Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights per draft opinion (Update: Dobbs opinion official) (7 Viewers)

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Brennan77

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In the months after the fall of Roe v. Wade, North Carolina experienced the largest spike in abortions of any state — its numbers fueled by a relatively permissive law and a Democratic governor promising to block the Republican-led legislature from enacting antiabortion measures.


But in recent weeks hard-liners in Raleigh have launched a plan to override a future veto and ban abortions as soon as around six weeks of pregnancy.


At the center of the effort are a handful of Democratic legislators with a history of voting for antiabortion legislation and who could now provide the GOP with enough votes to override a veto by Gov. Roy Cooper (D). That group, which includes two pastors of predominantly Black Baptist churches, is facing pressure from both sides.

“I lay down with it, I wake up with it,” said state Rep. Garland Pierce (D), who leads the congregation at Bright Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Laurinburg, N.C. “When you reach deep down you want to be sure you’re doing the right thing.”

The showdown in North Carolina reflects similar efforts underway in several conservative states that have become destinations for post-Roe abortion care.

In Florida and Nebraska — where laws still allow the vast majority of abortions to continue — conservatives are also pushing for six-week bans, which, together with the same kind of ban in North Carolina, could dramatically reshape the national abortion landscape once again.


Legal abortions increased in all three states after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion in June, according to an October report from WeCount, a research project led by the pro-abortion rights Society of Family Planning……

 
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, it promised to “return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” In virtually every instance in which it’s been returned to the people, which has mostly happened by ballot initiative and referendum, the people have acted to protect reproductive rights.

Perhaps that explains why less than a year after the fall of Roe, conservative activists are trying to put the issue of abortion access into the hands of a single man for whom no one ever voted: a federal judge in Texas named Matthew Kacsmaryk. In the coming weeks, there is a very real possibility that Kacsmaryk will single-handedly outlaw medication abortion in all 50 states, massively disrupting access to reproductive health care across the entire country.

Worse, there is a substantial likelihood that higher courts—including the Supreme Court—will let him get away with it.

Let’s be clear that the legal battle over medication abortion became inevitable the moment Roe fell. Over the past 50 years, reproductive health care has undergone a dramatic shift: A majority of American patients now terminate their pregnancies with pills rather than by undergoing a procedure at a clinic. This makes good sense, as medication abortions are 18 times safer than childbirth, very reliable, and easy to access.

In the 23 years since the FDA first approved the “abortion pill,” the agency has slowly loosened restrictions on prescriptions (though regulations remain irrationally stringent for the minimal risks of these pills). Meanwhile, a booming gray market for the medication has sprung up online following the end of Roe.

Today, virtually anyone anywhere in the United States can order pills to their door, legally or otherwise. This infuriates anti-abortion activists who wanted to see this issue settled with the clinic closures and vigilante laws that followed S.B. 8 and Dobbs.

But these activists think they have a solution to the pill problem: ban mifepristone, the first drug taken in the two-drug medication abortion protocol approved by the FDA, which ends the pregnancy. Rather than work through their elected representatives or popular votes, they are attempting to do this via a lawsuit seeking a nationwide injunction. They’re represented by the far-right Alliance Defending Freedom; Erin Morrow Hawley, wife of GOP Sen. Josh Hawley, is a lead attorney.

The suit was filed in the remote Amarillo division of the Northern District of Texas. No, there’s no specific connection between Amarillo and abortion pills. The plaintiffs only filed there because they were guaranteed to draw a single judge: Kacsmaryk, whom Donald Trump placed on the bench in 2019.

Before donning his robe, Kacsmaryk served as deputy general counsel at the far-right First Liberty Institute, where he fought LGBTQ equality, abortion, and contraception. (He once said that being transgender is a “delusion” and scorned “secular libertines” who sacrifice children to their “erotic desires.”) Since his confirmation, he has gained a reputation as perhaps the most lawless jurist in the country.

If that sounds like an overstatement—and to be sure, the competition is stiff—consider just a portion of his record: In less than three years, Kacsmaryk has seized control over border policy, repeatedly defied the Supreme Court’s decision protecting LGBTQ employees, and restricted minors’ access to birth control. It was probably inevitable that anti-abortion crusaders would shop their case to him.................


 
The Supreme Court's Dobbs decision appears to have ruined any chance of winning over many Gen Z voters, recently released polling shows.

In June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned decades of abortion protections in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision.

On its face, it was a victory for the Republican Party, which for decades pushed to restrict access to abortion, but the decision is also galvanizing the youngest generation of voters to go to the voting booth and vote against GOP candidates.

According to a recently released Walton Family Foundation/Murmuration survey that specifically sought to understand the motivations of the youngest voters, 29% of Gen Z respondents said that "abortion/women's rights" was the political issue that "concerned" them most when voting, coming ahead of "the economy," (8%) "election integrity," (7%) and "no specific issue" (10%).............

 
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, it promised to “return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” In virtually every instance in which it’s been returned to the people, which has mostly happened by ballot initiative and referendum, the people have acted to protect reproductive rights.

Perhaps that explains why less than a year after the fall of Roe, conservative activists are trying to put the issue of abortion access into the hands of a single man for whom no one ever voted: a federal judge in Texas named Matthew Kacsmaryk. In the coming weeks, there is a very real possibility that Kacsmaryk will single-handedly outlaw medication abortion in all 50 states, massively disrupting access to reproductive health care across the entire country.

Worse, there is a substantial likelihood that higher courts—including the Supreme Court—will let him get away with it.

Let’s be clear that the legal battle over medication abortion became inevitable the moment Roe fell. Over the past 50 years, reproductive health care has undergone a dramatic shift: A majority of American patients now terminate their pregnancies with pills rather than by undergoing a procedure at a clinic. This makes good sense, as medication abortions are 18 times safer than childbirth, very reliable, and easy to access.

In the 23 years since the FDA first approved the “abortion pill,” the agency has slowly loosened restrictions on prescriptions (though regulations remain irrationally stringent for the minimal risks of these pills). Meanwhile, a booming gray market for the medication has sprung up online following the end of Roe.

Today, virtually anyone anywhere in the United States can order pills to their door, legally or otherwise. This infuriates anti-abortion activists who wanted to see this issue settled with the clinic closures and vigilante laws that followed S.B. 8 and Dobbs.

But these activists think they have a solution to the pill problem: ban mifepristone, the first drug taken in the two-drug medication abortion protocol approved by the FDA, which ends the pregnancy. Rather than work through their elected representatives or popular votes, they are attempting to do this via a lawsuit seeking a nationwide injunction. They’re represented by the far-right Alliance Defending Freedom; Erin Morrow Hawley, wife of GOP Sen. Josh Hawley, is a lead attorney.

The suit was filed in the remote Amarillo division of the Northern District of Texas. No, there’s no specific connection between Amarillo and abortion pills. The plaintiffs only filed there because they were guaranteed to draw a single judge: Kacsmaryk, whom Donald Trump placed on the bench in 2019.

Before donning his robe, Kacsmaryk served as deputy general counsel at the far-right First Liberty Institute, where he fought LGBTQ equality, abortion, and contraception. (He once said that being transgender is a “delusion” and scorned “secular libertines” who sacrifice children to their “erotic desires.”) Since his confirmation, he has gained a reputation as perhaps the most lawless jurist in the country.

If that sounds like an overstatement—and to be sure, the competition is stiff—consider just a portion of his record: In less than three years, Kacsmaryk has seized control over border policy, repeatedly defied the Supreme Court’s decision protecting LGBTQ employees, and restricted minors’ access to birth control. It was probably inevitable that anti-abortion crusaders would shop their case to him.................


Wife of Josh Hawley? That explains a lot.
 
An anti-abortion group must pay nearly $1m in fines to Planned Parenthood.

A judge in Spokane County, Idaho, ordered the group — by the name of The Church at Planned Parenthood — to pay $110,000 in civil damages and attorney fees amounting to $960,000 to the sexual health care nonprofit, the Spokesman-Review reported.

The ruling comes after several protests dating back to 2020 that “interfered with patient care” at the Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and Northern Idaho location. The anti-abortion group had been previously banned in 2021 from protesting outside the location while patients were receiving care……


 
An anti-abortion group must pay nearly $1m in fines to Planned Parenthood.

A judge in Spokane County, Idaho, ordered the group — by the name of The Church at Planned Parenthood — to pay $110,000 in civil damages and attorney fees amounting to $960,000 to the sexual health care nonprofit, the Spokesman-Review reported.

The ruling comes after several protests dating back to 2020 that “interfered with patient care” at the Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and Northern Idaho location. The anti-abortion group had been previously banned in 2021 from protesting outside the location while patients were receiving care……



Kootenai County, Idaho or Spokane County, Washington?
Ain't no Spokane County, Idaho.
 
Low-income women in some cities are more likely than their wealthier counterparts to be targeted by Google ads promoting anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers when they search for abortion care, researchers at the Tech Transparency Project have found.

The research builds on previous findings detailing how Google directs users searching for abortion services to so-called crisis centers – organizations that have been known to pose as abortion clinics in an attempt to steerwomen away from accessing abortion care.

The researchers set up test accounts in three cities – Atlanta, Miami and Phoenix, Arizona – for women of three different income groups suggested by Google: average or lower-income rate, moderately high-income rate and high-income rate.

They then entered search terms like “abortion clinic near me” and “I want an abortion”.

In Phoenix, 56% of the search ads shown to the test accounts representing low- to moderate-income women were for crisis centers, compared with 41% of those served to moderately high-income test accounts and 7% tohigh-income accounts.

In Atlanta, 42% of ads shown to the lower-income group were for crisis pregnancy centers, compared with 18% for moderately high-income women and 29% for high-income women…….

The results were not the same in all cities. In Miami, researchers saw the inverse result: high-income women were more likely to get ads from crisis centers than lower-income women. Theresearchers say they cannot be certain why Miami diverged from the other cities but speculate that crisis pregnancy centers might more actively target low-income women in more restrictive states. (While Arizona and Florida both ban abortion after 15 weeks, the former has more restrictions layered on the 15-week limit.)…….

 
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A few months after South Dakota banned abortion last year, April Matson drove more than nine hours to take a friend to a Colorado clinic to get the procedure.

The trip brought back difficult memories of Matson’s own abortion at the same clinic in 2016. The former grocery store worker and parent of two couldn’t afford a hotel and slept in a tent near a horse pasture — bleeding and in pain.

Getting an abortion has long been extremely difficult for Native Americans like Matson. It has become even tougher since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

New, restrictive state laws add to existing hurdles: a decades-old ban on most abortions at clinics and hospitals run by the federal Indian Health Service, fewer nearby health centers offering abortions, vast rural expanses for many to travel, and poverty afflicting more than a quarter of the Native population.

“That’s a lot of barriers,” said Matson, who lives in Sioux Falls and is Sicangu Lakota. “We’re already an oppressed community, and then we have this oppression on top of that oppression.”


Among the six states with the highest proportion of Native American and Alaska Native residents, four – South Dakota, Oklahoma, Montana and North Dakota – have moved or are poised to further restrict abortion. South Dakota and Oklahoma ban it with few exceptions.

In some communities, the distance to the nearest abortion provider has increased by hundreds of miles, said Lauren van Schilfgaarde, a member of Cochiti Pueblo in New Mexico who directs the tribal legal development clinic at the University of California-Los Angeles…….

 
The Associated Press changed its abortion guidelines to reflect more accurate framing, and right-wing media are expressing outrage over the medically backed changes. In reality, there’s even more room for improvement on abortion reporting, including terms that the AP should address in the near future.
In late 2022, the AP updated its stylebook, a resource of journalistic best practices for grammar and language, to guide journalists away from misleading framing on abortion and toward more accurate language. Here are a few examples of language the AP expressly advised against using:
  • Medication abortion reversal”: This phrase, along with “abortion pill reversal,” is used by anti-abortionmedia to convince pregnant people to undergo an “unproven and unethical” procedure that falsely claims to undo the effects of ingesting abortion medication meant to end a pregnancy. The AP suggests that writers use the term in quotes and note that the procedure has “no scientific evidence” proving its safety or efficacy.
  • Pregnancy resource centers”: Better known as crisis pregnancy centers, these fake clinics (oftentouted or defended by conservative media) pose as health care providers giving pregnant people unbiased advice but in reality work to discourage patients from proceeding with abortion care. In its updated guidelines, the AP suggests terms including “anti-abortion centers” rather than “pregnancy resource centers” or “pregnancy counseling centers” and urges reporters to explain that “their aim is to dissuade people from getting an abortion.”
  • Heartbeat bill”: The term “heartbeat bill” or “heartbeat legislation” is a misnomer used by right-wing media and conservative politicians to mislead the public into advocating for six-week abortion bans under the inaccurate pretense that a “fetal heartbeat” can always be detected at that stage. The AP described such legislative terminology as “overly broad and misleading” and suggests that writers use “cardiac activity” in lieu of “heartbeat.”
In light of the AP’s style changes, some in right-wing media were enraged that their misleading framing is under attack. A Fox News article from December 2022 includes quotes from proven misinformers, including Kristi Hamrick of Students for Life of America, who disparaged the AP for supposedly “putting pro-abortion politics over facts.” The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, also accused the AP of “promoting pro-abortion propaganda” and spreading guidance “contrary to medical science.” Earlier this month, a report from the Daily Signal titled “AP Bans ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centers,’ Directs Journalists to Use Negative Term Instead” renewed right-wing scrutiny against the news agency, inspiring further coverage from conservative outlets and anti-abortion blogs.
For decades, conservative media have worked in tandem with anti-abortion activists to disseminate problematic framing on abortion to undermine the credibility of the procedure, fueling stigma and misguided restrictions. Often based on pseudoscience and contrary to general medical consensus, anti-abortion terminology has even permeated mainstream media, making the AP’s updated guidance especially useful for reporters in the wake of Roe v. Wade…….

 
I know AP is correct in their “heartbeat” fact check. No embryo has an actual heart at six weeks. They have a little clump of cells that sometimes have started a rhythmic series of contractions. It doesn’t carry out the function of a heart.
 
A Virginia bill to shield data on menstrual cycles stored on period-tracking apps from law enforcement has been killed this week after Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced his opposition to the motion.

The bill, which was passed last week with bipartisan support in the Democrat-led Senate, would have prohibited search warrants to obtain menstrual health data stored on a computer, cellphone, or any other electronic device.

Around a third of menstruating adults use period-tracking apps, according to a 2019 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Abortion rights activists have raised alarm at the idea that period-tracking apps could be used to prosecute abortion-law violations, following the overturning of Roe v. Wade last year.............

 
Dr Leilah Zahedi-Spung always knew providing abortion care in Tennessee was going to be hard, but she probably never could have imagined how hard. On 25 August 2022, 18 months after Zahedi-Spung landed a dream job as a maternal fetal medicine specialist, the state enacted one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, one that does not even make explicit exceptions to save the life of the pregnant person.

Tennessee’s ban makes performing or attempting to perform an abortion a Class C felony – meaning Zahedi-Spung could have faced a 15-year-prison sentence for providing life-saving care. So, in January 2023, she decided to leave for work in Colorado, where abortion is still legal in all stages of pregnancy.

At the end of 2022, she started writing a diary for the Guardian, detailing her last days in a busy doctor’s office where she sometimes saw more than 40 patients a day, many begging her for help she could not give.

The diary has been supplemented with interviews, to try and capture what life is like for a doctor whose work is severely restricted due to a total abortion ban.

30 November 2022 – ‘utter and complete chaos’

11/30/202230 November 2022: Had a patient with a lethal anomaly, discussed again. Plans for C-Section. Discovered immediately prior to Dobbs [being overturned] but couldn’t coordinate care to terminate. Now 36 weeks pregnant. [She delivered a] stillbirth at 36 weeks. Devastating. Completely heart breaking every time. I cried with her. She was alone today.

This patient knew around 15 weeks that her pregnancy was going to be unviable, but in the confusion that followed the overturning of Roe v Wade last June, she struggled to make a decision about whether to leave the state for care or to wait it out.

“It was such utter and complete chaos that she just couldn’t figure out what to do,” says Zahedi-Spung. As her doctor, Zahedi-Spung worried the longer the pregnancy went on, the harder it would be for her patient to let go. Eventually, they made plans to go ahead with the birth in Tennessee, through cesarian section.

Zahedi-Spung and I discuss what happened with that patient in a phone call. “She carried to term and got delivered on Friday [9 December], and her baby died within a couple of minutes after delivery. But she got some time with her and that’s what she wanted,” says Zahedi-Spung.

Another patient came to see Zahedi-Spung alone on 30 November, having carried a pregnancy she had long warned was at high risk of being unsuccessful. The patient had been hopeful, although she was aware of a fetal anomaly. At 36 weeks, Zahedi-Spung diagnosed a stillbirth.

“I had to tell her that her baby’s dead. I mean, it’s just it’s awful every time. But it’s really awful when they’re alone,” says Zahedi-Spung, reflecting on the case.

Later on 30 November – no heartbeat detected……..

 
LAKELAND, Fla. — Deborah Dorbert is devoting the final days before her baby’s birth to planning the details of the infant’s death.


She and her husband will swaddle the newborn in a warm blanket, show their love and weep hello even as they say goodbye. They have decided to have the fragile body cremated and are looking into ways of memorializing their second-born child.


“We want something permanent,” Deborah said. Perhaps a glass figurine infused with ashes. Or an ornament bearing the imprint of a tiny finger. “Not an urn,” she said, cracking one of the rare smiles that break through her relentless tears. “We have a 4-year-old. Things happen.”

Nobody expected things to happen the way they did when halfway through their planned and seemingly healthy pregnancy, a routine ultrasound revealed the fetus had devastating abnormalities, pitching the dazed couple into the uncharted landscape of Florida’s new abortion law.


Deborah and Lee Dorbert say the most painful decision of their lives was not honored by the physicians they trust. Even though medical experts expect their baby to survive only 20 minutes to a couple of hours, the Dorberts say their doctors told them that because of the new legislation, they could not terminate the pregnancy.


“That’s what we wanted,” Deborah said. “The doctors already told me, no matter what, at 24 weeks or full term, the outcome for the baby is going to be the same.”


Florida’s H.B. 5 — Reducing Fetal and Infant Mortality — went into effect last July, soon after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a half-century constitutional right to abortion……

 
I wish her luck

Cavanaugh’s filibuster is one of the last strategies that liberal senators have in an overwhelmingly conservative body to slow the progress on controversial bills such as LB 626, which would ban any abortions after cardiac activity is detected in a fetus, or LB574, which would ban gender-affirming care for minors.

Cavanaugh said her fellow senators forced her hand with their lack of collegiality and promised they would be hearing from her on every bill being debated this session
 
I wish her luck

Cavanaugh’s filibuster is one of the last strategies that liberal senators have in an overwhelmingly conservative body to slow the progress on controversial bills such as LB 626, which would ban any abortions after cardiac activity is detected in a fetus, or LB574, which would ban gender-affirming care for minors.

Cavanaugh said her fellow senators forced her hand with their lack of collegiality and promised they would be hearing from her on every bill being debated this session
Good for her. If they want to play dirty, return the favor.
 
In TN, every time a doctor performs a D&C to clear a doomed pregnancy and save the woman from deadly complications, they are committing a felony. If they do not act, they are performing medical malpractice. How many doctors will stay in TN, do you think? How many women would die if these procedures remain a felony?

Anti-abortionists would never oppose saving the lives of women you say?

 

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