How Hobby Lobby Could Be Trump’s Reproductive Rights Wrecking Ball

The 2014 Supreme Court ruling is even more consequential as we stare down the possibility of Trump’s reelection—and a revival of the Comstock Act.

Susan Rinkunas
March 25, 2024

When Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell 10 years ago, he provided answers to questions that no one had asked—at least, officially. The plaintiffs, two businesses owned by Christians, objected to a mandate in the Affordable Care Act requiring health insurance providers to cover types of birth control known as emergency contraception, or E.C. Colloquially known as the “morning-after pill,” E.C. works after sex to prevent pregnancy by blocking sperm from fertilizing an egg or by preventing the release of an egg in the first place. But anti-abortion activists believe that morning-after pills and IUDs prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus, which they say is tantamount to an abortion.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/179622/hobby-lobby-comstock-alito-contraception

A State Supreme Court Just Issued the Most Devastating Rebuke of Dobbs Yet

BY DAHLIA LITHWICK AND MARK JOSEPH STERN
JAN 30, 2024

The Supreme Court’s eradication of the constitutional right to abortion in 2022’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization had an immediate and devastating impact on gender equality in the United States. … [Alito] dismissed his ruling’s ruinous impact on gender equality in a single conclusory paragraph asserting that abortion restrictions could not possibly discriminate against women.

… This week the Pennsylvania Supreme Court responded to that conclusion: no. On Monday, the court issued a landmark opinion declaring that abortion restrictions do amount to sex-based discrimination and therefore are “presumptively unconstitutional” under the state constitution’s equal rights amendment. The majority vehemently rejected Dobbs’ history-only analysis, noting that, until recently, “those interpreting the law” saw women “as not only having fewer legal rights than men but also as lesser human beings by design.” Justice David Wecht went even further: In an extraordinary concurrence, the justice recounted the historical use of abortion bans to repress women, condemned Alito’s error-ridden analysis, and repudiated the “antiquated and misogynistic notion that a woman has no say over what happens to her own body.”

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/01/pennsylvania-supreme-court-dobbs-sam-alito-abortion.html

USA – Where does the fight to stop travel bans for abortion stand?

Nov. 13, 2023
By GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press

A federal judge and the U.S. Department of Justice this week said that states are going too far by trying to block people from helping others cross state lines for abortion.

A ruling in Idaho and the federal government taking sides in an Alabama lawsuit are far from the final word, but they could offer clues on whether an emerging area of abortion regulation may eventfully hold up in court.

Continued: https://www.gulflive.com/news/2023/11/where-does-the-fight-to-stop-travel-bans-for-abortion-stand.html

13.11.2023

Commentary

abortion trafficking

abortion travel bans

anti-choice ordinances

Debora K. Grasham

Melissa Murray

National Right to Life Committee

Steve Marshall

travel bans on abortion

traveling for abortion

Abortion bans are unpopular. Republicans are passing them anyway.

In some cases, anti-abortion legislators have been forced to backtrack from some more restrictive proposals. In others, they’ve tried to subvert the lawmaking process to avoid blowback.

Shefali Luthra
May 12, 2023

With abortion bans becoming increasingly unpopular, Republican-led statehouses are walking a delicate line: Trying to advance bills that would restrict access to the procedure without drawing attention, circumventing normal processes to cram new policies through as legislative sessions come to a close.

Last year, Republican lawmakers across the country pushed restriction after restriction in anticipation of the looming Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which in June of last year allowed states to begin banning abortion. But now that those laws can actually take effect, legislators are newly attuned to potential political consequences.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2023/05/abortion-bans-unpopular-republicans-passing-them-anyway/

12.05.2023

anti-choice restrictions

USA – After wins at the ballot, abortion rights groups want to ‘put this to the people’

November 11, 2022
Sarah McCammon

Abortion rights supporters had a successful run of ballot measures this year. In every state where voters were asked to weigh in directly on abortion rights, they supported measures that protect those rights and rejected initiatives that could threaten them.

Those victories have abortion rights advocates looking at where they can next take the fight directly to voters.

Contiuned: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/10/1135757008/after-wins-at-the-ballot-abortion-rights-groups-want-to-put-this-to-the-people

11.11.2022

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News

American Civil Liberties Union

Anthony Romero

Fairness Project

Kelly Hall

Marjorie Dannenfelser

California: What constitutional law experts say about the abortion ballot measure

BY MELODY GUTIERREZ
OCT. 14, 2022

SACRAMENTO — With favorable polls and a pile of cash on hand, supporters of the California ballot measure to add abortion rights directly into the state Constitution have enjoyed an easy road in this election thus far. Gov. Gavin Newsom is using at least $2 million of his own campaign funds to air ads supporting Proposition 1, and supporters featured Hillary Clinton on a panel Thursday discussing the importance of further solidifying California’s abortion rights.

But the smooth sailing would end if it’s passed, the small and underdog opposition campaign is promising ahead of the Nov. 8 election.

Continued: https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2022-10-14/california-politics-abortion-measure-gas-taxes-ca-politics

Revealed: Ginni Thomas’s links to anti-abortion groups who lobbied to overturn Roe

Analysis of ‘amicus briefs’ shows how closely Clarence Thomas’s wife was entwined with rightwing effort to reverse 1973 ruling

Ed Pilkington in New York
Fri 9 Sep 2022

Ginni Thomas, the self-styled “culture warrior” and extreme rightwing activist, has links to more than half of the anti-abortion groups and individuals who lobbied her husband Clarence Thomas and his fellow US supreme court justices ahead of their historic decision to eradicate a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.

A new analysis of the written legal arguments, or “amicus briefs”, used to lobby the justices as they deliberated over abortion underlines the extent to which Clarence Thomas’s wife was intertwined with this vast pressure campaign.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/09/ginni-thomas-abortion-roe-v-wade-supreme-court

Abortion opponents pushing for more restrictions, laws across U.S.

By Amy Forliti and Geoff Mulvihill, The Associated Press
Posted July 30, 2022

Now that Roe v. Wade has been toppled, abortion opponents are taking a multifaceted approach in their quest to end abortions nationwide, targeting their strategies to the dynamics of each state as they attempt to create new laws and defend bans in courts.

One anti-abortion group has proposed model legislation that would ban all abortions except to prevent the death of a pregnant woman. New legal frontiers could include prosecuting doctors who defy bans, and skirmishes over access to medication abortions already are underway. Others hope to get more conservatives elected in November to advance an anti-abortion agenda.

|Continued: https://globalnews.ca/news/9027063/u-s-abortion-opponents-more-restrictions/

30.07.2022

Alliance Defending Freedom

model anti-choice bills

National Right to Life

Roe v. Wade

This Is What It Was Like to Be an Abortion Escort Before Roe Ended

A volunteer and a legal scholar take you into a job that is about to become much more dangerous.

a. l. Dawson and J. Shoshanna Ehrlich
June 30, 2022

All across the country, with its wildly uneven distribution of reproductive health services, anti-abortion protesters continue to wage a war of attrition against abortion access—often transforming the public spaces in front of clinics into hostile zones that clients must navigate in order to access essential care.

It will only get harder now that the Supreme Court has gutted Roe with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. While abortion access has become increasingly difficult in recent years, particularly for marginalized communities in abortion-hostile regions, we will soon face the grim reality that abortion most likely will be banned in at least 25 states. (Oklahoma didn’t even bother to wait for the Supreme Court to institute such a ban, which the governor signed at the end of May.) At the same time, abortion clinics that still remain are anticipating more protests by emboldened and potentially more aggressive anti-abortion activists who are seeking to transform the nation into a unified abortion wasteland.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/06/this-is-what-it-was-like-to-be-an-abortion-escort-before-roe-ended/

Biden braces for Supreme Court to overturn Roe after months of planning for next steps

By Kevin Liptak and Jasmine Wright, CNN
Thu June 23, 2022

President Joe Biden is bracing for a Supreme Court ruling that would strip away nationwide abortion rights in the US, potentially setting off mass protests and heaping pressure on the White House to act, according to officials, even as there remains little he can do through executive action to fully mitigate the anticipated decision.

The nearing announcement -- which is expected to come within the next two weeks as the Supreme Court concludes its term -- will punctuate months of contingency planning at the White House and lobbying efforts by abortion rights advocates, who want Biden to take immediate action.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/politics/joe-biden-abortion-supreme-court/index.html