Anticipated abolition of Roe v. Wade after 49 years takes away freedom and health for many American women

Boulder Daily Camera
January 22, 2022
By Warren M. Hern

One of the great legal landmarks in American history, and one of the most important landmarks in the history of women, is one year short of its 50th anniversary. The Supreme Court handed down its Roe v. Wade decision on Jan. 22, 1973, and it is very doubtful that it will reach that 50th anniversary. With its anticipated abolition by the Court goes freedom and health for many American women.

The Supreme Court is now a partisan tool of the Republican Party and its partner in gaining overwhelming, unassailable political power. We are headed for permanent minority rule by a white supremacist, misogynistic, theocratic minority that opposes basic personal freedom, secular society, freedom of the press, scientific knowledge, social justice, civil rights, voting rights, democracy itself, and thought.

Continued: https://www.dailycamera.com/2022/01/22/warren-m-hern/

Group whose anti-abortion ad Amy Barrett signed accused of promoting harassment of doctors

In one case, a doctor whose name was published by Indiana group was warned by FBI of kidnapping threat against her daughter

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington
Fri 14 Jan 2022

An Indiana group whose anti-abortion campaign was endorsed in a signed advertisement by Amy Coney Barrett before she became a supreme court justice, keeps a published list of abortion providers and their place of work on its website, in what some experts say is an invitation to harass and intimidate the doctors and their staff.

In one case, court records show, a doctor whose name was published by the group, which is called Right to Life Michiana, was warned by the FBI of a kidnapping threat that had been made online against her daughter.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/14/anti-abortion-group-indiana-amy-coney-barrett

Sarah Weddington, attorney who won Roe v Wade abortion case, dies aged 76

Texan lawyer and Linda Coffee won landmark 1973 case, safeguarding right now under threat from US supreme court

Martin Pengelly in New York
Sun 26 Dec 2021

Sarah Weddington, an attorney who argued and won the Roe v Wade supreme court case which established the right to abortion in the US, has died aged 76.

Susan Hays, a Democratic candidate for Texas agriculture commissioner, announced the news on Twitter on Sunday and the Dallas Morning News confirmed it.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/26/sarah-weddington-attorney-who-won-roe-v-wade-abortion-case-dies-aged-76

USA – 59% Of Women Seeking Abortions Are Mothers Facing High Poverty Risk

Teresa Ghilarducci, Senior Contributor
Dec 24, 2021

When I taught economics at the University of Notre Dame, I learned that banning
abortion in effect violates a keystone of Catholic social teaching that gives a
“preferential option to the poor” and vulnerable. In America, young mothers are
among the most vulnerable among us.

I was honored to teach at Notre Dame for 25 years. There I befriended
activists, many liberation theologians, and others who were “pro-life.” They
were deeply committed to the sanctity of life and often opposed the death
penalty for the same reasons they opposed abortion. A group of women faculty,
once we were tenured, advocated for our health insurance to cover Viagra and
invitro fertilization. Very pro-life.

Continued: https://www.forbes.com/sites/teresaghilarducci/2021/12/24/59-of-women-seeking-abortions-are-mothers-facing-high-poverty-risk/?sh=267cb248264f

24.12.2021

Catholic support for abortion

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

USA – How Abortion Access Can Save Women From Violence

In America, pregnancy is a uniquely violent and sometimes deadly time. Abortion can be a lifeline.

Caroline Orr Bueno
December 15, 2021

There was a particularly revealing exchange at the Supreme Court last week, during arguments over Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, in a case with grave implications for abortion rights nationwide. Justice Amy Coney Barrett brought up safe haven laws—which allow babies to be surrendered for adoption shortly after birth without criminal penalties—and suggested that abortion is no longer necessary since women can just give up their babies for adoption. If abortion rights advocates are concerned about the burdens of forced motherhood, Barrett asked, “Why don’t the safe haven laws take care of that problem?”

Barrett’s comments reflect complete disregard for the ordeal of pregnancy itself and the impact of making people endure an unwanted pregnancy.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/164711/abortion-bans-violence-against-women

It’s not as simple as abortion v. adoption. Just ask Bri

December 14, 2021
AMY ISACKSON

Bri had wanted to be a mom for as long as she can recall. "I remember in high school, one of my aunts had a large family, so I used to say I wanted five kids like her," she said.

But seven years ago, Bri got pregnant by accident. She was 21 years old and the reality she confronted was very different from her teenage fantasy.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/14/1063784711/its-not-as-simple-as-abortion-v-adoption-just-ask-bri

14.12.2021

Commentary

Featured

adoption

adoption and abortion

Amy Coney Barrett

Corrine Rocca

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

The arguments about abortion in the US are about one thing: controlling women

Anti-abortionists are intent on enhancing men’s privileges, while women cannot even have rights over their own bodies

Rebecca Solnit
Fri 10 Dec 2021

A lot of people with a lot of power don’t see why women should have jurisdiction over their own bodies. That’s the anti-abortion argument in a nutshell, in that they claim a foetus, or even an embryo, or in some cases even a fertilised egg too small for the human eye to see, has rights that supersede those of the person inside whose body that egg, embryo or foetus might be.

What was clear from the rightwing pundits and conservative supreme court justices who have piped up over the last month as arguments were being heard in the most significant abortion rights case since Roe v Wade, is that in a country whose constitution is supposed to grant us all a lot of rights, they are happy to strip away a right so fundamental it’s unimaginable in other circumstances – or that it would be stripped from other people, namely men.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/10/arguments-abortion-us-controlling-women-anti-abortionists-women-rights-over-bodies

The Supreme Court’s Texas Abortion Ruling Isn’t the Victory Many Want It to Be

Sonia Sotomayor said it best: “The Court should have put an end to this madness months ago.… It failed to do so [earlier], and it fails again today.”

By Elie Mystal
December 10, 2021

The Supreme Court today allowed some lawsuits to go forward against Texas’s six-week abortion ban, commonly known as Senate Bill 8. The majority opinion, written by Neil Gorsuch, allows abortion providers to sue a limited number of state officials and argue that the ban is unconstitutional. The decision means that lower courts will now be allowed to rule on the merits of the ban, and those lower court decisions will eventually be appealed back to the Supreme Court. The law will remain in place while that litigation plays out.

Meanwhile, in a separate, unsigned opinion, the Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice against SB 8.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/texas-abortion-ruling-supreme-court/

10.12.2021

The Mississippi Abortion Case and the Fragile Legitimacy of the Supreme Court

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is an open challenge to the Court’s authority, and perhaps broadly reflects a spirit of legal self-help that is running through the land.

By Jeannie Suk Gersen
December 4, 2021

The legal landscape of the past weeks and months has prompted questions of which people and entities are legitimate interpreters and enforcers of the law and what happens when you take the law into your own hands. Mississippi and other states took the recent changes in personnel on the Supreme Court as an invitation to defy the Court’s constitutional rulings on abortion, and those states now seem likely to prevail.

During oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, last Wednesday, the three liberal Justices often seemed to be delivering dirges, as though they had accepted a loss and were speaking for posterity. Mississippi’s ban on abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy, which boldly flouts the Court’s precedents setting the line at around twenty-four weeks, is likely to be upheld by the conservative Justices.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/13/the-mississippi-abortion-case-and-the-fragile-legitimacy-of-the-supreme-court

Conservatives Are Tearing Down Roe. That’s Extreme — and Just the Beginning

What makes you think a movement this extreme would stop at erasing a woman’s right to choose?

By ALEX MORRIS , Rolling Stone
December 4, 2021

Listening to the oral arguments this week in
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, one thing seemed abundantly
clear: Roe v. Wade will soon be overturned. This was clear in Chief Justice
John Roberts’ line of questioning, as he lamely tried to get his conservative
colleagues to stick to the Mississippi law’s original (unconstitutional)
15-week ban rather than considering a full overturn of Roe that the state
started pushing for as soon as Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed. It was
clear when Barrett inanely skirted the issue of forced pregnancy and childbirth
by reassuring the court that “safe haven” laws still allowed women to give
their babies up for adoption. It was especially clear when Justice Brett
Kavanaugh began suggesting that the Constitution is “neutral on the question of
abortion” and enumerating cases in which precedent has been overturned. Based
on their line of questioning — and to the extent that it is predictive — a
majority of justices demonstrated not only a willingness to overturn Roe but
some prior consideration of how to justify doing so. Whether Dobbs is the case
that will finally mark the end of the constitutionally protected right to an
abortion (and we probably won’t know until June or July), it is clear that the
end is coming soon.

Continued: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/roevwade-dobbsvjackson-abortion-lgbtq-rights-1266062/