Indonesia widens abortion window for health emergencies, pregnancy due to rape

But Muslim-majority nation’s top clerical body slams move saying fetus has a soul at 40 days.

Pizaro Gozali Idrus and Arie Firdaus
August 1, 2024

Indonesia has widened the window to 14 from six weeks after conception for women to have abortions in cases of health emergencies and pregnancies from rape and sexual violence – a divisive change in the Muslim-majority country where termination is mostly illegal.

Gender rights activists in Southeast Asia’s most populous country who have been demanding the change welcomed the move that came two years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending that nation’s right to abortion.

Continued: https://www.benarnews.org/english/news/indonesian/abortion-window-widened-08012024185515.html

Inside the Supreme Court’s negotiations and compromise on Idaho’s abortion ban

By Joan Biskupic, CNN Chief Supreme Court Analyst
Mon July 29, 2024

The Supreme Court began the year poised to build on its 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and to deliver a new blow to abortion access.

In January, the court took the extraordinary step of letting Idaho enforce its ban on abortion with an exception only to prevent the death of a pregnant woman, despite an ongoing challenge from the Biden administration arguing that it intruded on federal protections for emergency room care.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/29/politics/supreme-court-idaho-abortion-emtala-biskupic/index.html

What GOP’s European abortion example looks like in France

French law bans elective abortions after the first trimester but includes sweeping exceptions

By Ariel Cohen
July 3, 2024

PARIS — Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, Republicans on Capitol Hill and conservative justices have regularly cited European laws barring abortion after the first trimester of pregnancy to argue for similar policy in the United States.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. both cited European abortion limits in their opinions in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case. More recently, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has called for a national ban on abortion after 15 weeks of gestation, told reporters on Capitol Hill that a first-trimester abortion limit would put the U.S. in line with other peer nations.

“Forty-seven of 50 European nations have national limits on abortion between 12 and 15 weeks,” Graham said in April after former President Donald Trump said he would leave abortion policies to the states. “This is the civilized world’s position.”

Continued: https://rollcall.com/2024/07/03/what-gops-european-abortion-example-looks-like-in-france/

The supreme court abortion ruling hides conservative justices’ partisan agenda

One day soon, this case will come back, and the supreme court will allow states to ban emergency abortions

Moira Donegan
Fri 28 Jun 2024

The supreme court is a messy institution. Its six conservative justices are mired in infighting over both the pace of their shared ideological project of remaking American law and life according to rightwing preferences, and over their preferred methodological course for doing so. Their squabbling is not helped by the fact that two of them, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, keep embarrassing the court with gauche public scandals, which draw attention to the court’s legitimacy crises like a vulgar flag waving above One First Street. For their part, the liberals are exhausted, impotent and at times apparently publicly despairing. Their dissents have sometimes taken on tones of exasperation and peeved sarcasm, as if they’re turning to the country and asking: “Can you believe this?” Their most senior member, Sonia Sotomayor, recently told an interviewer that over the past several terms, since the court’s conservative supermajority was sealed under the Trump administration, she has sometimes gone into her chambers after the announcement of major decisions and wept. She says she anticipates having to do so again: in one recent dissent, she warned ominously about the future of gay marriage rights.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/28/supreme-court-abortion-ruling-conservative-justices

28.06.2024

Opinion

Burwell v Hobby Lobby

Clarence Thomas

emergency abortions

EMTALA

Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Moira Donegan

Moyle v United States

Anti-abortion states are targeting an emergency healthcare law. Will the supreme court side with them?

Justices to rule whether abortion bans should undo Emtala, the Reagan-era law requiring hospitals to treat emergency patients

Jessica Glenza
Sun 21 Apr 2024

One of the only universal rights to healthcare in the US is to be treated in the emergency room – a place where doctors are required to stabilize patients if their future health or life is in serious jeopardy.

That right, guaranteed by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known across the country by healthcare professionals as Emtala, was borne out of what was once a common practice called “patient dumping” – transferring patients who could not pay from private hospitals to public counterparts, even in emergency situations.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/apr/21/emtala-supreme-court-abortion

USA – ‘Very clear’ or ‘narrow and confusing’? Abortion lawsuits highlight confusion over emergency exceptions

N'dea Yancey-Bragg, USA TODAY
Jan 27, 2024

A North Dakota judge's recent decision to deny a request blocking part of the state's restrictive abortion law highlights an issue abortion-rights advocates say is impacting doctors nationwide: The exceptions in strict abortion laws can be vague, causing medical providers to question when they can perform an abortion in a medical emergency.

A lawsuit in North Dakota is one of several recently filed by advocates seeking to clarify and expand the circumstances under which doctors can provide abortions during medical emergencies in states with strict abortion bans. Mary Ziegler, a professor of law at University of California, Davis, said the emergency exceptions written into these laws can be confusing for physicians and, given their high penalties, can lead doctors to "err on the side of protecting themselves and not providing care to patients."

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/01/27/abortion-lawsuits-emergency-medical-exceptions/72339103007/

Most state abortion bans have limited exceptions − but it’s hard to understand what they mean

January 26, 2024 Naomi Cahn, Sonia Suter

More than a year after the Supreme Court found there is no fundamental right to get an abortion, 21 states have laws in effect that ban abortion well before fetal viability, generally allowing it only in the first trimester.

Fourteen of these 21 states have also issued near-total bans on abortion from the point of conception. But it’s not clear when, if ever, an abortion would be permissible under these near-total bans.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/most-state-abortion-bans-have-limited-exceptions-but-its-hard-to-understand-what-they-mean-221389

26.01.2024

Commentary

abortion exemptions

abortion law exceptions

Center for Reproductive Rights

USA – Doctors face ‘a perpetual rollercoaster’ as abortion returns to the Supreme Court

Two cases — one concerning medication abortion and another about providing the procedure in medical emergencies — could further upend a profession already under siege.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
January 19, 2024

Less than two years ago, the Supreme Court eliminated the federal right to an abortion, a decision that the court’s conservative majority suggested would remove them from further litigation of abortion rights..

”The Court’s decision properly leaves the question of abortion for the people and their elected representatives in the democratic process,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2024/01/doctors-emtala-mifepristone-impact-abortion-supreme-court/

19.01.2024

abortion pills

Brett Kavanaugh

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

What to Know About the Federal Law at the Heart of the Latest Supreme Court Abortion Case

The federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known as EMTALA, requires hospitals to provide medically necessary care to stabilize patients in emergency situations.

By Pam Belluck
Jan. 18, 2024

One of the newest battlefields in the abortion debate is a decades-old federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known by doctors and health policymakers as EMTALA.

The issue involves whether the law requires hospital emergency rooms to provide abortions in urgent circumstances, including when a woman’s health is threatened by continuing her pregnancy. But, as with many abortion-related arguments, this one could have broader implications. Some legal experts say it could potentially determine how restrictive state abortion laws are allowed to be and whether states can prevent emergency rooms from providing other types of medical care, such as gender-affirming treatments.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/18/health/emtala-abortion-supreme-court.html

A Young Woman Almost Died Due to Texas’ Abortion Bans. Now She’s Battling to Save Other Women

Jan 12, 2024
by BONNIE FULLER

“I can’t carry a pregnancy again,” Amanda Zurawski said sadly, but matter of factly. The Austin, Texas, resident will never be able to carry a pregnancy again because she was refused a necessary abortion in her state after her water broke at 18 weeks, long before her baby would have been viable.

Tragically, the delay in receiving what used to be normal healthcare allowed a massive bacterial infection to develop and turn into life-threatening sepsis—which ravaged her body and reproductive organs.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2024/01/12/amanda-zurawski-texas-abortion-kate-cox-republicans-womens-health/