Roe v Wade: Pretty cool while it lasted

[beyelzu]

so I have been reading stories about Gilead er Texas and I have wanted to share them here.

I don't think we have a dedicated reproductive rights thread, sadly, given the current assault on reproductive rights, I think we need one.

After the Texas law went into effect, Alan Braid performed a newly illegal abortion.

Then, this month, everything changed. A new Texas law, known as S.B. 8, virtually banned any abortion beyond about the sixth week of pregnancy. It shut down about 80 percent of the abortion services we provide. Anyone who suspects I have violated the new law can sue me for at least $10,000. They could also sue anybody who helps a person obtain an abortion past the new limit, including, apparently, the driver who brings a patient to my clinic.

For me, it is 1972 all over again.

And that is why, on the morning of Sept. 6, I provided an abortion to a woman who, though still in her first trimester, was beyond the state’s new limit. I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care.

Dr Braid explains himself in this editorial


Now he is being sued as the texas law entails.

Since the Texas ban took effect Sept. 1, advocates on both sides of the abortion debate have been anticipating such lawsuits, though perhaps not from a “disbarred and disgraced former Arkansas lawyer,” as Oscar Stilley described himself in his complaint.

funnily enough

Texas Right to Life, an antiabortion group, quickly disavowed the lawsuits as “self-serving legal stunts.”

“We believe Braid published his op-ed intending to attract imprudent lawsuits, but none came from the Pro-Life movement,” John Seago, the organization’s legislative director, said in a statement. “Texas Right to Life is resolute in ensuring the Texas Heartbeat Act is fully enforced.”

that sounds odd, but

Melissa Murray, a professor at New York University School of Law, said lawsuits like the one Stilley filed on Monday were “never the principal goal” of the Texas law. The main point, she said, was to avoid a preemptive legal challenge and to “absolutely bring reproductive care in Texas to a standstill. That was always the endgame.”

Braid being sued by a convicted felon attorney in Arkansas

[beyelzu]

On a windy Tuesday morning, the parking lot outside a small brick building on the Southside of Oklahoma City was filling up fast. The first to arrive, a red truck shortly before 8 a.m., was from Texas. So was the second and the third.

The building houses one of Oklahoma’s four abortion clinics, and at least two-thirds of its scheduled patients now come from Texas. So many, in fact, that it is trying to hire more staff members and doctors to keep up. The increase is the result of a new law in Texas banning abortions after about six weeks, a very early stage of pregnancy. As soon as the measure took effect this month, Texans started traveling elsewhere, and Oklahoma, close to Dallas, has become a major destination.

and

Marva Sadler, senior director of clinic services at Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four clinics in Texas, said she believed that many patients were not able to arrange child care or take time off work without losing their jobs to travel to other states.

“I think a majority of women are being sentenced to being parents,” she said.

Well yeah, those people streaming into Oklahoma are going to be richer than average because they can afford to drive out of state.

As states pass more abortion restrictions, it increasingly is poor women who must grapple with their effects. Half of American women who got an abortion in 2014 lived in poverty, double the share from 1994, when about one-quarter of the women who had abortions were low-income, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. Theories for why include demographic change, increased funding for abortions for low-income women, and higher-income women having more access to highly effective contraception.

The longer women have to wait, the more expensive their procedures become. Abortions at Trust Women range in cost from $650 for earlier stages to $2,350 for later stages. Financial assistance is also available.

Anyway, it's a pretty drepressing read overall

With abortion largely banned in Texas, an Oklahoma clinic is inundated – East Bay Times

[beyelzu]

On Wednesday, Texas defended its Heartbeat Act by arguing—wait for it—that forcing pregnant people to travel hundreds of miles out of state to obtain a medical procedure that it has effectively banned is a good thing because it is “stimulating” interstate commerce. In a court filing, Attorney General Ken Paxton—the one who sued other states last year to overturn the 2020 election—said that contrary to the Justice Department’s claim that the federal government has the authority to block the law over interstate-commerce concerns, he’s seen news reports of women driving to Oklahoma and Kansas to seek abortions. Which, like a sociopath, he paints as a positive development. The DOJ doesn’t “cite any actual evidence that the Texas Heartbeat Act burdens interstate commerce,” Paxton said in the filing in federal court in Austin. “What evidence that does exist in the record suggests that, if anything, the Act is stimulating rather than obstructing interstate travel.” In other words, according to this guy, Oklahoma and Kansas and whatever other states people are fleeing to to end their pregnancies because they can’t do so locally owe Texas a debt of gratitude.

Ken Paxton is still a piece of shit

[Ari]

If it wasn’t all just bad faith claims under the assumption the judge is in their pocket and just needs a plausible excuse to rule their way, this would be a great way to ban gun sales. We’re not infringing on your rights, we’re increasing interstate commerce by boosting other state’s economy!

[beyelzu]

For several hours on September 11th, 2021 — a little more than a week after the most restrictive abortion ban in the country went into effect — the Texas GOP’s website was plastered with an army of adorable, amphibious Pokémon. Scroll a little further down the home page and you would find a Rick Astley music video, a mission statement attributed to the “Republican Party of Fucking Over Women,” and a joke about U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz being the Zodiac Killer.

A button up top encouraging visitors to “Join Operation Jane” redirected to Twitter, where a splinter group of the hacktivist collective Anonymous were documenting guerilla efforts to push back against Texas’ six-week abortion ban. (Before targeting the Texas GOP, for instance, the group encouraged supporters to flood ProlifeWhistleblower.com — a site designed for users to anonymously inform on abortion providers violating S.B. 8 — with fake tips and Shrek porn.)

and

In the first two leaks alone, hundreds of gigabytes of data were made public — including the identities of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys working in law enforcement. The latest cache includes a backup on the Texas GOP’s server on September 8th, as well as “private documents, database, draft articles,” according to an announcement distributed by Anonymous. Some individuals, like Micah Lee, director of information security at The Intercept, have already had success recreating the WordPress-based site. (Lee tweeted that the leak includes the emails of 66,000 people signed up for Texas GOP’s updates and the résumés of more than 1,000 people who applied for jobs with the party.)

Operation Jane’s team, which she said is led by women, had been following the developments in Texas for months with a growing sense of dread. “We felt early on, with the confirmation of Kavanaugh, that the right to abortion was in jeopardy. Activists on the ground in Texas screamed about the danger of SB8 all summer long,” the hacker wrote. Now, as copycat laws take effect in other states, they are contemplating expanding their efforts. “We knew SB8-like bans would spread to other states … that this type of framework could be used to target and circumvent other federally protected rights with impunity.”

and

She added: “With ProlifeWhistleblower, the Texas Right to Life set up shop in the wrong playground. Epik gave quarter to fascists. The Texas GOP can go fuck themselves. Think twice. The internet is ours and we are all Jane. Abortion on demand and without apology!”

I quoted most of the good bits from the
Rollingstone article

[beyelzu]

Brittney Poolaw, 20, was found guilty by a jury earlier this month after the Comanche County District Attorney's Office in Oklahoma said her methamphetamine use was the cause of the loss of her fetus.

However, the cause of death from the DA differed from the medical examiner.

Poolaw was between 15 and 17 weeks pregnant when she suffered a miscarriage on January 4, 2020, according to the medical examiners report viewed by USA TODAY.

The report said the miscarriage could have happened due to genetic anomaly or placenta abruption.

They did note there was evidence of Poolaw using methamphetamine as it was found in the baby's liver and brain, but the medical examiner did not assign a cause of death.

as Roe v Wade degrades, I expect more of these punishments to be handed down.

[Ari]

I’m reminded of the fact ‘Crack babies’ never existed and were a completely made up thing to punish poor and minority women.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Ari

I’m reminded of the fact the entire "war on drugs" was never about drugs but a completely made up thing to punish poor and minority people.

[beyelzu]

It sure sounds like Roe is doomed.

Midway through arguments in a case that could end with the Supreme Court abolishing the constitutional right to an abortion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked a pointed question about the Court’s future: “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception, that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?

There are early signs Sotomayor is correct that the public is turning against the Court as the Court turns against Roe v. Wade. But during Wednesday’s oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, all six of the Court’s Republican appointees appeared eager to push ahead anyway and overrule at least some key parts of the Court’s prior decisions protecting abortion.

The justices were asked to consider a Mississippi law that prohibits nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a law that violates the Court’s decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) that pregnant people have a right to terminate their pregnancy up until the point when the fetus is “viable,” meaning it can live outside the womb. A majority of the Court appeared very likely to overrule this part of Casey.

At least four justices seemed inclined to go even further, eliminating the right to an abortion altogether. And though Justice Amy Coney Barrett played her cards a little closer to her chest than her colleagues, it seems more likely than not that she will join them. In other words, there could be a majority for overturning Roe.

And even if the Court does not explicitly overrule Roe, it could easily announce a new legal standard that renders Roe an empty husk. A decision like that might leave Roe nominally alive, but that would also leave states free to restrict access to abortions to the point they’re nonexistent in the state, or come up with other creative ways to effectively ban them.

I expect the husk option, much as casey restricted abortion rights back in 1992.

It is still possible the Court will surprise the myriad of legal analysts predicting the end of a constitutional right to an abortion. In 1992, when the Court heard Casey, even Justice Harry Blackmun, the author of Roe, expected his landmark opinion to be overruled. Instead, Casey weakened, but didn’t overrule, Roe.

Given how prevalent Trap laws became and served as the pathway to the current laws restricting this right in many states, I think Blackmun was more right than wrong. Since Casey has been controlling precedent, we have seen abortion access plummet in much of the United States.


The erosion of Roe began with Casey.

In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court upheld all but one main provision in the new law, the spousal notification requirement. In the decision, the court still claimed its commitment to “the right of the woman to choose to have an abortion before viability.” Yet the ruling allowed states to regulate that choice at any point as long as they did not impose an “undue burden” on access to abortion services.

Roe had given women an unmitigated first-trimester right to choose. Casey rendered abortion rights contingent on and subject to state control at any point during a pregnancy.

The new “undue burden” framework provided two avenues for states seeking to limit access to abortions.

First, it widened the timeline for intervention by the state. Under Roe, courts would treat any regulatory constraints on first-trimester abortions as suspect. Under Casey, states could now far more easily regulate abortions at any time during a person’s pregnancy.

Second, Casey shifted the requirements for anti-abortion states and abortion-rights advocates when arguing their positions in court. For one, it reduced the requirements that states had to meet to uphold abortion restrictions. Under Roe’s framework, states regulating abortions during the first trimester needed to prove to the court that they had a compelling reason for limiting a woman’s right to choose. Casey removed that barrier. Casey’s “undue burden” framework also required individuals suing states to prove that the policies imposed significant challenges to abortion access.

In effect, under Casey, any abortion regulation would now be presumed constitutional unless someone could prove that it imposed undue and significant burdens on a woman’s ability to access an abortion.

In 2015, the Fifth Circuit revisited and reinvigorated Casey when reviewing a Texas law restricting abortions, in Whole Women’s Health v. Cole. According to abortion-rights advocates, the Texas law imposed costly restrictions on existing abortion providers that would have forced most clinics in the state to close. The Fifth Circuit, relying on Casey, upheld the law. It argued that regulating abortions before the third trimester is unconstitutional only if it places “a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion” or if it “serves no purpose other than to make abortions more difficult.”

[Jerome]

Originally Posted by Ari

I’m reminded of the fact ‘Crack babies’ never existed and were a completely made up thing to punish poor and minority women.

...and you trust the government????


Fucking lol, take another booster shot!!! Covid is out to get you, trust the government, they will save you, just like they saved the crack babies!11!!!11!11!!

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Whoops! pic.twitter.com/JBmPvWf5rO

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) December 1, 2021

[beyelzu]

Sotomayor also brought up just how big of a change Mississippi is asking for in taking away people’s rights that they’ve grown accustomed to, something the Court has historically been loathe to do.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart, who was defending the abortion ban, about Sotomayor’s reasoning. Stewart said no, that LGBTQ and contraception rights won’t be overturned if abortion rights are because they involve “clear rules that have engendered strong reliance interests and that have not produced negative consequences.”

In other words, people have come to rely on the individual rights articulated in cases like Lawrence v. Texas (which legalized gay sex in all 50 states), Obergefell v. Hodges (which legalized marriage equality in all 50 states), and Griswold v. Connecticut (which protected some people’s right to use contraception) and they haven’t had the negative effects that he believes Roe has had.

That argument, apparently, wasn’t good enough for Sotomayor, considering there are people who rely on abortion being available and plenty of other people who believe that gay sex, marriage equality, and contraception have negative effects.

So she got as close to calling him a liar as one can get in the Supreme Court.

“I just think you’re dissimulating when you say that any ruling here wouldn’t have an effect on those,” she told Stewart.

That's a good word, I think it roughly translates from Supreme Courtese to lying like a motherfucker.

Supreme Court Justice shoots down lawyer’s wild claim about LGBTQ rights / LGBTQ Nation

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Having an Abortion at Your Second Home

For those of us lucky enough to have second (or third) homes in places like Provence or Tuscany, an unwanted pregnancy could be an invitation to a vacation.

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) December 2, 2021

[beyelzu]

In an exchange that set much of the internet aflame, Justice Amy Coney Barrett posed a question to an attorney for Mississippi’s Jackson Women’s Health during last week’s oral arguments. Why, she wondered, were abortion rights necessary when “safe haven” laws exist to dispense with the “consequences of parenting and the obligations of motherhood”?

“Why didn’t you address the safe haven laws, and why don’t they matter?” she asked.

Now lots of people have talked about how adoption doesn’t magically solve abortion issues, but it was also something of a dog whistle (although I think Justice Serena Joy is probably a true believer and not trying to dog whistle so much as she was a dumbshit ideologue arguing her dumbshit beliefs..

Anti reproductive rights advocates have long pushed this similar argument.

At all levels of the anti-abortion movement, advocates have long touted safe haven laws to dismiss the necessity of abortion — a rich history that Barrett’s question was tapping into.

The argument, stretching back more than two decades, is splattered across Supreme Court legal briefings supporting various abortion restrictions.

“The safe haven statute completely eliminates the pregnant woman’s burden of parenthood,” petitioners write in a 2015 filing defending Arkansas’ 12-week abortion ban.

A similar refrain is voiced repeatedly by those defending the Mississippi ban currently before the Supreme Court. It was also wielded in filings for the six-week ban out of Texas and in a recently decided case on abortion clinic restrictions in Louisiana.

“Abortion is permanent,” the Texas amici write. “Pregnancy lasts months.”

I disagree with this expert

“The fact that she used that phrase, which most people don’t know what it is — she was signalling to her base,” Carol Sanger, a professor at Columbia University Law School, told TPM.

Because I think Serena Joy is a creepy ass true believer culty Christian. (Note I refer to her particular cult as a cult and not all Christians). I don’t think she was signaling, I think she thinks and believes the garbage.
Amy Coney Barrett Was Speaking In Anti-Abortion Code

[beyelzu]

In a major victory for abortion rights, Kansas voters on Tuesday rejected an effort to strip away their state’s abortion protections, sending a decisive message about the issue’s popularity in the first political test since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.

Kansas voting in first referendum on abortion since Roe was overturned - The Washington Post

The GOP made the referendum during primaries hoping to have power turnout and some early polling suggested that the support was 47/43/10 (yes/no/undecided) meanwhile almost 60 percent voted No.

Normally only Dems and GOP can vote primary in Kansas but independents were allowed to vote on the referendum. Also some GOP operatives did texts lying about what a yes vote would mean.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by beyelzu

Also some GOP operatives did texts lying about what a yes vote would mean.

You don't say.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Cards Against Humanity is donating 100% of their profits to the National Network of Abortion Funds if the order comes from a state restricting abortion access.

If someone selects “I didn’t agree to this” an additional $5 donation is added to their cart. �� pic.twitter.com/lFJzr0C9lc

— Kolleen (@littlewhitty) September 6, 2022

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Sad Trombone - YouTube

[Stephen Maturin]

Guess you could say that I'm punching the air right now.

Also punching the clown.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Surprise! Lying liars lied!

[Miss Shelby]

West Virginia Legislature passes abortion ban with few exceptions - CNNPolitics.

[Miss Shelby]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

Sad Trombone - YouTube

I feel the little dude. Well I would, anyways, if I gave some fucks about what people think of my opinions.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

7F72D190-B301-4442-8F94-904146E931CA.png

[It's Me!]

After the Walker reveal, all these GOP folks on the airwaves basically coming right out and stating what we all knew - that it was never about being "pro-life" but "pro-in control of others (mainly women's) lives".

[erimir]

They say that abortion is murder, literal murder.

So what they're saying is, according to their moral views, Herschel Walker paid to have his child murdered.

But they can forgive him, because he has the right position on abortion now, and thinks that people who get or perform abortions should go to prison. Now, he doesn't admit to the accusation and he doesn't say that he personally should be in prison or otherwise accept the sort of punishment he proposes for others, but he's redeemed by being on the right team, I guess.

Now, supposing it came out that Walker had had an infant child, and his girlfriend paid the babysitter to kill the infant, and then Walker reimbursed her for the child-murder expenses.

Hell, they say that it's no different from murdering an adult! Same scenario, but it's Walker's 18-year-old child!

Do you suppose the reaction from the right-wing would be at all similar?

So weird how they say it's murder and abortionists are murderers, but they sure don't treat it like it's murder and that Herschel Walker is a murderer.

For example

Ted Kennedy, an actual murderer, was the worst human being in American politics in my lifetime, & set the agenda of the Democratic Party for decades, an agenda it follows to this day. Every living Democrat would vote for him without qualm. https://t.co/a88mMsgrr6

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) October 4, 2022

Very revealing use of the word "actual" there. It seems that Herschel Walker paying for abortion (perhaps multiple abortions, according to the rumors) isn't "actual" murder, because Mr. Baseball is drawing a contrast between that and what Walker did.

You can find similarly revealing statements from all sorts of right-wing Walker defenders.