Sotomayor felt ‘shell-shocked’ after U.S. Supreme Court’s abortion decision

By Karen Sloan, Reuters
January 4, 2023

SAN DIEGO - Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Wednesday told legal educators she felt a "sense of despair" at the direction taken by the U.S. Supreme Court during its previous term, during which its conservative majority overturned the constitutional right to abortion.

Sotomayor, who has dissented in major cases including the abortion decision as the court's 6-3 conservative majority has become increasingly assertive, described herself as "shell-shocked" and "deeply sad" after that term ended in June.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/sotomayor-felt-shell-shocked-after-us-supreme-courts-abortion-decision-2023-01-04/

04.01.2023

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Association of American Law Schools

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

This year was devastating for women’s rights. 2023 may not be better.

Now is not the time to take your eyes off the erosion of these fundamental rights.

Dec. 31, 2022
By Marisa Kabas, MSNBC Opinion Columnist

The year 2022 was, in a word, devastating for women. It was the year we lost fundamental rights; it was the year we lost bodily autonomy; it was the year we became inferior in the eyes of the government; it was the year we slid backwards.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn nearly 50 years of legal precedent and no longer consider abortion a constitutional right sent women’s rights into a tailspin. Suddenly it was up to individual states to decide on the legality of this safe medical procedure, and with that came the possibility for legislators and judges alike to look at all manor of reproductive health care in a new light. Now it seems nothing is off the table.

Continued: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/texas-abortion-rights-get-even-worse-2023-rcna63721

31.12.2022

Marjorie Dannenfelser

Matthew Kacsmaryk

Roe v. Wade

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America

‘THE central issue’: How the fall of Roe v. Wade shook the 2022 election

More than 50 Democratic and Republican elected officials, campaign aides and consultants took POLITICO inside the first campaign after the Supreme Court's landmark ruling.

By ELENA SCHNEIDER and HOLLY OTTERBEIN
12/19/2022

On May 4, less than 48 hours after a draft opinion was published showing the Supreme Court was poised to end the federal right to abortion, a group of eight strangers gathered around a conference table in the Detroit suburbs to talk about the news.

They were all white women, mostly in their 30s to 50s and without college degrees. Their home county, Macomb, had voted for President Barack Obama twice and President Donald Trump twice. In the upcoming gubernatorial race, they were undecided, frustrated by how Democratic incumbent Gretchen Whitmer had handled the pandemic.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/19/dobbs-2022-election-abortion-00074426

USA – Desperate abortion foes resort to new tactics while pregnant people find ways to thwart them

BY ROBIN ABCARIAN, COLUMNIST
DEC. 18, 2022

Illegal abortion is back, and — dare I say? — it’s better than ever. Did our ultraconservative Supreme Court, so out of step with 21st century America, really think that overturning nearly 50 years of legal precedent would end elective abortion in America?

Sure, sure, they returned the issue to the states, the reddest of which immediately banned the procedure, even when a pregnancy results from rape or incest or the fetus has medical issues incompatible with life.

Continued: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-12-18/illegal-abortion-pills-ban-medication-abortion

When Fetal Rights Are More Important Than Democracy

After Roe, the anti-abortion movement faces a new opponent: popular opinion.

By Mary Ziegler
OCTOBER 3, 2022

The anti-abortion movement has
long loved to profess its love for democracy. Clarke Forsythe of Americans
United for Life consistently called on the Supreme Court to reverse Roe v. Wade
and put questions about abortion “back into voters’ hands—where they belong.”
The National Catholic Register proclaimed the day Roe was overturned “a
wonderful day for democracy.”

But now democracy may not look so hot to
anti-abortion activists: In the months since Roe was overturned, voters in
Kansas, a deeply conservative state, decisively rejected a proposal to undo
state constitutional abortion rights, and many expect the result to be the same
when voters confront ballot initiatives in key states such as Michigan. Fueled
by rage about the reversal of abortion rights, Democrats have nearly eliminated
Republicans’ advantage in voter registration and have turned what appeared to
be a landslide loss in the 2022 midterms into a potential nail-biter.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/anti-abortion-movement-roe-v-wade-democracy/671583/

Revealed: Ginni Thomas’s links to anti-abortion groups who lobbied to overturn Roe

Analysis of ‘amicus briefs’ shows how closely Clarence Thomas’s wife was entwined with rightwing effort to reverse 1973 ruling

Ed Pilkington in New York
Fri 9 Sep 2022

Ginni Thomas, the self-styled “culture warrior” and extreme rightwing activist, has links to more than half of the anti-abortion groups and individuals who lobbied her husband Clarence Thomas and his fellow US supreme court justices ahead of their historic decision to eradicate a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.

A new analysis of the written legal arguments, or “amicus briefs”, used to lobby the justices as they deliberated over abortion underlines the extent to which Clarence Thomas’s wife was intertwined with this vast pressure campaign.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/09/ginni-thomas-abortion-roe-v-wade-supreme-court

Biden leans into abortion rights in speech to Democratic activists

The president's remarks about abortion came as he works through refining a midterm stump speech full of increasingly sharp-edged digs at the GOP.

By OLIVIA OLANDER and CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO
Sept 8, 2022

President Joe Biden escalated his attacks on Republicans over abortion rights in a speech to Democratic activists late Thursday, addressing the specifics of what he contends his opponents want: an expansion of abortion bans before many women know they’re pregnant, and an attempt to pass a national ban, which he pledged to veto.

Leaning into the Supreme Court’s overturning of abortion rights this summer, the president suggested there would be a surge of voter activity in the fall midterm elections pushing back against the high court’s decision. Biden reiterated that abortion could be just the start of Republican attempts to dial back rights, including contraception and same-sex marriage.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/08/biden-leans-into-abortion-rights-00055819

08.09.2022

Why restricting access to abortion damages women’s health

The PLOS Medicine Editors
Published: July 26, 2022
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004075

In late June, the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling was overturned by the United States Supreme Court, a decision, decried by human rights experts at the United Nations [1], that leaves many women and girls without the right to obtain abortion care that was established nearly 50 years ago. The consequences of limited or nonextant access to safe abortion services in the US remain to be seen; however, information gleaned from abortion-related policies worldwide provides insight into the likely health effects of this abrupt reversal in abortion policy. The US Supreme Court’s decision should serve to amplify the global call for strategies to mitigate the inevitable repercussions for women’s health.

Continued: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004075

The inside story of how John Roberts failed to save abortion rights

Joan Biskupic, CNN legal analyst & Supreme Court biographer
Tue July 26, 2022

Chief Justice John Roberts privately lobbied fellow conservatives to save the constitutional right to abortion down to the bitter end, but May's unprecedented leak of a draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade made the effort all but impossible.

It appears unlikely that Roberts' best prospect -- Justice Brett Kavanaugh -- was ever close to switching his earlier vote, despite Roberts' attempts that continued through the final weeks of the session.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/26/politics/supreme-court-john-roberts-abortion-dobbs/index.html

The Supreme Court is unscientific and medically negligent

Robert Pearl
July 25, 2022

A pair of Supreme Court rulings in June — one on gun rights, the other on abortion — have elicited strong, partisan reactions.

In recent weeks, critics have called out inconsistencies in the court’s decisions: One ruling restricts the ability of states to regulate guns while the other expands the right of states to regulate abortions. The result, opponents say, is that Americans are free to carry guns but forced to carry babies.

Continued: https://thefulcrum.us/Government/Judicial/supreme-court-decisions

25.07.2022