states for the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research center that supports abortion rights. “It was very clear that that sort of grace period was not going to be provided.”

Advocates and doctors in favor of abortion rights fear that the newest trigger laws — which in Texas will carry a potential life sentence for doctors who perform an abortion — will have a chilling effect on helping people who either need an abortion because they are facing life-threatening complications or are trying to travel and get one elsewhere. The stiffer laws come as patients and providers navigate a confusing tangle of policies amid ongoing legal challenges that at times have made abortion accessible one day and completely illegal the next. Even more changes are on the horizon as lawmakers in South Carolina and West Virginia consider new bills during special legislative sessions.

Patients in states such as Tennessee have rushed in recent days to try to make last-minute appointments before they lose access to abortion completely — some only to be turned away, ineligible for an abortion because of the state’s “heartbeat” law.

Kaydria, a 28-year-old from Jackson, Miss., started researching the changing abortion laws as soon as she found out she was pregnant in mid-August. With abortion already banned in her home state, she decided to drive three hours to Memphis.

She knew she’d have to hurry: On Aug. 25, all elective abortions would be banned there, too.

“I needed to go ahead and take care of it,” said Kaydria, who spoke on the condition that only her first name be used to protect her privacy. “I knew I didn’t have time.”

‘A very confusing landscape’

Roughly 14 states have bans outlawing most abortions, with varying exemptions and penalties for doctors. In all, nearly 21 million — about 1 in 3 girls and women in the United States between the ages of 15 and 44 — have lost access to the procedure, according to U.S. census data.

The states that bar abortion from conception tend to be located in the South and the Midwest, including Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri and Oklahoma. Wisconsin has conflicting laws that leave the legality of abortion uncertain, but clinics stopped providing abortions in the state after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, effectively ending abortion within its borders. Georgia, Idaho, Ohio and Tennessee have bans that begin when fetal cardiac activity can be detected, which can occur before many people realize they are pregnant.

“This has been fast-moving and frightening,” said Melissa Grant, chief operations officer for Carafem, which operates abortion clinics in several states, including Tennessee, Georgia, Illinois and the D.C. region.

Antiabortion advocates were jubilant after the high court overturned Roe and are now setting their sights on building on their victory, including measures that would prevent out-of-state travel, remove exemptions for victims of sexual assault and provide legal rights for fetuses.

“When you say, ‘Hey, we want to protect all of our unborn residents,’ you want to make sure that that is effective,” said Peter Breen, the vice president and senior counsel for the Thomas More Society, a conservative legal organization aiming to help state GOP lawmakers enact further restrictions.

Millions more live in states where abortion access is uncertain as legal challenges wind their way through the courts and lawmakers consider passing new laws. In some states, abortion access has changed day by day as courts have blocked and unblocked bans.

North Dakota has an abortion ban from conception that has been temporarily blocked by the courts, but it could go into effect Friday if it is not enjoined this week. South Carolina has a six-week ban that was in effect for weeks until the state Supreme Court temporarily blocked it from being enforced last Wednesday. That same day, a district court judge reinstated a 1973 law that bars abortion after 20 weeks in North Carolina, although the state remains one of the few with first- and second-trimester abortion access in the South, where most of its neighbors have outlawed the procedure.

Three new laws triggered by the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe that are slated to take effect Thursday in Texas, Tennessee and Idaho will stiffen penalties for abortion providers or restrict access even further.

Immediately after the Supreme Court’s decision in June, abortion was almost completely outlawed in Texas under a statute that predated Roe, and clinics closed their doors to patients.

On top of those restrictions, Texas legislators passed a trigger law in 2021 that makes providing an abortion a first-degree felony, which can result in a life sentence, and raises the civil penalty to a $100,000 fine. There are no exceptions for rape or incest in the Texas abortion ban.

“The criminal penalties will further chill the provision of care to women who need it,” said Elisabeth Smith, director of state policy and advocacy for the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy organization that represented the clinic at the center of the Supreme Court case.

In Idaho, the state’s “heartbeat” ban on abortion went into effect this month. Now a near-total abortion ban is expected to kick in, further limiting access and imposing criminal penalties of up to five years’ imprisonment on providers. The ban slated to take effect Thursday includes exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the pregnant person — but not when their health is at risk.

The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against the ban, arguing that the state’s law violates a federal requirement to provide medical care when a patient’s life or health is at stake. A federal judge said he would issue his opinion by Wednesday.

“It’s a very confusing landscape,” said Caitlin Gustafson, a family physician and abortion provider in rural Idaho, who is suing the state over three different abortion laws that took effect at different times after the Supreme Court struck down Roe.

Tennessee will also see a trigger law completely ban abortion Thursday, with no exception for victims of rape or incest.

‘A generational push’

For some antiabortion activists, the current restrictions in many states do not go far enough, and they are itching to narrow the limited exceptions for victims of rape and incest as soon as politically possible.

“I drafted the heartbeat law, and it was a tough pill to swallow when we had to make that compromise to create the exceptions for rape and incest,” said Blaine Conzatti, the president of the Idaho Family Policy Center. “And so that’s something that I would like to fix in the future.”

Yet he acknowledged that doing so will probably be an uphill battle — even in Idaho, where Republicans control both the governor’s office and the legislature.

“I think that’s going to be a generational push,” Conzatti said, adding that it will take time to convince some reluctant lawmakers as well those who belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a key constituency that supports some exceptions in the cases of rape and incest.

Republican state Rep. Brent Crane, chairman of the Idaho House committee overseeing abortion legislation, said he isn’t planning on pushing bills further restricting abortion in the upcoming session, believing that the state needs to move “slowly and deliberately.” He said he’s comfortable with the current exemptions in the law and predicted that if removing the exception for rape and incest were brought up, it would not pass his panel.

Even in some Republican strongholds, antiabortion lawmakers and activists have run into opposition in trying to push through no-exemption bans, finding there is a limit to how far even many conservative voters are willing to go. This month, voters in Kansas resoundingly rejected a ballot measure that would have stripped protections for abortion from the state constitution. Days later, Nebraska’s governor announced that he would not call a previously anticipated special session to pass an abortion ban.

Lawmakers in West Virginia and South Carolina are pushing new bans in legislative sessions that could stretch into late summer. Republicans in those states are bitterly debating whether those bills should include exceptions for victims of rape or incest.

Meanwhile, a slew of new restrictions in several states is probably coming before the end of the year.

Next month, Indiana will join the states with near-total abortion bans after legislators passed a law set to take effect Sept. 15. That ban includes exceptions for rape, incest or lethal fetal abnormality, or to save the life of the pregnant person.

Several states, including South Carolina, Utah, Wyoming, North Dakota and West Virginia, have pending court cases that will decide the fate of abortion bans that were triggered by the fall of Roe. If all of those bans prevail, at least 23.2 million women will live in a state where abortion is banned from conception or around six weeks.

‘Get here now’

As soon as Roe was overturned, staff members at Choices, an abortion clinic in Memphis, began preparing for the courts to lift an injunction on a six-week abortion ban, a change they knew could come at any time and would outlaw most abortions in Tennessee. Within hours of the Supreme Court decision, staff started calling patients scheduled for the following week, urging them to get to the clinic as soon as possible.

“They told me, ‘Get here now,’” said Jacretia Porter, a 24-year-old who had an abortion scheduled a week after the Dobbs decision. “They didn’t know how much longer they’d be able to do abortions.”

Porter immediately drove to the clinic, where she saw many other women who had received similar calls that morning. The other patients looked just as she felt, Porter added: “rushed, overwhelmed and super confused.”

While Porter was able to get her abortion that day, hundreds of other patients have been turned away at Choices and other clinics in Tennessee since the six-week ban took effect on June 28. Over the last seven weeks, patients have experienced “a lot of shock and anger,” said chief executive Jennifer Pepper — feelings that will only intensify when the procedure is banned altogether.

“For the first few weeks, there was not a time I left [the clinic] when I didn’t see a patient upset on the porch,” Pepper said.

After the state’s total ban goes into effect Thursday, abortions will be allowed only to save the life of a pregnant patient, such as in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, or to “prevent serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” Doctors and advocates worry that the law’s vague language will lead to potentially costly confusion.

Kaydria arrived at Choices on a recent Wednesday in August, only to find out she was already too far along to receive an abortion in Tennessee. The staff handed her a piece of paper with a list of abortion clinics in Illinois.

The closest option was more than seven hours from Kaydria’s home in Mississippi.

Angry and frustrated, Kaydria said lawmakers shouldn’t “have the right” to decide whether she gets an abortion, adding that “women aren’t breeding machines.” Already a mom, she said she used to live paycheck to paycheck and only recently began to feel on solid ground financially. By having another child, she said, she would be taking “10 steps back.”

Sitting outside the clinic, she resolved to start calling the numbers on the list that evening. She would have to find another babysitter and ask to take another day off work.

But first, a three-hour drive home.

 

[fraurosena]

As they say, you reap what you sow. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Buyer’s remorse could be creeping in for GOP on abortion"

Quote

The signs are disparate, inconclusive and perhaps not fully applicable to the 2022 midterm elections. But virtually everything since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade back in June suggests Republicans have a political problem on their hands now that they’ve obtained their long-sought goal of being able to severely restrict and even ban abortion.

And if you look closely, you’ll see signs of potential buyer’s remorse creeping in.

To the extent Republican rethink their extremely restrictive posture on abortion in the days ahead, a South Carolina state legislator might have provided a crystallizing moment last week.

At a hearing, state Rep. Neal Collins (R) recounted the arduous journey faced by a 19-year old thanks to an abortion ban he himself supported. Collins said the woman’s fetus was not viable, but that attorneys told her doctor they couldn’t extract it because it still had a heartbeat — the standard set in the bill supported by Collins that had gone into effect just the week before.

“They discharged that 19-year old,” Collins said. “The doctor told me at that point there is a 50 percent chance -- well, first she’s going to pass this fetus in the toilet. She’s going to have to deal with that on her own. There’s a 50 percent chance -- greater than 50 percent chance that she’s going to lose her uterus. There’s a 10 percent chance that she will develop sepsis and herself, die.”

Collins added: “That weighs on me. I voted for that bill. These are affecting people.”

It’s a dilemma previewed long before the Supreme Court’s momentous decision, including in this space. In many states, Republicans passed restrictive laws and so-called “trigger laws” that would ban almost all abortions, including in cases of rape and incest, and with stringent rules for exceptions to protect the mother’s health. Those measures worked well as messaging exercises, but now they will be law. And polls show those ideas are broadly unpopular.

Since the Supreme Court’s action, the evidence has pointed almost exclusively in one direction: that Democrats have been buoyed by the abortion issue taking on new prominence.

• Voters in red Kansas overwhelmingly voted against a ballot measure that would have set aside abortion protections in the state constitution and allowed lawmakers to severely restrict or even ban the practice.
• Democrats have over-performed in every special election held since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson — after been under-performing in special elections before then. In just about every case, Democratic turnout appears to have been juiced. And in the most significant race so far — New York’s closely divided 19th district — the Democrat won after making the race a referendum on abortion, over-performing President Biden’s 2020 numbers in the district.
• The so-called “generic ballot” — pitting an unnamed Republican against an unnamed Democrat — has shifted in Democrats’ favor enough that the average now favors Democrats slightly.
• A new Pew Research Center poll this week showed abortion rocketing up as a “very important” priority for Democratic voters — from 46 percent in March to 71 percent today — while just 4 in 10 Republicans called it a key issue.
• Both Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel are sounding alarm bells about the GOP’s ability to flip Congress, with McDaniel specifically citing Democrats’ fundraising momentum post-Dobbs.

The conservative Wall Street Journal’s editorial board summarized it in a piece after the New York special election, titled “The GOP’s Abortion Problem.”

“Republicans are on the backfoot because they’re talking about abortion as if Roe were still the law, when it was easy to favor a total ban because it didn’t matter,” it wrote. “Now the policy stakes are real, and Republicans will have to make clear what specific abortion limits they favor and why.”

Republicans have been slow to do that. But there are signs that they recognize the peril of this issue’s sudden salience, and they’re charting divergent courses when forced to take positions.

In the New York special election, for instance, Republican Marc Molinaro said he opposed a federal abortion ban. Some GOP Senate candidates, particularly in the West, have effectively endorsed allowing abortion early in a pregnancy. Colorado Senate candidate Joe O’Dea has said abortion should be banned only after 20 weeks. Nevada Senate candidate Adam Laxalt endorsed banning abortion after 13 weeks. Arizona candidate Blake Masters called his state banning abortion after 15 weeks “a reasonable solution” after previously calling abortion “demonic" and likening it to genocide.

Efforts to reckon with rape, incest and other exceptions are less evident but are lurching forward in some red states. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) has said he prefers the state to have them, but he has yet to press the issue with the state legislature. West Virginia’s state legislature added the exceptions after Democrats forced a vote on an amendment, though the final version of the bill remains uncertain. And Indiana Republicans split over an effort to nix rape and incest exceptions from their bill, leaving them in.

It’s too simple to say Democrats’ sudden signs of hope in their effort to keep Congress are exclusively the result of the abortion issue. It’s also possible this issue creates a Democratic turnout edge in primary and special elections that won’t be replicated in the general election, when more casual voters are more likely to vote.

What’s pretty clear, though, is that Republicans are in the kind of pickle the Wall Street Journal editorial board noted. They’ve now got this power to do something they’ve long said they aspired to do — and which their base demands — but which creates potential problems for them and their very real ambitions of reclaiming power in Washington. In many cases, as the video of state Rep. Collins shows better than just about anything, they’re now contending with the consequences.

At the very least, it’s a complicating factor. Now they must decide how much they fear that factor, and whether they can do anything about it without alienating the voters they’ve spent decades firing up about what was then a much more abstract — and apparently advantageous — issue.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Judge blocks part of Idaho’s abortion law from taking effect"

Quote

The Biden administration on Wednesday scored its first legal victory since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, convincing a judge to block the portion of an Idaho law that criminalizes performing an abortion on a woman to protect her health.

The law, which was set to take effect on Thursday, bans abortions except in cases involving rape, incest or when a woman’s life is in danger — and does not contain an exception for when a pregnant person’s health is at risk. It would allow authorities to arrest a health-care professional involved in performing an abortion, putting the onus on that person to prove in court that the abortion met the criteria for one of the exceptions.

In a ruling late Wednesday, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill said the statute violates a federal act that requires hospitals participating in the federally funded Medicare program to provide medical care when a person’s life or health is at stake. The “trigger” law was written by Idaho state lawmakers long before the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June, with the expectation that it would automatically go into effect soon after the court made that landmark ruling.

Idaho can still have a strict abortion law in place. But in issuing a preliminary injunction, Winmill ruled that a doctor cannot be punished if he or she performs an abortion to protect the health of a pregnant patient.

“It’s not about the bygone constitutional right to an abortion,” the judge’s ruling states. “This Court is not grappling with that larger, more profound question. Rather, the Court is called upon to address a far more modest issue — whether Idaho’s criminal abortion statute conflicts with a small but important corner of federal legislation. It does.”

A spokesperson for Idaho’s attorney general did not immediately return a request for comment.

The ruling sets up a potential clash in the federal court system, with a Texas court ruling Tuesday that the federal statute in question does not require states to allow abortions in instances when it could protect a pregnant patient’s health. With many states passing increasingly stringent abortion bans, legal experts expect the litigation over the health-exception issue to continue, potentially reaching the Supreme Court.

Still, the crux of Idaho’s abortion law will remain intact, with the state continuing to ban abortion in most circumstances. The narrow scope of the decision underscores just how few legal tools the Biden administration has to significantly shape abortion rights in the country since Roe was struck down, upending the right to terminate a pregnancy that had been enshrined in federal law for nearly 50 years.

The Justice Department did not have a legal path to seek access to abortion for all women in Idaho. Instead, the lawsuit aimed to protect access to abortion in extreme health crises and ensure that doctors could not be prosecuted for terminating pregnancies in these emergencies.

Winmill, who was appointed to the federal bench in 1995 by President Bill Clinton, opened his hearing Monday morning by saying that the Idaho case was narrow in scope, dealing only with pregnancies that pose a significant health risk, and would not serve as a broad debate about whether abortion should be permitted in other instances.

Justice Department lawyers hinged their lawsuit on their interpretation of a 1986 law that has rarely been associated with abortion in courts: the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. They say the law, known as EMTALA, requires that hospitals participating in the federally funded Medicare program provide necessary, health-stabilizing treatment to all patients, even if that treatment is an abortion.

Idaho accused the Justice Department of federal overreach since the Supreme Court ruled that states can set their own abortion restrictions under Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Winmill seemed skeptical on Monday of the Idaho lawyers’ arguments that in the “real world,” a Idaho lawyer would never prosecute a doctor for performing an abortion on a severely ill patient. “The concern is that real-world events are very hard to predict, but the text of the law is very clear,” he said.

“As the District Court ruled, a state law that attempts to prevent a hospital from fulfilling its obligations under EMTALA violates federal law and the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Wednesday night. “The Department of Justice will continue to use every tool at its disposal to defend the reproductive rights protected by federal law.”

While this is the first time the Biden administration has argued in court that EMTALA protects a right to an abortion in certain instances, the federal government attempted last month to require hospitals that receive Medicare funds to perform abortions that would protect a patient’s health.

In July, shortly after the Dobbs ruling, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — the federal office charged with enforcing EMTALA — issued guidance to hospitals saying that the statute preempts any state law that bans performing an abortion when a woman’s health is at risk.

The state of Texas, in response, sued the secretary of Health and Human Services, saying the guidance amounted to federal overreach. On Tuesday, a federal judge in Texas agreed, ruling that requirements set forth in EMTALA do not conflict with the state’s strict abortion laws.

Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, said he expects circuit courts across the country to be split on whether access to abortions in health emergencies is part of EMTALA. He said the public should anticipate many appeals in coming months.

“When EMTALA was enacted, did Congress intend to preempt state law that bans certain medical procedures? My view is, absolutely,” Gostin said. “If EMTALA stands for anything, it stands for any person in America, in any place in America, being able to walk into an emergency department expecting that doctors will do everything possible to save their lives and prevent a deterioration of their health.”

Since Roe was overturned, Justice Department officials and abortion rights advocates have also been weighing other legal strategies to protect abortion rights, including protecting women who are traveling to states where the procedures are legal and ensuring that people have access to pills that can induce abortions.

 

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Buyer’s remorse could be creeping in for GOP on abortion"

 

They were told.  They were told it would cause women like that 19 year old to be put in dangerous and horrible medical situations.  They were told that radicals would insist that victims of rape and incest carry the babies if they were impregnated by the vile monsters who violated them.  They were told that there would be disastrous results like a child victim of rape having to travel and go to extensive lengths to keep from going through a birth her body wouldn't be able to handle.  They were told that it would be weaponized to start tearing away access to birth control.

And they were told there would be outrage and we wouldn't forget who was responsible and that we will mobilize and organize and they shouldn't get too comfortable in their legislative seats because we're going to do everything in our power to vote them out. 

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

Guys:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7b7na/anti-abortion-luke-bowen-arrested-solicitation-of-minor

I read in a comment on another site that it's the biggest Texas anti-abortion organization and that their website has been scrubbed.  Apparently the website prominently featured this guy until the arrest.  It's especially noteworthy as Texas removed the rape/incest exception yesterday.  I have so many words to say but I will just go with my best Beta/Samuel L. Jackson impersonation and leave it at MOTHERFUCKER!

[GreyhoundFan]

It's sad this has to happen. "After Roe, teens are teaching themselves sex ed, because the adults won’t"

Quote

FRANKLIN, Tenn. — Sweating in the sun, two dozen teenagers spread themselves across picnic blankets in a grassy park and prepared to discuss the facts of life they never learned in school.

Behind them on a folding table, bouquets of pamphlets offered information teachers at school would never share — on the difference between medical and surgical abortions, and how to get them. Beside the pamphlets sat items adults at school would never give: pregnancy tests and six-packs of My Way Emergency Contraceptive.

Emma Rose Smith, 17, rose from the blankets, tucked her pale-blonde hair behind her ears and turned off the music on a small, black speaker. She faced the assembled high-schoolers, all members of her newfound group, Teens for Reproductive Rights, and began talking about the nonprofit Abortion Care Tennessee. Her words hitched at first, then tumbled in a rush.

“A little bit about them,” Emma Rose said, “is they’re an organization that funds people’s abortions if they can’t afford it. Also, by the way, there’s another organization that we can also talk about later, when we give you guys, like, resources, that actually does free mail-in abortion pills.”

Twelve days after the teens’ picnic, abortion would become illegal in Tennessee, a measure made possible by the Supreme Court’s June decision, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade. The students wouldn’t hear anything about it in school: State law does not require sex education, and it holds that schools in areas with high pregnancy rates must offer “family life education” focused on abstinence.

Post-Roe, the teens in the park had decided, this lack of education was no longer acceptable. They are part of a burgeoning movement of high-schoolers nationwide who, after Roe’s fall, are stepping up to demand more comprehensive lessons on reproduction, contraception and abortion — and who, if the adults refuse, are teaching each other instead.

In Utah, high-schoolers rallied outside a courthouse in May to call for accurate education on sex and abortion. In Texas, a group of teens held a virtual protest on the gaming website Minecraft to urge the state to start giving middle-schoolers lessons on birth control. Over the summer, that group — Fort Bend Students United for Reproductive Freedom — began sharing mini-sex-education lessons to its Instagram account for the benefit of peers; recent posts include “Endometrial Ablation,” “Pap smears” and “WHAT IS PCOS?” (It is an initialism for polycystic ovary syndrome.)

And in Virginia, 15-year-old Rivka Vizcardo-Lichter is organizing demonstrations outside school board meetings to pressure the Fairfax County district to offer students information about reproductive health clinics, more detailed lessons on contraceptive methods other than abstinence (it already includes the basics, but she wants more) — and access to contraception.

“Teenagers are teenagers, and some teenagers are going to have sex,” she said. “They need to be educated on how to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies and STIs [sexually transmitted infections] and sexual risk — especially if we’re removing the right to ... choose whether or not you’re having a baby.”

Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia require that students receive sex education at school, according to a tracker maintained by the nonprofit Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). Thirty states demand that schools emphasize the importance of abstinence, and 16 states mandate “abstinence-only” sex education.

What students actually learn in the classroom varies by district and even by teacher, said Laura Lindberg, a public health professor at Rutgers University who has studied sex education in the United States for three decades. But it is often “too little too late,” she said. Her research suggests that less than half of U.S. teens receive instruction on where to get birth control before having sex for the first time, and she noted that the teen birthrate in the United States — 16.7 births per 1,000 females in 2019 — is consistently among the highest in the developed world, though it has been declining in recent years.

In the Tennessee park, Emma Rose scrolled her thumb down her phone screen, squinting at the glare, to read off details of upcoming advocacy: An outdoor concert to raise money for abortion rights groups. A protest at the Tennessee Capitol on the day the state’s abortion ban takes effect.

Then she shared how she and the group’s three co-founders, Alyson Nordstrom, Lily Swain and Paige Buckley, all 17, see the future.

“We want to start getting groups structured in different parts of Tennessee,” Emma Rose said. Each spinoff chapter would be located at a different high school throughout the state.

Then those teens, too, could start teaching each other.

‘Alone and ignorant’

In some parts of the country, teens teaching teens sex ed is not a new idea.

That includes Park City, Utah, where Carly McAleer started high school four years ago having received a sex education that “basically amounted to scaring students with really grotesque photos” of sexually transmitted infections. Utah law requires sex education in all schools but prohibits “the advocacy or encouragement of the use of contraceptive methods or devices,” instead mandating that schools “stress the importance of abstinence.”

By sophomore year, Carly, who is now 18 and uses they/them pronouns, began searching for a way to become better informed — and discovered the Planned Parenthood Teen Council program. The initiative, begun in 1989 in Washington state, trains teens to teach other schoolchildren sex education, then partners with willing private schools, school districts or community groups to host peer-led lessons on topics ranging from consent to contraception, depending on state law and school policy. Since its founding, it has expanded to 15 states, and last year 300 teens volunteered on 31 councils, according to Nadya Santiago Schober of Planned Parenthood.

Carly applied, was accepted their junior year, and was soon walking into middle-school classrooms — feeling more than a bit nervous — to lead classes on STIs and healthy relationships. Carly found that most students, starved for information, were intensely curious.

And Carly came to love moments that demonstrated the difference they were making — for example when they asked students what kind of lubricant is okay to use with condoms, “the room went silent, and so I told them a silicone-based or water-based lubricant.”

The end of Roe appears to have driven more interest in the Teen Council program, which is poised to expand, Santiago Schober said: “We are seeing an increase in the size of our groups for the year ahead.” In Utah, said L-E Baldwin, a community health educator with that state’s Planned Parenthood chapter, “we have had interest from rural parts of the state in ways we have not previously.”

Lindberg, the Rutgers professor, said the upsurge in young people advocating for comprehensive sex education is admirable, if unsurprising in a generation known for its activism on climate change, gun control and reading freedom. She cautioned that it is important would-be student-teachers pick out correct information from the plethora of misinformation available online.

“Young people can now access information in places that a generation ago weren’t an option, whether that’s a YouTube video or a Tik Tok or something on Instagram,” she said. “But they have to be careful.”

And, she warned, anyone pushing for more sex education will face stiff opposition from mostly conservative parents and lawmakers who argue that it is inappropriate and will lead students to become promiscuous — despite a large body of research that shows providing sexual health information and services to students is not linked with increased sexual activity, and the fact that a majority of American adults across political lines support sex education in schools.

Since the 1980s, when sex education became widespread in America as a means to fight HIV infection, conservatives and the religious right have steadily chipped away at the availability of sex ed nationwide, Lindberg said. And they’re especially fired up now, post-Roe and amid raging education culture wars that have delivered new laws restricting what teachers can say about race, racism, sexuality, gender identity and LGBTQ issues. As Charles Herbster, an unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate in Nebraska, put it at a rally alongside former president Donald Trump in May: “We’re going to take sex education out of the schools and put it back in the homes where it belongs.” (Herbster did not answer requests for comment.)

An ascendant parents’ rights movement is also working to limit what students learn in school about sex — partly through measures that increase parental control over students’ in-class reading choices and outlaw sexually explicit texts. Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the national parent group Moms for Liberty, said in an interview that “comprehensive sex ed has no place in school.” She said school districts everywhere should convene groups of parents to determine what is “age appropriate” for children to learn.

She had a message for students advocating around sex ed: “The teenagers are being pushed by activist organizations, whose purpose is making children politically literate rather than actually literate so they can become social justice warriors. That’s what the union is trying to do,” she said, referring to teachers organizations, which Justice said are pushing communist doctrine on America’s children.

In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) — who won his office by campaigning on education issues — this spring signed a law that requires school districts to notify parents whenever sexually explicit material is included in lessons, and to offer students non-explicit alternatives if parents request them.

Rivka, the Fairfax County teen, believes this law imperils students’ access to sex education. She is all the more determined to persuade her school district to expand its sex-ed curriculum by teaching about more contraceptive options and reproductive health clinics, as well as offering students free contraception. Her sex-ed experience was “abstinence 100” percent of the time, she said.

Fairfax sex ed comprises “an abstinence-based ... curriculum, meaning that both abstinence and contraception are included in instruction,” district spokeswoman Julie Moult said in a statement. “Contraception is included in instruction in grades 8-12,” she added, pointing to teachings about “barrier, hormonal, and surgical contraceptive methods,” including condoms. Parents can remove their children from the program if they wish.

Moult said the district mentions Planned Parenthood as a resource for “students experiencing unintended pregnancy” in 10th grade. But she said “inclusion of reproductive health clinics could be considered” by school officials in the future.

Moult previously told The Washington Post that giving students access to contraception would be “outside the scope and purpose” of sex ed. The Fairfax County School Board this spring voted to delay a series of proposed changes that would have expanded the topics covered in sex ed and ended gender segregation in some classes, an idea Rivka supports.

“We have millions of men who don’t know how a period works,” Rivka said, recalling conversations with male friends who were clueless about things like tampons and pads. “Teens are just going out into these waters alone and ignorant.”

Teens wonder: Could we do better?

In Tennessee, Alyson Nordstrom had never so much as joined a march when Roe came under threat.

But on May 3, feeling the angriest she had ever been, she tapped out an Instagram message to Emma Rose Smith, who had helped organize a 10,000-strong protest after the murder of George Floyd: “I don’t know if you saw the leaking of the Roe v Wade draft opinion from the Supreme Court but me and some of my friends [are] wanting to put together something in protest of that ... I was wondering if you wanted to work together.”

Emma Rose responded: “I would love too!”

The girls each brought in their friends, Lily Swain and Paige Buckley, and Teens for Reproductive Rights was born — although they didn’t finalize the name until a coffee-shop confab, when they also created an Instagram profile. Their first event was a May 7 march in Nashville Public Square Park for abortion rights; their second, a music concert in late July that raised $5,000 for Abortion Care Tennessee.

At that point, the girls started to rethink what they might accomplish. The foursome had initially thought the group was “a one-time thing,” Lily said, “but then we started hanging out and getting to know each other.” Soon, their minds turned to sex education.

Alyson, who wants to become a lawyer, recalled the lessons she sat through: “It was just, like, ‘Don’t have sex,’ [and] the guys goofed off the whole time.” Emma Rose, who wants to major in English and political science, had similar memories: “In fifth grade, they just said your boobs might grow and you might get your period. ... In ninth grade, they showed pictures of STDs [and] said this is what you’re going to get if you have sex.” Paige remembered the teacher letting the boys go to the playground while the girls learned about periods. And Lily, an Irish history buff, said what stuck out most was that her sex-ed teachers clearly didn’t want to answer any questions.

That fits with Tennessee law, where sex education cannot include instruction that encourages students to engage in “non-abstinent behavior,” and teachers could face a $500 fine if they fail to comply.

The four teens began to wonder: Could we do better?

The two-hour picnic on a superhot Saturday afternoon this month attended by about 30 students — mostly girls but a handful of boys, too — was a trial run. The girls spoke briefly about issues they want to cover more later, including the implications of new state antiabortion laws. But a lot of the conversation was loose, just teens talking.

“It’s like you’re going back in time,” one girl said of Roe’s end.

“I think my concern is bringing more kids into this world,” said another. “The foster-care system is terrible.”

A boy recounted a recent chat with his devoutly Christian mother and shared advice for approaching antiabortion family members: “It can be scary. But it’s definitely worth talking with people about.”

Much of the afternoon had the vibe of a hangout, with boxes of pizza and gentle music. The teens played games of Ninja and Zap. A boy who rode up on a bike, training for his high school cycling team, offered to wear a Teens for Reproductive Rights sticker on his racing helmet.

As the clock inched to 5 p.m., Alyson sought everyone’s attention one more time. She had homework to assign.

“There’s a documentary on Netflix,” she said, raising her voice. “It’s called ‘Reversing Roe.’ It talks about, literally from early 1900s to recent — I think it came out right before the actual reversing.” She added that the film traces how abortion “became politicized, which it wasn’t originally at all.”

Teens sprawled on blankets bent their heads over phones and pamphlets to take down the name.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is awful. I'm postmenopausal, but in the past have had to take misoprostol in preparation for a procedure. I was lucky to not get pushback.