USA – Don’t rule out a national abortion ban in 2025

Activists think they have a path to stopping abortions nationwide. It runs not through Congress but through the White House, the Supreme Court, and an arcane 19th-century law.

By Mary Ziegler
May 30, 2023

Almost a year ago, when the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court promised that each state would make its own decision on abortion. At the time, a national statute of any kind seemed impossible. Democrats had tried and failed to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have secured abortion rights nationwide. And once Republicans gained a majority in the House of Representatives, they didn’t try to pass a national abortion ban. Their legislative wish list did not include one, and poll after poll showed that most Americans believed abortion to be a right and wanted it to be legal, especially early in pregnancy.

The antiabortion movement had never wanted the issue left to the states. Since the 1980s, the movement had made sure that the Republican Party platform had a plank endorsing a human life amendment. But in the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs ruling, it seemed that there was little chance that antiabortion advocates could get their wish for a national ban.

Continued: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/05/30/opinion/abortion-ban-comstock-act-mary-ziegler/


Old Anti-abortion Laws Are Taking on Unintended Meanings

Even where the words remain the same, a shifting political culture has changed the impact of suddenly revived statutes.

By Daniel K. Williams
SEPTEMBER 20, 2022

Abortion opponents seem not to have expected some of the more draconian consequences of the Dobbs decision—that anti-abortion laws would prevent pregnant women who were not seeking abortions from receiving needed treatment for miscarriages, or that women facing dire medical complications from their pregnancies would not be able to get proper care. After all, the anti-abortion laws that were in force in the pre-Roe era before 1973 were almost never used to prosecute doctors treating miscarriages or providing lifesaving care to women, and all of the anti-abortion laws that went into effect this summer (including the one enacted in Indiana in August) specifically allow abortions in cases where they are necessary to save a pregnant person’s life. A National Review article published in late July insisted that no current state anti-abortion law prevents the treatment of miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/abortion-laws-pre-roe/671409/


How Anti-Abortion Politics Swallowed Up the GOP

Over the years, anti-abortion activists became certain that campaign finance laws were the enemy.

BY MARY ZIEGLER
JUNE 23, 2022

The American anti-abortion movement contributed far more to the rise of Donald Trump and the transformation of the GOP than we often think. Scholars have traced how an ascendant form of Christian nationalism—the belief that the United States was and always should be a Christian nation—was needed for Donald Trump to edge out Hillary Clinton in 2016. But the influence of the anti-abortion movement went much further, and it had everything to do with money in U.S. politics.

Political scientists and historians of the religious right have told part of the story of the fascinating partnership between abortion foes and Republican leaders. Their studies often suggest that while pro-lifers became dependent on the GOP, the Republican Party did not fundamentally change its priorities. Some assert that the GOP co-opted the religious right, gaining its votes while offering little but speeches in return.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/campaign-finance-abortion-activism-dollars-for-life.html


USA – Dismantling the RNC’s Legacy of Hostility To Abortion Access

This week, the Republican National Convention has featured graphic and deceptive rails against abortion—the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that Trump has made mainstream over the last few years.

8/27/2020
by ANDREA MILLER

This brand of over-the-top opposition to abortion (Abby Johnson promised “the most provocative, impassioned, memorable” anti-abortion speech in history) may seem like a departure from the genteel conservatism of past conventions.

But, in reality, nearly 40 years of GOP opposition to abortion and the party’s failure to respect the importance of making fundamental decisions about our reproductive lives has led us to this point.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2020/08/27/republican-national-convention-abortion-dismantling-the-rnc-legacy-of-hostility-to-abortion-access/


USA – The long fight for reproductive rights is only getting harder

The long fight for reproductive rights is only getting harder

Book review, By Katha Pollitt
May 13, 2020

Fifteen-year-old Talia didn’t realize she was pregnant until well into her second trimester. Ending the pregnancy meant she had to get a judge’s approval. Neither parent could fulfill her state’s consent requirement because one was missing and the other was involved in her life only now and then. When she arranged a clinic visit 24 hours before the abortion, per the state law for minors, she wound up at a “fake women’s health center” next door to the real abortion clinic. The people there did everything they could to dissuade her from ending her pregnancy, including falsely telling her that they would do it later (past her state’s deadline), but Talia remained firm in her decision. Lacking health insurance that covered abortion, she had to come up with $4,000 for the procedure.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-long-fight-for-reproductive-rights-is-only-getting-harder/2020/05/12/2fda9f2a-8326-11ea-878a-86477a724bdb_story.html