‘Extreme’ US anti-abortion group ramps up lobbying in Westminster

The UK branch of the Alliance Defending Freedom has increased its spending and is forging ties with key MPs

Shanti Das, Home affairs correspondent
Sat 6 Apr 2024

A rightwing Christian lobby group that wants abortion to be banned has forged ties with an adviser to the prime minister and is drawing up policy briefings for politicians.

The UK branch of the US-based Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has more than doubled its spending since 2020 and been appointed a stakeholder in a parliamentary group on religious freedoms in a role that grants it direct access to MPs.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/06/extreme-us-anti-abortion-group-ramps-up-lobbying-in-westminster

USA – Abortion concerns once delayed a major religious freedom law. Now, they’re back in the spotlight

Do religious exercise rights protect access to abortion? Courts have been asked to decide

By Kelsey Dallask
Nov 25, 2023

On Sept. 18, 1992, the Senate Judiciary Committee and dozens of invited guests gathered to consider, among other things, the link between religious freedom and abortion.

The focus of the hearing was the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a bill designed to restore religious exercise protections that recently had been severely limited by the Supreme Court.

Continued: https://www.deseret.com/2023/11/25/23960097/abortion-religious-freedom-restoration-act

US judge blocks law that would have been first to ban ‘abortion pill reversal’

Abortion foes claim practice can be used to halt medication abortion while studies don’t support potentially harmful theory

Carter Sherman
Mon 23 Oct 2023

A law that would have been the first in the United States to ban a controversial practice known as “abortion pill reversal” cannot take effect, a judge ruled late Saturday.
abortion
US district court judge Daniel D Domenico granted a preliminary injunction in the case, ruling in favor of a Catholic health clinic that had argued the law infringed on its first amendment rights.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/22/abortion-pill-reversal-ban-progesterone-judge-ruling

A legal scholar sizes up the religious argument against abortion bans

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL
JULY 9, 2023

(JTA) — The abortion debate is often portrayed as a clash between religious beliefs on the pro-life side and secular or humanist convictions on the pro-choice side. Indeed, lawmakers and activists have often invoked God in enacting state bans on abortion since the Supreme Court, in last year’s Dobbs decision, struck down a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy.

Some clergy and faith groups, however, including a number of Jews, are pushing back. In efforts to overturn these restrictions, they have been pressing a legal strategy claiming that abortion bans violate their religious liberty. In Kentucky, a case brought by three Jewish women argues that the state’s near-total abortion ban violates their religious beliefs about when life begins and protecting a mother’s life. In Indiana, a suit brought by Hoosier Jews for Choice and four women who represent a variety of faiths demands exemptions from the state’s abortion ban for people whose religions support abortion rights.

Continued: https://www.jta.org/2023/07/09/ideas/a-legal-scholar-sizes-up-the-religious-argument-against-abortion-bans

Federal judge says constitutional right to abortion may still exist, despite Dobbs

The judge said the Supreme Court’s ruling concluded only that the 14th Amendment included no right to abortion, but stopped short of definitively ruling out other aspects of the Constitution.

By KYLE CHENEY and JOSH GERSTEIN
Feb 6, 2023

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., suggested Monday that there may be a constitutional right to abortion baked into the 13th Amendment — an area she said went unexplored by the Supreme Court in its momentous decision last year overturning Roe v. Wade.

In a pending criminal case against several anti-abortion activists, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization concluded only that the 14th Amendment included no right to abortion but stopped short of definitively ruling out other aspects of the Constitution that might apply.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/06/federal-judge-constitutional-right-abortion-dobbs-00081391

06.02.2023

News

13th Amendment

14th Amendment

Colleen Kollar-Kotelly

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Equal Rights Amendment

involuntary servitude

State lawsuits defend abortion access with religious freedom

Critics of religious freedom laws often argue they are used to discriminate against LGBTQ people and only protect a conservative Christian worldview

By ARLEIGH RODGERS Associated Press/Report for America
December 27, 2022

INDIANAPOLIS -- Cara Berg Raunick watched with bafflement as Indiana's Republican legislators took less than two weeks to debate and pass an abortion ban that the governor signed quickly into law.

The women’s health nurse practitioner from Indianapolis was struck by just how frequently faith was cited in the arguments as reason to ban the medical practice. But Berg Raunick, who is Jewish, said those views go against her beliefs.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/state-lawsuits-defend-abortion-access-religious-freedom-95854873

Jewish congregations mount legal challenges to state abortion bans

BY: ARIANA FIGUEROA
AUGUST 26, 2022

Thousands of years of Jewish scripture make it clear that access to abortion care is a requirement of Jewish law and practice, according to Rabbi Karen Bogard.

“We preserve life at all costs,” she said in an interview with States Newsroom. “But there is a difference between that which is living, and that which is not yet living.”

Continued: https://www.virginiamercury.com/2022/08/26/jewish-congregations-mount-legal-challenges-to-state-abortion-bans/

History shows that the First Amendment should protect abortion

Antiabortion activists have long sought to prevent this.

Perspective by Rachel Kranson
May 12, 2022

A leaked opinion revealed that the Supreme Court is potentially poised to reverse the long-standing legal precedent that established a constitutional right to abortion under the 14th Amendment’s right to privacy. That has left champions of abortion rights wondering about other legal avenues that could ensure reproductive freedom. Might the Constitution guarantee abortion access as a First Amendment, religious right?

Many Americans are surprised by the notion that a religious tradition could permit or even mandate the termination of a pregnancy. They assume all religions endorse the conservative Christian view that life begins at conception, rendering abortion akin to murder.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/05/12/first-amendment-could-save-abortion-rights/

12.05.2022

14th Amendment

American Civil Liberties Union

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby

First Amendment

Henry Hyde

National Council of Jewish Women

National Right to Life Committee

Rachel Kranson

Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

religious freedom

Religious Freedom Restoration Act

right to privacy

Roe v. Wade

U.S. Supreme Court

USA – The Supreme Court is leading a Christian conservative revolution

Almost as soon as Justice Barrett was confirmed, the Court handed down a revolutionary “religious liberty” decision. It hasn’t slowed down since.

By Ian Millhiser
Jan 30, 2022

Justice Amy Coney Barrett had been a member of the Supreme Court for less than a month when she cast the key vote in one of the most consequential religion cases of the past century.

Months earlier, when the seat she would fill was still held by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Court had handed down a series of 5-4 decisions establishing that churches and other houses of worship must comply with state occupancy limits and other rules imposed upon them to slow the spread of Covid-19.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/22889417/supreme-court-religious-liberty-christian-right-revolution-amy-coney-barrett

US Muslim advocates weigh in on abortion rights battle

Imminent threat to Roe v Wade raises concern from many religious communities across the US, including Muslim Americans.

By Dalia Hatuqa
Published On 26 Jan 2022

Forty-nine years ago, the US Supreme Court
issued a ruling that changed the lives of American women, formally legalising
the right to abortion across the United States.

Now, as Roe v Wade faces its most serious threat in decades, Muslim Americans,
like many others across the US, have been contemplating what overturning that
decision could mean for women’s reproductive rights and access to safe
abortions.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/26/us-muslim-advocates-weigh-in-on-abortion-rights-battle