Imani Gandy (ABL)

I wrote this post about twenty-week abortion bans for RH Reality Check, and it explains what a circuit split is, so if you ever wanted to know what that means, you should read this! But you’ll have to click outside the blog which I know causes some of you great consternation. You have been thusly warned. Also, hello everyone! -ABLxx

In the “war on women,” 20-week abortion bans have become a rallying point for both pro- and anti-choice camps alike. While Texas’ recently-enacted law, which among other things bans abortions after 20 weeks, may have garnered most of the media attention in recent weeks, so far 13 states have passed similar bans, and three states have passed even more restrictive laws, prohibiting abortions as early as six weeks’ gestation. Nevertheless, these 20-week abortion bans have been gaining traction.

Much has been written about the politics behind these laws—especially the false claims that they are designed to protect women—but so far, there has been relatively little coverage of the anti-choice litigation strategy in relation to these bans. For instance, how do anti-choice campaigners intend to persuade the Supreme Court to reverse Roe v. Wade? Of all the various state anti-abortion laws, which one is most likely to be used as the test case at the national level?

The Supreme Court won’t review its long-standing abortion jurisprudence unless it has to. Given the controversial nature of abortion, a simple appeal from a state to clarify abortion law probably won’t prompt the Court to act. (The Oklahoma supreme court recently tried this tactic when it struck down Oklahoma’s ultrasound law and practically begged the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case; the Court didn’t bite.) What will prompt the Supreme Court to act is a conflict between the laws that apply in one circuit and the laws that apply in another.

“Circuit” is a fancy legal term for a group of states. The country is split into eleven circuits, plus the D.C. Circuit, with one federal appeals court in charge of setting the law for each of the circuits. If one circuit court sets law that is different than the law that applies in another circuit, then a legal mess—or, as it is sometimes called, a “circuit split”—results. And since the Supreme Court likes to have laws that bind the entire country, it will intervene to resolve the circuit split.

The push for 20-week abortion bans is part of a national strategy implemented by anti-choice advocates to create exactly the sort of legal mess that will force the Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and to revisit the viability standard that has served as the constitutional foundation for abortion rights for 40 years.

An analysis by RH Reality Check suggests that the strategy deployed by anti-choicers is deeply subversive. It capitalizes on personal feelings and anti-abortion hostilities by enticing judges and legislatures to abandon empirical science in favor of biased, agenda-driven science or, as it is sometimes called, “junk science.” Proponents of junk science, which has become a cottage industry among anti-abortion advocates, confuse the issue of fetal viability, invent claims about fetuses feeling pain (or masturbating in utero), and call into question established medical standards.

The strategy is a smart one, to be sure. Anti-choicers understand that once junk science has been incorporated into legislation, courts are not inclined to question those scientific findings—no matter how agenda-driven they are—and will simply apply the law to those “facts.” In cases when junk science is presented to a court, a judge (or justice) hostile to abortion rights requires only the flimsiest reasoning to ground their legal opinion in fact, even if those “facts” are anything but factual.

It is hard to fathom that any court would find these pernicious bans constitutional. After all, the Constitution guarantees a right to choose abortion up until the point of fetal viability, which occurs well after 20 weeks’ gestation. Nevertheless, anti-choice advocates are alarmingly optimistic about their chances in making these bans stick—at least, some are.

The 20-week abortion ban enthusiasts are confident that the key to a reversal of Roe v. Wade rests with Justice Anthony Kennedy. In his majority opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart, Kennedy made it clear that he finds certain abortion procedures to be terrible, and that he is very concerned about the mental state of women who would dare to seek them. What about the bonds of love between mother and child, he wonders in his opinion. What if women come to regret their choice to abort the “infant life they once created and sustained”?

Since Anthony Kennedy’s 2003 opinion in Gonzales, anti-choice litigators and advocates have smartly tailored their litigation strategy to suit Kennedy’s sensibilities. Drawing upon the junk science that anti-abortion advocates like David Reardon and frequent co-authors J.M. Thorp and Priscilla K. Coleman have been developing for decades, anti-choice advocates are weaving junk science into the very fabric of state-level 20-week abortion bans.

[read the rest at RH Reality Check]

20-Week Abortion Bans and the Pathway to the Supreme CourtPost + Comments (36)

Last week, the North Carolina GOP attached a bunch of abortion restrictions to an anti-sharia law. The outrage was such that Governor Pat McCrory vowed to veto it unless significant changes were made to the bill. Hooray!

Except, no — not really.

Even though it appears that Governor McCrory will keep his word and veto the sharia law/abortion hybrid bill (HB 695), he will likely sign a new motorcycle safety/abortion hybrid bill should it pass the House and Senate and reach his desk. Yes, you read correctly. Stop rubbing your eyes.

Early this morning, the North Carolina GOP (the House Judiciary Committee, to be precise) added sweeping abortion restrictions to a bill — SB353 — that was approved by the Senate in April and which was supposed to increase fines and penalties for drivers who endanger motorcyclists on the road. So sneaky were the Republicans in this maneuver that some Democrats in the House didn’t know what the hell was happening until a few minutes before the committee meeting began.

Sneaking bills through the legislature without public notice! That’s the North Carolina way, apparently.

So now in addition to protecting motorcyclists, SB 353 bans telemedicine abortion, places burdensome regulations on abortion clinics, and will force many clinics to close.

How does McCrory feel about the new abortion/motorcycle hybrid bill?

He’s fine with it, of course. After all, it’s a different bill — sort of — than the one he promised to veto. No fuss, no muss!

Robin Marty at RH Reality Check has more:

Republican North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory announced Wednesday morning that unless significant changes were made to HB 695, a bill ostensibly created to bar Sharia law in the state but which would greatly reduce access to safe, legal abortion in North Carolina, he would veto it. However, within a few hours of that announcement a new bill, SB 353, was reviewed by a house subcommittee, and it was rewritten to add nearly identical anti-choice amendments as those found in HB 695. Unlike the previous bill, SB 353 has the approval of the governor.

As originally written, SB 353 is a motorcycle safety act that would increase fines and penalties for drivers who endanger motorcyclists on the road. The bill had remained dormant for much of the legislative session until Judiciary Subcommittee B was informed it would be on the calendar Wednesday morning. Not all of the committee members were informed prior to the meeting that the bill had been amended to add modified versions of abortion restrictions that were inserted earlier this month into HB 695.

(read the rest)

The war on women is getting downright absurd, wouldn’t you say?

Oy.

[via RH Reality Check; Think Progress]

#MotorcycleVagina: It’s a Thing Happening in North CarolinaPost + Comments (89)

Texas Senator Wendy Davis is currently on hour 4 of her 13 hour filibuster of #SB5, a pernicious bill that will result in all but five clinics being closed in Texas, and will ban abortion after 20 weeks. (You can watch the livestream here.)

For the past several days, there have been protests at the Capitol, and Texas anti-choicers have been doing everything they can in order to ram SB5 through the legislature. The bill passed the House at around 3 am on Monday morning (to loud screams of “SHAME! SHAME!”) Then yesterday, Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst attempted to leverage the death of the father of one of his colleagues in order to suspend the 24-hour rule in the Senate and bring the bill to an immediate vote. (He failed.)

Senator Davis’s filibuster and the repro rights fight in Texas hasn’t been getting much play in the media, so if you want to read up on what’s going on, check RH Reality Check‘s coverage here. RHRC’s Andrea Grimes has been a warrior on the ground. Another repro rights warrior, Jessica Luther of Flyover Feminism has a post detailing what you can do to stand with Texas women even if you don’t live in Texas. (You can read that post here.)

Also, President and Editor-in-Chief of RHRC, Jodi Jacobson, is organizing a massive food delivery to all the men and women who are camping out at the capital to show their support for Wendy Davis. On Sunday, RHRC provided more than $800 worth of food to more than 1,000 people. We expect the crowd to be even larger tonight.

If you want to donate to that effort, click here.

Go, Wendy, go!

P.S. If you’re thinking about typing “Women should just move out of Texas!” please don’t.

*** You can follow Jessica Luther on Twitter — @scaTX. you can follow Andrea Grimes on Twitter — @andreagrimes. You can also follow the hashtags #TxLege, #SB5, #HB16, and #HB60 for the most up-to-date news.

Senator Wendy Davis is Filibustering Anti-Choice Legislation in TexasPost + Comments (142)

Via RH Reality Check:

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San Jose, Costa Rica, the highest human rights court in the Americas, handed down Thursday a decision ordering the government of El Salvador to provide Beatriz with life-saving care. It ordered the state to provide the measures necessary to protect her life, health, and well-being, as well as refrain from interfering with the actions the doctors consider appropriate.

Beatriz, a 22-year-old woman who suffers from several life-threatening health problems, is 25 weeks pregnant with an anencephalic fetus, meaning it is missing part of its brain and will likely die at birth or shortly thereafter.  Her doctors recommended she receive an abortion, and she requested one on April 11. However, abortion is illegal under all circumstances in El Salvador.

The spokesperson for the Inter-American Court, Paola Ugaz, explained that the case is not going through formal channels; rather, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights asked the judges to issues an immediate order to the Salvadoran government to avoid irreparable harm to Beatriz. This is the first case on abortion that the court has considered. The government has until June 7 to present a first report to the court on its compliance with the measures ordered.

~snip~

According to the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), the court’s decisions carry a mandatory requirement for governmental compliance since El Salvador is a member state of the Organization of American States and signed the American Convention on Human Rights, which includes acceptance of the court’s competency.

This is good news, but obviously, we’ll have to wait and see what happens, since the government has until June 7 to report on its compliance with the order.

[via RH Reality Check]

Update on #SaveBeatriz: El Salvador Ordered to Provide Beatriz Access to Life-Saving CarePost + Comments (27)

***This post is a follow-up to mistermix’s post and includes action items. -ABLxx

The Supreme Court of El Salvador has handed down a death sentence for Beatriz, a 22-year-old woman who desperately needs an abortion to save her life. Jodi Jacobson of RH Reality Check has the story:

In a stunning decision made worse by the length of time it took to be handed down, the Supreme Court of El Salvador gave a young woman a death sentence on Wednesday by denying “permission” for an abortion needed to save her life.

Beatriz (a pseudonym) is now 24 weeks into an extremely high-risk pregnancy, complicated by a severe form of lupus, an autoimmune disease, hypertension, and renal (kidney) failure. Moreover, her pregnancy is not viable. The fetus she is carrying is anencephalic—it does not and will never have a fully formed brain—and can not survive more than a few hours after childbirth, if it survives at all. More than ten weeks ago, in the first trimester of pregnancy, Beatriz’s doctors determined she herself could not survive this pregnancy and strongly recommended to authorities that she be allowed to have an abortion to save her life. The minister of health concurred. According to the New York Times:

In a letter addressed to the Supreme Court last month, Health Minister María Isabel Rodríguez described Beatriz’s situation as “grave maternal illness with a high probability of deterioration or maternal death.” Given the fatal prognosis of the fetus, “it is necessary to undertake a medical-legal approach urgently,” Ms. Rodríguez wrote.

This was no routine medical recommendation: Abortion is banned in El Salvador without exception, and both physicians providing and women receiving abortions can be imprisoned for many years. It is thus not often that physicians, much less the minister of health, are willing to put themselves at risk even when a woman’s life is in danger. And in part as a result of these realities, maternal mortality in El Salvador remains very high.

Beatriz could have had an abortion before the end of her first trimester, and we likely would never have heard of her. But the country’s attorney general asserted he would indeed prosecute the case if the doctors performed an abortion, and so a cruel and confusing international circus began.

~snip~

[T]he case went to the Supreme Court where Beatriz herself pleaded for her own life, telling the court she wanted to live and raise her son. In a response that was as shocking then as today’s final decision is now, the Court told her they’d get back to her within 15 days, completely dismissing the agony of pain and uncertainty each day of waiting means for this woman. Meanwhile, every day that has passed has taken an increasing toll on her body and health, multiplied the costs of her medical care, increased the risk of death from a c-section or labor, and made less and less likely the prospect that she will survive. Speaking by phone to RH Reality Check last week, Beatriz’s lawyer Victor Hugo Mata asserted that “if anything happens to Beatriz, the judges of the Supreme Court will in some way be responsible.”

Today, as reported by the New York Times, the court ruled 4-to-1 against saving Beatriz’s life, citing the country’s legal “absolute impediment to authorize the practice of abortion.” The court ruled that “the rights of the mother cannot be privileged over those” of the fetus.

Change.org in concert with various national and international women’s rights organizations are petitioning Pope Francis to spare Beatriz’s life. The petition reads as follows:

To: His Holiness Pope Francis, Twitter @Pontifex

We are writing to ask you to ask Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes to spare Beatriz’s life. Beatriz is a young wife and mother in El Salvador. She is pregnant. According to her doctors, her fetus has no brain, and she has several medical conditions that make it likely she will die in labor if she gives birth. El Salvador is a Catholic country. It has extremely strict laws preventing abortion — even in cases where the mother’s health and even life are threatened, and even when the life in her womb is so damaged that it could never become its own person. She has been denied the care she needs, and her appeals have been rejected by El Salvador’s Supreme Court. If she is not allowed to get the medical care she needs, Beatriz is likely to die, which will also leave her 1-year-old son motherless and husband a widower. This policy will not save any innocent life, but it may well take the innocent life of a mother. There is nothing Christian about such a policy. Please help save Beatriz — for her, for her family. She has done nothing wrong. Let His Holiness show the world that the Catholic church is an instrument of God’s mercy by coming to this young woman’s aid.

Sincerely,
[Your name]

Please sign this petition. Please pass it along to your friends and family. Beatriz’s life just may depend on it.

It is sad that it has come to this: That a living breathing woman’s right to life is being trumped by the “rights” of a fetus — a fetus that has no chance of survival outside the womb.

To read RH Reality Check‘s coverage of Beatriz, click here.

UPDATE: To donate to help save Beatriz’s life, click here. All funds collected for Beatriz are being accepted by Women’s Link Worldwide, an international non-profit organization working to promote women’s rights. They will pass through tax-deductible contributions to the local Salvadoran organization Agrupación Ciudadana por la Despenalización del Aborto Ético, Terapéutico y Eugenésico (Citizens Association for the Decriminalization of Abortion), which is leading the legal fight on the ground for Beatriz. All funds will first and foremost be used for Beatriz’s medical bills, and any remaining funds will be used to help support the work of the Citizens Association.

[via RH Reality Check]

#SaveBeatriz: El Salvador Has Denied A Young Woman Her Right to LifePost + Comments (61)

Army of God posted an alarming video of a recent conversation with Scott Roeder, the convicted murderer of Dr. Tiller, in which they discuss the re-opening of Dr. Tiller’s clinic, and stopping abortion by murdering abortion doctors, specifically Julie Burkhart, the clinic’s executive director. In the conversation, Roeder says, “I think eight have been shot, so we’ve got 92 to go. Maybe she’ll be number nine. I don’t know, but she’s kind of painting a target on her.”

Via Kari Ann Rinker at RH Reality Check:

Nearly four years after Dr. Tiller’s assassination, anti-choice violence continues to percolate in Wichita. It started up again two years ago, with the harassment of Dr. Mila Means. Anti-choice terrorist Angel Dillard penned a letter threatening violence against the doctor, who sought to include abortion care in her private practice. That letter has resulted in federal charges against Dillard brought under the FACE Act. In addition to the letter, it was reported this week by RH Reality Check that the U.S. Department of Justice filed papers in court revealing that a Kansas county jail inmate said Dillard asked him last year to firebomb the home of Dr. Means.

The opening of the new abortion clinic has brought yet another round of frightening behavior from local anti-choice forces. The clinic’s executive director, Julie Burkhart, has been harassed at her home and has had to file a temporary restraining order against local terrorist Mark Hollick after he pointed a sign saying “Where is Your Church?” at her home (an obvious reference to the place of Dr. Tiller’s assassination). Meanwhile, Troy Newman, of Operation Rescue infamy, is already posting pictures and audio of a person who he claims is a new physician at the clinic.

A recent YouTube video posted by David Leach from the anti-choice group Army of God should cause local law enforcement officials to raise their local terrorist alert to red. The video is a recording of a recent jailhouse conversation with Scott Roeder, the convicted murderer of Dr. Tiller. What follows is the entire recorded conversation and a partial transcript.

Murder for life. That’s the anti-choice terrorist way.

***Head to RHRC for a transcript and the full article.

[via RH Reality Check]

Legacy of Tiller’s Murder: Anti-Choice Terrorists Threaten Staff at Wichita ClinicPost + Comments (47)

Not to be outdone by the Arkansas legislature, which overrode Governor’s Mike Beebe’s veto of a bill banning abortion after 12 weeks, the North Dakota legislature has passed what is now the most restrictive abortion law in the country.

Breathe easy, Kansas, Arizona, Arkansas, and South Dakota! North Dakota has got this.

HB 1456 bans abortion as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which happens six or seven weeks into the pregnancy, two weeks after a woman misses her period, and about 28 days post-conception. That’s a ridiculously narrow window. The bill provides an exception for health of the mother, but no exception for rape.

Robin Marty writing for RH Reality Check points out that this law screws North Dakotan women, and not in a good way:

show full post on front page

North Dakota to Restrict Abortion to Point of RidiculousnessPost + Comments (33)