#Anti-abortion Laws

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Your letters: Overturning Roe V. Wade hurts poor people more than people with means

"How could a country that values freedom outlaw a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body and put those decisions in the hands of legislators?" - Marge Langer of Danbury

Dear editor, Fifty-one years ago, on Jan. 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that full reproductive healthcare for women was a constitutional, human right when it issued the Roe V. Wade decision. The decision was overturned on June 24, 2022. I am shocked by this development. It is an authoritarian move. How could a country that values freedom outlaw a woman’s right to make decisions about…

[thevitalportal]

Tyranny of the Right Wing politicians.

[thoughtlessarse]

A pregnant woman has died after having to carry a dead foetus in her womb for over a week. The hospital at which she was treated denies wrongdoing, but prosecutors have launched an investigation and activists blame the death on Poland’s near-total abortion ban that came into force last year. A similar case last autumn, when a pregnant woman died after doctors refused to terminate her foetus despite it being diagnosed with fatal birth defects, prompted mass protests against the abortion law. Similar demonstrations are now again being planned for today. News of the latest death – of a 37-year-old, named only as Agnieszka, who is survived by a husband and three children – was announced last night by the family on social media. They blamed the hospital for the tragedy, saying Agnieszka had been forced to carry a dead foetus for seven days because doctors did not want to remove it for fear of harming its twin. The twin subsequently also died, and both foetuses were removed two days later. The hospital then called in a priest to conduct a funeral for them, according to the family. But Agnieszka herself subsequently fell ill, with what her family believe was sepsis, a life-threatening response by the body to infection. After later being transferred to a different hospital, she died soon after. “We appeal for justice and redress for the death of our wife, mother, sister and friend,” wrote her family in their appeal. “This is further evidence that the government has blood on its hands.”

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[worldofwardcraft]

So sue me.

March 28, 2022

The GOP has long marketed itself as being staunchly opposed to "frivolous lawsuits." This was mainly because trial lawyers associations typically back Democrats. But now Republicans stand revealed as the party that actually encourages irresponsible legal filings with a rash of legislation in red states outlawing abortion and then allowing private citizens to enforce the ban through lawsuits. In this way, anti-choice Republicans believe they can circumvent the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision by claiming state governments aren't involved.

It all started in the failed state of Texas with the passage of Senate Bill 8. Here's the Texas Monthly to describe it.

SB 8 allows any private citizen in Texas, or elsewhere, to sue anyone who performs an abortion in the state after an embryo’s cardiac activity can be detected. It also allows any private citizen to sue anyone (in Texas or elsewhere) who “aids or abets” anyone in getting an abortion in Texas after that period or anyone who intends to aid or abet that process. Each lawsuit has a minimum statutory damage amount of $10,000, with the damages collected by the plaintiff as a sort of bounty.

When the US Supreme Court twice refused to strike down that blatantly unconstitutional act, more than ten far right-dominated states — including Tennessee, Florida and Ohio — scrambled to take advantage of Texas’ "legal hack" by introducing copycat bills.

In the Missouri House of Representatives an amendment was inserted into an unrelated spending bill making it illegal to help a Missouri woman get an abortion outside the state at any point in her pregnancy. Like the Texas law, this would be enforced through lawsuits brought by private citizens, not state officials. Remarkably, these legislators think they have the authority to control the behavior of Missouri residents outside the state.

Idaho has already passed its own Texas-style anti-abortion legislation, allowing any private citizen to file a lawsuit against anyone who performs, aids or abets an abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected (usually at six weeks). And only last week Oklahoma enacted a similarly oppressive law eliminating abortion access, likewise enforced through private lawsuits.

Besides cynically gaming the system, laws like these are also consistent with the right wing's fanatical notion that governments should never do anything. Including enforce laws, apparently. But as the Associated Press reports, a bill recently introduced in California "seeks to use citizen lawsuits to go after gun companies in same way Texas law targets abortion providers." So guess what, GOPer geese? Your lawsuit sauce can also be applied by liberal ganders .

[butasformeblog]

What's Good For The Goose Is Good For The Gander...

"On first glance, it would be easy to see the Supreme Court’s decision Friday in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson as a win for abortion rights. It would also be wrong.

The specific question in Jackson is whether abortion providers are allowed to bring a federal lawsuit seeking to block SB 8. Although Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion technically answers this question in the affirmative, it permits suits only against state health officials who play a very minimal role in enforcing the law. It does not allow suits to proceed against the Texas state officials who play the biggest role in enforcing SB 8: state court judges and clerks.

The upshot of this decision is that, while the abortion provider plaintiffs in Jackson may be able to get a federal court order declaring that SB 8 is unconstitutional, the only real relief they are likely to win is an order preventing a few state health officials from carrying out the minor role they play in enforcing the law.The most important provisions of the law — the ones that effectively prevent anyone from performing an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy by threatening them with financial ruin if they do so — will most likely remain in effect.

BE THAT AS IT MAY, SCOTUS OPENED A CAN OF WORMS WITH ITS' DECISION AND GUN RIGHTS OPPONENTS HAVE GONE FISHING WITH IT...

One day later, Newsom announced that he will push for an SB 8-style law in California, which targets gun rights in the same way that Texas targeted abortion rights.

At oral arguments in Jackson itself, Justice Brett Kavanaugh — who is probably the median justice on the current Court — repeatedly pointed to a brief filed by the Firearms Policy Coalition, which warned that states might enact SB 8-style laws targeting guns. Although Kavanaugh effectively voted to sustain Texas’s efforts to ban abortions in Jackson, he appeared unwilling to do the same for a gun law.

The hypocrisy of a decision allowing states to neutralize a right favored by Democrats, but not a right favored by Republicans, is obvious. But, honestly, we should hope for hypocrisy. We should hope that the worst thing that comes out of Jackson is an unprincipled decision holding that Jackson is a one-off case that applies to abortion and nothing else. For, if Jackson is allowed to stand unmodified, it threatens the very notion that states are bound by the Constitution.

So Newsom proposes taking the Supreme Court at its word. The legislation he floated on Saturday would allow private citizens to sue anyone who “manufactures, distributes or sells an assault weapon or ghost gun kit” (“ghost guns” are weapons with no serial number). In June, a conservative federal judge struck down California’s existing ban on “assault weapons,” although that case is now on appeal.

[cricketcat9]

Polish fundamentalist barbarism

bears fruit: a young woman died as a result of the abortion ban enacted last year. A 22 weeks pregnant 30-year-old woman died on September 22, 2021, at the Pszczyna County Hospital. On admission, PROM* was diagnosed, and fetal malformations were confirmed. According to the family's information, the pregnant woman reported to family members and friends in messages sent during her stay that the doctors took a wait-and-see attitude. They didn't empty the uterine cavity until the fetus died, which she linked to current laws that DRASTICALLY limit legal abortion options. "The fever is rising; I'm hoping I don't get sepsis or I won't leave here," she wrote to her family. She did get sepsis and died after 24 hours. She left behind a husband and a daughter. The case was turned over to the prosecutor's office.

IMO, the guilty parties: the doctors, making a cowardly decision; Ordo Iuris, a fundamentalist legal organization comprised of extremist Catholic lawyers, PiS, the ruling party - PiS politician, one Marek Suski said: "Women can die during childbirth, this has nothing to do with the Constitutional Tribunal's decision“, Kaja Godek, a rabid homophobe and pro-lifer PM, currently sponsoring an anti- LGBT bill, and Polish Catholic Church.

*PROM - pre-labor rupture of membranes

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

(The whole story is a 4-minute listen; full transcript is at the link)

Key quote (Emphasis Mine):

In our constitutional system, there are two different ways to protect people's individual rights. One is the courts strike down some law that violates the Constitution. So they say there's a right to choose, a right to privacy. And therefore, if Texas passes an abortion law, it gets struck down. But there's a whole separate way, which is Congress itself can directly guarantee those rights. And they do so all the time. All of the laws on, you know, race discrimination and employment, for example - those are all laws passed by Congress. And so Congress can go way above and beyond what the courts themselves provide.

And right now, you have legislation pending in Congress that's almost got a majority of senators and representatives as co-sponsors that says, we are going to codify the rights in Roe v. Wade. And this is something known as the preemption power in our Constitution that allows the federal government to sweep away laws of the states that conflict with a federal right.

Call your Representative! Remind them of this!

[doctorhelena]

Hi! So I'm Polish, I'm a woman and well, my country is turning more and more to look hell-like. I'd like to thank you A LOT for reblogging posts about situation with our terrific almost-anti-abortion law. Thanks to you more people from all over the world may learn about this and that is very important for me and for every person who is doing something with that. So again thank you for your support - not all heroes wear capes, some reblog important stuff and that hero is you ❤

I wish I could do more than just reblog things, but I’m glad to hear from someone in the situation that they think it’s helping, even a bit!

[taratarotgreene]

George Carlin on Abortion truths

George Carlin on Abortion truths

This is devastatingly accurate truth and totally hilariously brilliant from George Carlin in 1996. “Not every ejaculation deserves a name.”

Jesus_is_coming.._Look_Busy_(George_Carlin).jpg: Bonnie from Kendall Park, NJ, USAderivative work: Hic et nuncderivative work Grey Geezer [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D

George Carlin’s astrology chart is interesting.

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