October 27, 2020
Sarah McCammon
Judge Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court confirmation could open the door to a world that many anti-abortion-rights activists have been envisioning for decades.
"I hope and pray that we will be in a world post-Roe v. Wade," said Carrie Murray Nellis, 41, an adoption attorney based in Georgia.
OCT. 27, 2020
By Madeleine Aggeler
With the appointment of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, the legal battle over reproductive rights in the United States is likely to intensify quickly. There are currently 17 abortion-related cases one step away from the Supreme Court. And now, with a 6-3 conservative majority on the Court, the future of Roe v. Wade — the 1973 case which ruled that abortion is a constitutional right — is more uncertain than ever.
Barrett, a devout Catholic and former mentee of the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, evaded questions about abortion during her confirmation hearing. But pro-choice groups like NARAL and Planned Parenthood have called her a “clear and present danger to Roe and reproductive freedom,” and “a particular insult to the legacy of Justice Ginsberg.” Indeed, Barrett was a member of an anti-abortion, “right to life” group in Indiana as recently as 2016, and in 2013, she gave two talks to anti-abortion student groups at the University of Notre Dame.
Continued: https://www.thecut.com/2020/10/what-are-trigger-laws-anti-abortion-roe-v-wade.html
Abortion rights don't hinge on whether a new Justice Amy Coney Barrett votes to overturn Roe. They're already at death's door by a thousand smaller cuts.
Ziad Munson, Opinion contributor
Oct 26, 2020
Here's a reality check for both sides of the abortion issue: The days when the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling protected widespread and easy access to abortion, along with the days when overturning Roe might dramatically reduce the number of abortions, are decades in the past.
The value of Roe today is not so much practical as it is symbolic. For the pro-choice movement, Roe has become an important public face of reproductive rights and a symbol of women's equality under the law. For the pro-life movement, Roe represents an original sin that activists have spent almost two generations working to erase.
BY CAROLINA ABUELO, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
10/25/20
In the conference room of Hospital Dos de Mayo in Lima, Peru, where I was researching cervical cancer, the medical resident droned through a list of bizarre tropical illnesses that had previously only existed in my North American textbooks. He was piecing together a case of fever and pain in the pelvis of a woman in her 20s. Then he added one more potential diagnosis: botched abortion.
That diagnosis had never occurred to me and was not part of my medical training in the United States. A few weeks later and a few miles away at our apartment in Lima, my baby sitter sat me down at the dining table to tell me that she was pregnant. Knowing that Maria’s husband had been unfaithful to her, I was not sure if congratulations were in order. As it turned out, he did not want to have this child and had encouraged her to pursue termination, even though it was illegal in Peru. He planned for her to take some black-market drugs.
St. Mary’s College has long had an anti-abortion club, but not an abortion rights one – until now.
By Melissa Jeltsen, HuffPost US
10/25/2020
Two years ago, when Megan King enrolled at Saint Mary’s College, a private Catholic women’s liberal arts school in Indiana, she quickly noticed the college’s official anti-abortion club. It was hard not to.
The student group Belles for Life, which stands against “abortion, infanticide, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia,” had posters in the hallways promoting its events, and handed out stickers for students to affix to their laptops. Online, the group recruited volunteers for the annual March for Life rally in Washington, D.C.
PBS, Oct 21, 2020
by Courtney Vinopal
Over her three-day confirmation hearing, Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett repeatedly declined to discuss her stance on abortion. But while there is no way to know for certain how she will rule on such cases, legal scholars say that her record, as well as a careful reading of certain answers she gave the Senate Judiciary Committee, gives clues about where the Supreme Court could be headed on issues of reproductive rights.
Barrett assured members of the committee that she would bring “no agenda” to her role if confirmed to the high court. She has also expressed anti-abortion beliefs in the past, and joined two dissents on abortion restriction cases during her time on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
BY DALIA FAHMY
OCTOBER 20, 2020
As the Senate prepares to vote on Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, public attention has focused on her Catholic faith and, in particular, her stance on abortion rights.
Some critics, citing Barrett’s past rulings on abortion, have questioned her views on Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that established a woman’s right to abortion. Others have connected Barrett’s legal opinions to her embrace of Catholic teachings, which prohibit abortion. During Senate hearings last week, Barrett declined to give specific answers about her stance on Roe v. Wade, saying that she does not have “any agenda.” If she is confirmed, Barrett will be the sixth Catholic justice on the court.
Continued: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/20/8-key-findings-about-catholics-and-abortion/
Republicans won’t tell Americans to wear masks to beat Covid, but will say what women and gay people can and cannot do
Robert Reich
Sun 18 Oct 2020
Trump and many Republicans insist that whether to wear a mask or to go to work during a pandemic should be personal choices. Yet what a woman does with her own body, or whether same-sex couples can marry, should be decided by government.
It’s a tortured, upside-down view of freedom. Yet it’s remarkably prevalent even as the pandemic resurges – America is back up to more than 60,000 new cases a day, the highest rate since July, and numbers continue to rise – and as the Senate considers Trump’s pick for the supreme court.
Women’s rights groups have raised concerns that Amy Coney Barrett will restrict abortion access in the United States.
17 Oct 2020
Thousands of protesters have rallied in the US capital – Washington, DC – and other cities across the country to protest against President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee and to call for his defeat in the November 3 election.
Saturday’s rallies, which organisers said were taking place in all 50 states, were inspired by the first Women’s March in Washington, DC, a huge anti-Trump rally held a day after his 2017 inauguration.
Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/17/womens-march-holds-rally-against-trumps-supreme-court-pick
By Quoctrung Bui, Claire Cain Miller and Margot Sanger-Katz
Ne York Times
Oct. 15, 2020
The almost-certain confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court has increased the chances that Roe v. Wade will be weakened or overturned. If that were to happen, abortion access would decline in large regions of the country, a new data analysis shows.
Legal abortion access would be unchanged in more than half of states, but it would effectively end for those living in much of the American South and Midwest, especially those who are poor, according to the analysis. (The analysis incorporates more recent data on research we wrote about last year.)
Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/15/upshot/what-happens-if-roe-is-overturned.html
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