USA – Inside the Extreme Effort to Punish Women for Abortion

Abortion “abolitionists” are the outer edge of the anti-abortion movement. They’re looking to gain followers after the decision to overturn Roe, unsettling mainstream anti-abortion groups.

By Elizabeth Dias
July 1, 2022

Hours after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week, a man with a wiry, squared-off beard and a metal cross around his neck celebrated with his team at a Brazilian steakhouse. He pulled out his phone to livestream to his followers.

“We have delivered a huge blow to the enemy and to this industry,” the man, Jeff Durbin, said. But, he explained, “our work has just really begun.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/us/abortion-abolitionists.html

The state fighting to dismantle abortion rights has a long history of permissive abortion laws

by Isabelle Taft
June 8, 2022

When Mississippi asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, it argued that a long tradition of state restrictions on abortion in the U.S. “defeats any claim of a deeply rooted right” to an abortion.

Yet for all but 21 of its 156 years as a state prior to Roe, Mississippi law technically permitted abortion for any reason until about 16 weeks of pregnancy.

Continued: https://mississippitoday.org/2022/06/08/mississippi-abortion-history/

USA – The Right to Reproductive Autonomy: A 14th Amendment Guarantee

5/24/2022
by DIANA KASDAN and RISA KAUFMAN

Despite the Supreme Court’s expected ruling, a correct understanding of the Constitution guarantees the legal right to reproductive autonomy: reclaiming the full promise of the 14th Amendment.

The Supreme Court will soon issue its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. A decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which the leaked opinion indicates a majority of the Court is prepared to do, would be egregiously wrong and have devastating impact nationwide. But whether the Court explicitly dismantles Roe or stops short of rejecting constitutional protection for abortion, we must continue fighting to secure the full promise of the 14th Amendment. Under a correct understanding of its multiple and interdependent guarantees, a future with stronger constitutional protection for reproductive autonomy is both necessary and possible.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2022/05/24/right-to-abortion-constitution-14th-amendment-freedom/

What the brewing interstate travel wars over abortion portend

Opinion by Mary Ziegler
Mon May 23, 2022

(CNN) The Supreme Court seems ready to undo Roe v. Wade, the landmark case recognizing the right to choose abortion, in a matter of weeks, and blue as well as red states are already preparing for what might be coming next: a conflict between states seeking to facilitate out-of-state travel for abortion and those trying to shut it down.

Strikingly, however, this brewing interstate war would be something relatively new. What has changed to make interstate conflict a possible new front in the abortion wars, and what does it mean for a post-Roe America?

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/23/opinions/anti-abortion-movement-geography-ziegler/index.html

Forced Pregnancy Is Involuntary Servitude, Violates the 13th Amendment

5/23/2022
by CARRIE N. BAKER

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.“
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

The draft Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked this month gives America a glimpse into a dystopian future where the Constitution would offer no protection for women’s rights—including abortion rights—because they are not “deeply rooted in the country’s history and traditions.”

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2022/05/23/abortion-bans-13th-amendment/

23.05.2022

involuntary servitude

reproductive coercion

United States

Health

Human Rights

America Almost Took a Different Path Toward Abortion Rights

Roe v. Wade was never expected to be the case that made history.

By Emily Bazelon
May 20, 2022

For three days in January 1970, they filled the 13th floor of the federal courthouse in Manhattan, women of all ages crowded into a conference room, sitting on the floor, spilling into the hallway. Some brought friends or husbands. One nursed a baby. Another was a painter who also taught elementary school. A third had gone to Catholic school. They’d come to give testimony in the case of Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz, the first in the country to challenge a state’s strict abortion law on behalf of women.

The witnesses in the courthouse were among 314 people, primarily women, brought together by a small team of lawyers, led by Florynce Kennedy and Nancy Stearns, to set up a legal argument no one had made before: that a woman’s right to an abortion was rooted in the Constitution’s promises of liberty and equal protection. New York permitted abortion only to save a woman’s life. Kennedy and Stearns wanted the court to understand how risking an illegal procedure or carrying a forced pregnancy could constrict women’s lives in ways that men did not experience.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/magazine/roe-v-wade-abortion-rights.html

20.05.2022

Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz

Coat Hanger Farewell

Diane Schulder Abrams

Equal Protection Clause

Griswold v. Connecticut

Justice Harry Blackmun

Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey

United States v. Virginia

women's abortion stories

Democrats Must Become As Brave and Righteous as Abortion-Clinic Escorts

To win back abortion rights, Democrats need to learn how to fight the moral battle being waged by anti-abortion theocrats—something clinic escorts do every day.

By Elie Mystal, The Nation
May 16, 2022

We now live in a country where the government cannot force you to wear a mask on a plane during a pandemic but can force you to carry a pregnancy to term against your will. It is a country where the government won’t ban certain kinds of assault rifles but will ban certain kinds of medical care. We live in this country because five justices in thrall to a fundamentalist Christian orthodoxy have taken control of the Supreme Court—and because the majority of Americans who reject that orthodoxy have too often ceded the moral ground to the monsters who claim to have legitimate, enforceable interests over women’s bodies.

Women’s rights organizations and advocates have been in the trenches, fighting this fundamentalist sect, at literal physical risk to their lives, for decades. They’ve been fighting in the streets and fighting in the courtroom, but their alleged allies in Congress, in the media, and in the boardroom have rarely had their back.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/abortion-moral-fight/

16.05.2022

Featured

Opinion

14th Amendment

abortion clinic escorts

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

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Alito’s abortion history lesson in dispute

By Lawrence Hurley
May 6, 2022

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Justice Samuel Alito's draft U.S. Supreme Court ruling that would overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide hinges on a contested historical review of restrictions on the procedure enacted during the 19th century.

Lawyers and scholars backing abortion rights have criticized Alito's reading of history as glossing over disputed facts and ignoring relevant details as the conservative justice sought to demonstrate that a woman's constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy was wrongly recognized in the Roe ruling.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-justice-alitos-abortion-history-lesson-dispute-2022-05-06/

06.05.2022

USA – The next frontier for the antiabortion movement: A nationwide ban

Advocates and some GOP lawmakers have started mobilizing around potential federal legislation to outlaw abortion after six weeks of pregnancy

By Caroline Kitchener
May 2, 2022

Leading antiabortion groups and their allies in Congress have been meeting behind the scenes to plan a national strategy that would kick in if the Supreme Court rolls back abortion rights this summer, including a push for a strict nationwide ban on the procedure if Republicans retake power in Washington.

The effort, activists say, is designed to bring a fight that has been playing out largely in the courts and state legislatures to the national political stage — rallying conservatives around the issue in the midterms and pressuring potential 2024 GOP presidential candidates to take a stand.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/02/abortion-ban-roe-supreme-court-mississippi/