Post Roe Abortion Problems

[RTH10260]

Montana lawmaker seeks to overturn abortion ruling

AMY BETH HANSON
Tue, January 17, 2023 at 11:19 PM GMT+1

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The Montana legislature is considering a proposal that would interpret the state’s constitutional right to privacy to mean that it does not protect the right to an abortion, a move that would echo others in several states to severely restrict or ban abortion.

Sen. Keith Regier, the proposal's sponsor, argued during a committee hearing Tuesday that the phrase “individual privacy” in the state Constitution should also refer to unborn babies that are individuals who have rights that should not be infringed upon.

State efforts to regulate abortion became more urgent after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June — in the Dobbs v. Jackson case — to leave abortion rights up to the states. The ruling overturned the 1973 decision in the Roe v. Wade case that found the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provided a privacy right that protected the right to an abortion.

The Iowa Supreme Court in June cleared the way for lawmakers to limit or ban abortion in that state, reversing a decision issued by the court just four years earlier that guaranteed the right to abortion under the Iowa Constitution. Other states, meanwhile, including Minnesota and Maine, are taking steps to protect abortion access.

Earlier this month, the Idaho Supreme Court upheld a ban on abortions on the same day that justices in South Carolina blocked a law that would ban abortions after cardiac activity in the fetus can be detected.

Montana's Constitution states: “The right to individual privacy is essential to the well-being of a free society and shall not be infringed without the showing of a compelling state interest.”

“Privacy was never intended as a cloak for abortion,” said Bob Leach, a Republican activist who supports the bill that would effectively nullify a 1999 Montana Supreme Court ruling that protects a woman’s right to a pre-viability abortion.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/montana-lawm ... 32827.html

[AndyinPA]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ple-report

Wages, employment security, incarceration rates and access to unemployment benefits are all worse in US states where abortion is restricted or banned, compared with those where it is protected, a new report has found.

The report by the Economic Policy Institute also found that minimum wages are, on average, $3.75 an hour lower in abortion restrictive states compared with protective states ($8.17 compared with $11.92); and that restrictive states incarcerate people at 1.5 times the rate of protective states.

“There is strong empirical evidence that abortion denial and abortion bans have negative economic consequences, from prolonged financial distress to lower wages and earnings, employment, educational attainment, and economic mobility,” said Asha Banerjee, an economic analyst at EPI who authored the report.

“The states that have banned abortion rights are also the same states economically disempowering people through these other economic channels,” Banerjee added.

I can't say this comes as a surprise.

[RTH10260]

Illinois Planned Parenthood Clinic Firebombed 2 Days After Governor Signed Abortion Rights Bill

Susan Rinkunas
Wed, January 18, 2023 at 5:44 PM GMT+1

Someone threw a molotov cocktail into a Planned Parenthood health center in Peoria, Illinois, around 11:30 p.m. on Sunday night, which set the clinic aflame, according to the Associated Press. The fire is being investigated as arson and Peoria police are asking for the public’s help in finding a pickup truck caught on surveillance footage in the area. They have not yet identified the suspect.

Planned Parenthood of Illinois president and CEO Jennifer Welch said the fire caused “significant” damage to the building and estimated it would cost $150,000 to repair, NPR Illinois reported.

The arson came two days after Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed an abortion rights bill into law that protects people traveling to the state for abortions or gender-affirming healthcare. The legislation he signed Friday also protects the medical licenses of Illinois healthcare providers who provide care that’s legal in Illinois but may be illegal in other states.

As the bill Pritzker signed indicates, Illinois is a crucial access state after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and may be the closest state with abortion protections for people in much of the Southeast. Planned Parenthood of Illinois told the Associated Press that, while Roe stood, about 6 percent of their patients came from out of state, but that’s since shot up to 30 percent. Following the arson, patients have one fewer clinic to go to (at least for the time being). The organization told the AP that while the clinic is closed, it’s rescheduling appointments at other health centers and offering transportation help to people who need it.

The Peoria clinic doesn’t even do abortions on-site—though it does prescribe abortion pills that people take at home—but that doesn’t matter to radical anti-abortion activists who want to target every possible aspect of abortion care.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/illinois-pla ... 00930.html

(original: Jezebel)

[RTH10260]

Religious leaders sue to block Missouri's abortion ban

JIM SALTER
Thu, January 19, 2023 at 5:27 PM GMT+1

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A group of religious leaders who support abortion rights filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging Missouri's abortion ban, saying lawmakers openly invoked their religious beliefs while drafting the measure and thereby imposed those beliefs on others who don't share them.

The lawsuit filed in St. Louis is the latest of many to challenge restrictive abortion laws enacted by conservative states after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. That landmark ruling left abortion rights up to each state to decide.

Since then, religious abortion rights supporters have increasingly used religious freedom lawsuits in seeking to protect abortion access. The religious freedom complaints are among nearly three dozen post-Roe lawsuits that have been filed against 19 states’ abortion bans, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

The Missouri lawsuit brought on behalf of 13 Christian and Jewish leaders seeks a permanent injunction barring the state from enforcing its abortion law and a declaration that provisions of its law violate the Missouri Constitution.

“What the lawsuit says is that when you legislate your religious beliefs into law, you impose your beliefs on everyone else and force all of us to live by your own narrow beliefs,” said Michelle Banker of the National Women’s Law Center, the lead attorney in the case. “And that hurts us. That denies our basic human rights.”

Missouri Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, a Republican, called the lawsuit “foolish.”

“We were acting on the belief that life is precious and should be treated as such. I don’t think that’s a religious belief,” Rowden said.




https://www.yahoo.com/news/group-faith- ... 27110.html

[AndyinPA]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va ... life-2023/

Thousands of abortion opponents streamed toward the National Mall in Washington Friday for a historic chapter of the March for Life, the first since the overturning of Roe v. Wade and an event busy with activists starting to articulate visions of their movement, post-Roe.

Created in response to the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion across the country, the religious march has now achieved its stated aim of overturning the decision. But it comes after some recent setbacks and internal debate about how to make a ban nation wide. March leaders emphasized Friday that Roe’s overthow was just the start and that they will be launching dozens of local marches.

Monica Condit and her daughter Catie were gathering with others from Kentucky at a downtown hotel before the march. They said the march this year was a celebration of the overturn by the Supreme Court in June, but they also are worried about the results of the 2022 midterm elections and the decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to allow pharmacies to dispense abortion pills. Catie Condit, 17, said she was “heartbroken” when an antiabortion ballot initiative failed in November, with Kentucky voters backing abortion rights.

“There is so much more we can do. We’re so close to having abortion banned completely,” Catie said.

[RTH10260]

How US police use digital data to prosecute abortions

Runa Sandvik
Fri, January 27, 2023 at 9:11 PM GMT+1

In late April, police in Nebraska received a tip saying 17-year-old Celeste Burgess had given birth to a stillborn baby and buried the body. Officers soon learned that her mother, Jessica Burgess, and a friend had helped her with transportation and burial. The police issued citations for concealing the death of another person and false reporting. But in June, they also charged Jessica with providing an abortion for her teenage daughter. Police had made the discovery after obtaining a warrant that required Meta to hand over their conversations on Facebook Messenger. The messages, which were not encrypted, showed the two had discussed obtaining and using abortion pills.

Warrants for digital data are routine in police investigations, which makes sense, given how much time we spend online. Technology giants have for years responded to valid court orders for specific information sought by law enforcement, though some companies have done more to fight for our privacy than others. Millions of people now use apps that encrypt their calls and messages, like Signal and WhatsApp, so that no one can access their messages — not even the providers themselves.

The case in Nebraska is not the first in which police have used digital data to prosecute an abortion, and it won’t be the last. While digital data is rarely the main form of evidence, prosecutors use it to paint a picture in court; by showing messages sent to friends, internet searches or emails from an online pharmacy. As in the Burgess case, however, it’s often people around the women who first notify the authorities — a doctor or nurse, a family member or a friend of a friend.




https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/us-p ... 58675.html

(original: TechCrunch)

[RTH10260]

South Dakota Gov. Noem threatens charges for abortion pills

Tue, January 24, 2023 at 7:23 PM GMT+1

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, along with the state's Republican attorney general, said Tuesday the state will prosecute pharmacists who dispense abortion-inducing pills following a recent Food and Drug Administration rule change that broadens access to the pills.

The Republican governor and South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley released a letter to South Dakota pharmacists saying they are “subject to felony prosecution” if they procure or dispense abortion-inducing drugs. The state bans all abortions except to save the life of the pregnant person.

“South Dakota will continue to enforce all laws including those that respect and protect the lives of the unborn,” Noem and Jackley said in the letter.

The FDA earlier this month formally updated labeling for abortion pills to allow many more retail pharmacies to dispense them, so long as they complete a certification process.

The change could expand access at online pharmacies. People can get a prescription via telehealth consultation with a health professional and then receive the pills through the mail, where permitted by law.

Still, in states like South Dakota, the rule change’s impact has been blunted by laws limiting abortion broadly and the pills specifically. Legal experts foresee years of court battles over access to the pills as abortion-rights proponents bring test cases to challenge state restrictions.

Amanda Bacon, the director of the South Dakota Pharmacists Association, said in an email that she was not aware of any South Dakota pharmacies with plans to participate in the federal program to dispense abortion pills.




https://www.yahoo.com/news/south-dakota ... 03115.html

[RTH10260]

Ohio city rewrites abortion ban, advocacy groups end lawsuit

JULIE CARR SMYTH
Fri, January 27, 2023 at 7:20 PM GMT+1

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Groups advocating for professional social workers and abortion rights said they have succeeded in forcing a small Ohio city to significantly narrow its ban on conducting or recommending abortions and so have ended their legal challenge.

The lawsuit by the National Association of Social Workers and the Abortion Fund of Ohio argued that the law, passed in May 2021, represented an “extraordinarily broad” infringement on the constitutional rights of due process and free speech. The groups' lawyers at the ACLU of Ohio and Democracy Forward further alleged the ban violated Ohio’s home-rule provisions.

The city of Lebanon, in southwest Ohio, opted to revise the law rather than defend it in court. Enforcement had been placed on hold while that work took place.

Opponents said they dropped their lawsuit Jan. 12 after provisions were removed that made aiding and abetting an abortion a crime, and the law was further clarified to assure that providing transportation, instructions, money or abortion doula services, including counseling, were still allowed.

Lebanon’s ban was one of four that cropped up around Ohio in 2021, part of a national effort to ban abortion “one city at a time” by the Texas-based Sanctuary Cities of the Unborn organization overseen by Mark Lee Dickson.

It was the first local ban to be challenged nationally after a leak revealed the U.S. Supreme Court planned to overturn Roe v. Wade. The court's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization energized abortion opponents' state and local efforts to outlaw the procedure.




https://www.yahoo.com/news/ohio-city-re ... 20499.html

[RTH10260]

GOP Lawmaker’s Sister, a Rape Survivor, Publicly Protests Her Proposed Abortion Ban

Kylie Cheung
Tue, January 31, 2023 at 6:35 PM GMT+1

A Utah state lawmaker who introduced an abortion ban requiring rape victims to report their rape to law enforcement for limited abortion access is being very publicly challenged by her sister, a rape survivor.

State Rep. Kera Birkeland (R) introduced a bill last week to further ban abortion in Utah, which currently limits it at 18 weeks. Birkeland’s bill would ban abortion at any point in pregnancy with few stated exceptions, including severe health risks for the pregnant person, lethal fetal defects, or cases of rape and incest—however, the bill requires rape victims to report the assault to police in order to qualify for the exemption. It’s a jarring requirement, given that the overwhelming majority of rapes aren’t reported to law enforcement, often due to a very real fear of police.




https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-lawmaker ... 00468.html

(original. Jezebel)

[RTH10260]

Contraceptive Coverage Expanded: No More ‘Moral’ Exemptions for Employers

Ari Blaff
Tue, January 31, 2023 at 1:48 AM GMT+1

Today, the White House issued a proposal that would overturn a Trump-administration rollback of an aspect of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The rollback had allowed employers with a “religious or moral objection” to opt out of the ACA’s mandate to cover contraception in their insurance plans.

The proposed new rule released today by the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor, and Treasury would remove the ability of employers to opt out for “moral” reasons, but it would retain the existing protections on “religious” grounds.

For employees covered by insurers with religious exemptions, the new policy will create an “independent pathway” that permits them to access contraceptives through a third-party provider free of charge.

“We had to really think through how to do this in the right way to satisfy both sides, but we think we found that way,” a senior HHS official told CNN.




https://www.yahoo.com/news/contraceptiv ... 26941.html

(original: National Review)

[raison de arizona]

Employer based health insurance is a joke patchwork of plans and arcane incantations anyway. What’s one more wrinkly hoop to jump through?

Hell of a way to run a railroad though.

[RTH10260]

20 attorneys general warn Walgreens, CVS over abortion pills

JIM SALTER
Wed, February 1, 2023 at 6:35 PM GMT+1

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Attorneys general in 20 conservative-led states warned CVS and Walgreens on Wednesday that they could face legal consequences if they sell abortion pills by mail in those states.

A letter from Republican Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey to the nation's largest pharmacy-dispensing companies was co-signed by 19 other attorneys general, warning that sale of abortion pills would violate federal law and abortion laws in many states. Missouri is among states that implemented strict abortion prohibitions last summer after the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

Bailey didn't specify what legal action he would take if the pharmacies begin selling abortion pills to Missourians by mail.

“I will enforce the laws as written," Bailey said in a statement in response to questions from The Associated Press. "That includes laws protecting the health of women and their unborn children. The FDA rule is in direct violation of federal law, and the unelected bureaucrats at the FDA have no authority to change Missouri law, either. The people’s elected representatives have spoken on the issue of abortion in our state, and we will fight to uphold that in court.”

Nineteen states have imposed restrictions on abortion pills, but there’s a court battle over whether they have the power to do so in defiance of U.S. Food and Drug Administration policy. A physician and a company that makes the pill mifepristone filed separate lawsuits last month seeking to strike down bans in North Carolina and West Virginia.

For more than 20 years, the FDA limited dispensing of the drug to a subset of specialty offices and clinics because of safety concerns. But since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency eased restrictions, eliminating the in-person requirement for the pill and allowing brick-and-mortar pharmacies to dispense it. At least one lawsuit filed by abortion opponents argues that the FDA has overstepped its authority in approving the abortion drugs.

A spokesman for Walgreens said the company is not currently dispensing mifepristone, although they are working to become eligible through an FDA-mandated certification process, requiring pharmacies to meet specific standards in shipping, tracking and confidentially storing drug prescribing records.

“We fully understand that we may not be able to dispense Mifepristone in all locations if we are certified under the program,” a statement from spokesman Fraser Engerman read.





https://www.yahoo.com/news/20-attorneys ... 07949.html

[raison de arizona]

You don't have to watch to the end.

I try to convince Anti-Abortion protestors to care about feeding children.
*watch till the end*

[Ben-Prime]

20 attorneys general warn Walgreens, CVS over abortion pills
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Attorneys general in 20 conservative-led states warned CVS and Walgreens on Wednesday that they could face legal consequences if they sell abortion pills by mail in those states.

<snip>

A spokesman for Walgreens said the company is not currently dispensing mifepristone, although they are working to become eligible through an FDA-mandated certification process, requiring pharmacies to meet specific standards in shipping, tracking and confidentially storing drug prescribing records.

“We fully understand that we may not be able to dispense Mifepristone in all locations if we are certified under the program,” a statement from spokesman Fraser Engerman read.

So, let me see if I understand this: selling something that is legal under federal law can be deemed illegal under state law, unless it goes 'pew pew pew!'

[raison de arizona]

So, let me see if I understand this: selling something that is legal under federal law can be deemed illegal under state law, unless it goes 'pew pew pew!'

Well, I dunno. Flip it on its head. Selling something that is legal under state law can be deemed illegal under federal law, like marijuana. But yeah, supremacy clauses and 10th amendments and I dunno.

[AndyinPA]

You can get it on Amazon.

[raison de arizona]

Dobbs Was Always Just the Beginning
A single judge could outlaw the abortion pill nationwide. And that’s not even the worst of it.

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.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... ility.html

[AndyinPA]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 242752002/

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — Kentucky has seen its first infant anonymously dropped off at one of its "baby box" safe surrender locations.

At a news conference Friday, Safe Haven Baby Boxes founder and CEO Monica Kelsey said the child was dropped off within the last seven days at a Bowling Green Fire Department location, declining to be more specific to protect anonymity. She said fire department staff was able to tend to the child in less than 90 seconds.

The child is the 24th in the country to be surrendered at one of more than 130 baby boxes and drawers the organization has established across nine states.

"This baby is healthy. This baby is beautiful. This baby is perfect," said Kelsey, who added that officials are now looking to place the child in "a forever home."

[Jim]

wonder how the pubs will react when it's the MEN who are preventing pregnancies?

Quick-acting male birth control drug shows promise in the lab

In 2018, Melanie Balbach, a postdoctoral scientist at Weill Cornell Medicine, surprised her bosses with a remarkable video of mouse sperm - just sitting there.

A colleague in the lab had asked for help injecting mice with an experimental drug developed for eye disease, and Balbach agreed, with one condition. She knew that the potential eye drug targeted a molecular pathway that was crucial for male fertility. On a scientific hunch, she wanted to check what happened to normally thrashing, free-swimming sperm.

"She showed the movie of these sperm not moving, just twitching," said Lonny Levin, a professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell. "I said, 'Oh my God. That's a holy grail. That's a male contraceptive.'"

In a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications, the team demonstrates that an improved version of the drug can stop sperm from maturing and swimming, preventing mouse pregnancies within 30 minutes after an injection. About 2 1/2 hours later, some sperm start to swim and male mice began to regain normal fertility. They were able to father normal offspring.

[AndyinPA]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -histories

The Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, appears to have thwarted an attempt to stop law enforcement obtaining menstrual histories of women in the state.

A bill passed in the Democratic-led state senate, and supported by half the chamber’s Republicans, would have banned search warrants for menstrual data stored in tracking apps on mobile phones or other electronic devices.

Advocates feared private health information could be used in prosecutions for abortion law violations, after a US supreme court ruling last summer overturned federal protections for the procedure.

But Youngkin, who has pushed for a 15-week abortion ban to mirror similar measures in several Republican-controlled states, essentially killed the bill through a procedural move in a subcommittee of the Republican-controlled House.

[RTH10260]

Her baby has a deadly diagnosis. Her Florida doctors refused an abortion.
Florida abortion ban includes exception for fatal fetal abnormalities. But her doctors told her they could not act.

By Frances Stead Sellers
February 18, 2023 at 7:40 a.m. EST

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.

The new law bans abortion after 15 weeks with a couple of exceptions, including one that permits a later termination if “two physicians certify in writing that, in reasonable medical judgment, the fetus has a fatal fetal abnormality” and has not reached viability.

It is not clear how the Dorberts’ doctors applied the law in this situation. Their baby has a condition long considered lethal that is now the subject of clinical trials to assess a potential treatment.




https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... -syndrome/

[RTH10260]

Kentucky high court lets near-total abortion ban continue

BRUCE SCHREINER
Thu, February 16, 2023 at 4:40 PM GMT+1

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Abortion access in Kentucky remained virtually shut off Thursday after the state's highest court refused to halt a near-total ban that has largely been in place since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Kentucky's Supreme Court, which was weighing challenges to the state’s near-total ban and a separate one that outlaws abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, sent the case back to a lower court for further consideration of constitutional issues related to the more restrictive ban.

The court weighed in on the issue after Kentucky voters last year rejected a ballot measure that would have denied any constitutional protections for abortion. The justices heard arguments in the case a week after the November midterm elections, and activists on both sides had anxiously awaited the ruling. The state's Republican-led Legislature passed both of those laws.

The justices ruled on narrow legal issues Thursday. They left unanswered the larger constitutional questions about whether access to abortion should be legal in the Bluegrass State.

“To be clear, this opinion does not in any way determine whether the Kentucky Constitution protects or does not protect the right to receive an abortion, as no appropriate party to raise that issue is before us,” Deputy Chief Justice Debra Hembree Lambert wrote. “Nothing in this opinion shall be construed to prevent an appropriate party from filing suit at a later date.”




https://www.yahoo.com/news/kentucky-hig ... 29958.html

[RTH10260]

South Carolina House passes near-total abortion ban

Jared Gans
Thu, February 16, 2023 at 5:46 PM GMT+1

The South Carolina House has passed a near-total abortion ban for the second time, just more than a month after the state Supreme Court struck down the state’s six-week ban.

The state House of Representatives voted mostly along party lines, 83-31, on Wednesday to ban the procedure from the point of conception, with exceptions for instances of rape, incest, a fatal fetal anomaly or the health or life of the pregnant individual being at risk, The Associated Press reported.

The bill’s passage comes a week after the state Senate approved legislation to ban abortion after cardiac activity can be detected, typically at around six weeks of pregnancy.

The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled in a 3-2 decision last month that the state’s previous six-week ban, which went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June, violated a state constitutional right to privacy.

But the author of the ruling and the deciding vote, former Justice Kaye Hearn, retired due to age requirements at the end of December. She was the only woman serving on the state Supreme Court and was succeeded by a male justice.

The state House and Senate will need to reconcile the differences between their two bills to pass new legislation to try to restrict access to the procedure. The state Supreme Court’s ruling allowed abortions to be performed at up to 20 weeks of pregnancy.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/south-caroli ... 28383.html

(original: The Hill)

[RTH10260]

Post-Roe, Native Americans face even more abortion hurdles

ASSOCIATED PRESS LAURA UNGAR and HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH
Tue, February 14, 2023 at 3:13 PM GMT+1

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.

“Native people are having to cross massive, massive distances and absorb all of the travel costs and child care,” she said.

Experts say the issue should be seen within the larger context of the tortured history between Indigenous people and white society that began with the taking of Native lands and includes coerced sterilization of Native women lasting into the 1970s. Native Americans on both sides of the abortion debate invoke this history — some arguing the procedure reduces the number of potential citizens in a population that has been threatened for centuries, and others saying new restrictions are another attack on Native women's rights.




https://www.yahoo.com/news/post-roe-nat ... 13006.html

[RTH10260]

DOJ Charges Eight Pro-Life Activists with Blocking Access to Abortion Clinic

Caroline Downey
Wed, February 22, 2023 at 10:21 PM GMT+1

The Justice Department on Wednesday charged eight people with blocking access to an abortion clinic.

Defendants Calvin Zastrow, Chester Gallagher, Heather Idoni, Caroline Davis, Joel Curry, Justin Phillips, Eva Edl and Eva Zastrow were also indicted in a civil rights conspiracy connected to a protest they held outside an abortion facility in Sterling Heights, Michigan in August 2020, a DOJ press release said.

The group “did willfully combine, conspire, and agree with one another, and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to oppress and intimidate patients and employees of the NFPC in the free exercise and enjoyment of the rights and privileges secured to them by the laws of the United States, namely, the rights to obtain reproductive health services,” according to the indictment.

The blockade, which was live streamed by Gallagher and Curry, was allegedly planned in advance and promoted online, the Daily Signal first reported. Another “uncharged co-conspirator” filmed the incident and said the group was “going over to stand in front of the door” of the clinic and “interpose.”

All eight of the accused allegedly violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act by “using physical obstruction to intimidate and interfere with the Sterling Heights clinic’s employees and patients” because they believed abortions would be performed there.

Almost a year later in April 2021, the indictment says, Idoni and Edl again allegedly tried to prevent patients and employees from entering an abortion clinic in Saginaw, Mich. The pair was charged in connection with that episode.

The FBI Detroit Field Office and Bay City Resident Agency investigated the case and the Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan are prosecuting the case, the DOJ said.

A number of the pro-life demonstrators, such as Zastrow and Davis, had already been charged by the DOJ in October for a separate March 2021 incident in the Nashville area. Gallagher, the indictment alleges, recruited participants and coordinated travel and logistics on Facebook for a blockade in front of the Carafem Health Center Clinic, in Mount Juliet, Tenn. In a social media post, Gallagher referred to the blockade as a “rescue.” That protest was also broadcast by a co-conspirator, Coleman Boyd, who the DOJ did not cite in the Michigan incident.

The DOJ has stated that the escalation of enforcement of the FACE Act has partially been motivated by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. The Biden administration has made it a matter of urgency to find creative ways to circumvent and undermine the ruling via aggressive executive action against pro-life activists.




https://www.yahoo.com/news/doj-charges- ... 03059.html

(original: National Review)