#Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Sen. Elizabeth Warren: suspend the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade during the next Democratic trifecta

Alexander Bolton at The Hill:

Progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) announced Wednesday that there are currently enough votes in the Senate to suspend the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade and abortion rights if Democrats win control of the House and keep the Senate and White House. “We will suspend the filibuster. We have the votes for that on Roe v. Wade,” Warren said on ABC’s “The View.”

She said if Democrats control the White House and both chambers of Congress in 2025, “the first vote Democrats will take in the Senate, the first substantive vote, will be to make Roe v. Wade law of the land again in America.” The Massachusetts Democrat said her party would only need “skinny” majorities in the House and Senate to override the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the national right to an abortion established by Roe v. Wade in 1973. “We can make Roe v. Wade law of the land if we have, and I have to be clear, we’ve got to have a majority in the House — skinny majority. We can take a really skinny majority in the Senate, I’ll take fifty. And a Democrat in the White House. We have those three things we will suspend the filibuster,” she said.

Speaking on ABC’s The View Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) supports the idea of suspending the filibuster to pass a Codify Roe bill should the Dems get a trifecta.

From the 07.17.2024 edition of ABC's The View:

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[tomorrowusa]

Republicans claim to be for "freedom" but they will readily tell you what you can and cannot do in your own bedroom.

The Ohio legislature wants to keep an extreme abortion ban intact despite widespread opposition to it among Ohioans.

There are two Ohio ballot measures coming up in the next few months which affect reproductive freedom. It's a little complicated, but to ensure reproductive freedom in Ohio, vote NO on the one in August and YES on the one in November.

For more details on how Ohioans can protect reproductive freedom, see our earlier post on it.

TL;DR version...

Keep freedom-hating Republicans out of your bedroom.

[nationallawreview]

HHS Publishes Final Rule to Support Reproductive Health Care Privacy

The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to eliminate the federal constitutional right to abortion continues to alter the legal landscape across the country. On April 26, 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) published the “HIPAA Privacy Rule to Support Reproductive Health Care Privacy” (the “Final…

[demdelis]

[contemplatingoutlander]

This is a gift🎁link so anyone can read the entire NY Times article, even if they don' subscribe to the Times.

Jamelle Bouie does another excellent job of looking at current events through the perspective of American history. In this column, he compares the current Roberts Court with the infamous late 1850s/ early 1860s Taney Court--the Court that lost all credibility with its Dred Scott decision. Below are a few excerpts.

If the chief currency of the Supreme Court is its legitimacy as an institution, then you can say with confidence that its account is as close to empty as it has been for a very long time. Since the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization nearly two years ago, its general approval with the public has taken a plunge. [...] In the latest 538 average, just over 52 percent of Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court, and around 40 percent approved. [...] At the risk of sounding a little dramatic, you can draw a useful comparison between the Supreme Court’s current political position and the one it held on the eve of the 1860 presidential election. [color emphasis added]

[See more below the cut.]

NOTE: Remember that back in the 1850s/1860s the Democrats were the party that supported slavery. The Democrats and Republicans switched positions on civil rights in the late 20th century.

It was not just the ruling itself that drove the ferocious opposition to the [Taney] Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which overturned the Missouri Compromise and wrote Black Americans out of the national community; it was the political entanglement of the Taney court with the slaveholding interests of the antebellum Democratic Party. [...] Five of the justices were appointed by slave owners. At the time of the ruling, four of the justices were slave owners. And the chief justice, Roger Taney, was a strong Democratic partisan who was in close communication with James Buchanan, the incoming Democratic president, in the weeks before he issued the court’s ruling in 1857. Buchanan, in fact, had written to some of the justices urging them to issue a broad and comprehensive ruling that would settle the legal status of all Black Americans. The Supreme Court, critics of the ruling said, was not trying to faithfully interpret the Constitution as much as it was acting on behalf of the so-called Slave Power, an alleged conspiracy of interests determined to take slavery national. The court, wrote a committee of the New York State Assembly in its report on the Dred Scott decision, was determined to “bring slavery within our borders, against our will, with all its unhallowed, demoralizing and blighted influences.” The Supreme Court did not have the political legitimacy to issue a ruling as broad and potentially far-reaching as Dred Scott, and the result was to mobilize a large segment of the public against the court. Abraham Lincoln spoke for many in his first inaugural address when he took aim at the pretense of the Taney court to decide for the nation: “The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.” [color/ emphasis added]

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[transformationsproject]

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[rapeculturerealities]

Abortion bans and domestic violence: Homicide is a leading cause of death for pregnant people.

Are there any numbers that show how the Dobbs decision has impacted any of these things, either the homicide rate for pregnant women or reproductive coercion?

The National Domestic Violence Hotline said that there was a 98 percent increase in reports of reproductive coercion the year after Dobbs, compared to the year before—more than 2,400 callers, the year after, reporting experiencing some form of reproductive coercion, compared to about 1,200 callers the year before that decision.

Were people referencing the law?

Some of the callers were saying that their abusers were referencing the abortion ban in their state. And this is also, broadly, a tactic that experts expect to increase. Basically, when the state hands down these abortion restrictions, it can wind up enabling abusers because it suggests that the state has no interest in giving them access to abortion and supporting their reproductive autonomy. So, it’s something that an abuser can also restrict. And it does sound like, from the anecdotes that I heard, sometimes this is what people are reporting.

[rickmctumbleface]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jonathan Nicholson at HuffPost:

On the first night of their national convention, Democrats highlighted three stories of how abortion restrictions after Roe v. Wade was overturned had hurt women and couples, hoping to underscore the importance of reproductive rights in one of the most poignant presentations Monday night. The message: Abortion bans put lives at risk. Giving the stage over to one couple and two women who had experienced the harm of abortion hurdles in the prime-time window of the convention’s first night shows how important Democrats see the issue for Kamala Harris’ presidential race.

An Economist/YouGov poll taken from Aug. 11 to Aug. 13 found that 75% of respondents said abortion rights were “very” or “somewhat” important to them, with 81% of female respondents feeling that way. Former President Donald Trump, who is campaigning while out on bail after his felony convictions in New York state, has said the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which tossed out Roe’s almost 50-year precedent, was good because it sent the issue of abortion to the states rather than preserving a national right. But many states have enacted total or near-total bans on abortion, and others have made abortions conditional on medical diagnoses that the woman’s life is in danger, which in turn has led to women being denied treatment until they were close to dying. “Because of Donald Trump, more than one in three women of reproductive age in America lives under an abortion ban. A second Trump term would rip away even more of our rights,” said Amanda Zurawski, who stood with her husband, Josh, on an otherwise darkened stage to discuss her experience in Texas.

[...] Kaitlyn Joshua, who was denied care in Louisiana, said she had to go to several medical facilities to confirm she was miscarrying. “Two emergency rooms sent me away. Because of Louisiana’s abortion ban, no one would confirm that I was miscarrying. I was in pain, bleeding so much my husband feared for my life,” she said. “No women should experience what I endured but too many have.” Hadley Duvall of Kentucky, the third speaker, said she had been raped by her stepfather and became pregnant at the age of 12. “I can’t imagine not having a choice. But today that’s the reality for many women and girls across the country because of Donald Trump’s abortion bans,” she said. Kentucky is listed as one of the 14 states that now have a total ban on abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

At the DNC Monday night, three women (alongside a man who was the husband of one of the speakers) who were harmed by their state’s abortion ban laws spoke the truths about how abortion bans harm women. #DNC2024 #DemConvention

[lenbryant]

They were never going to stop at abortion.

[whenweallvote]

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion with their decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. 

The impacts of the decision have been devastating — but voters in states across the country are fighting back.

Since 2022, abortion remains undefeated at the ballot box. In 2024, it’s still on the ballot. Register to vote now with us and FEMINIST at weall.vote/feminist.

[kimkimberhelen]

As a woman reading about Josseli Barnica, Rebecca Cheptegei, Amber Heard, or any number of nameless and faceless women who have been subjected to the mercy of haphazard decisions and behaviors of men (whether it be abuse, reproductive freedom, etc.), it makes me breathe a bittersweet sigh of relief that I'm entirely on my own and two and half years removed from absolute soul decimation. My freedom and personhood are completely in my own hands, and because of that, I know I'm in good hands. I can rest easy in my sanctuary. It almost feels like a privilege, which is terrible because it shouldn't feel that way, but that's just where we are, unfortunately.

[tomorrowusa]

Samuel Alito is the most extreme anti-abortion justice on the US Supreme Court. He wrote the main opinion for the odious 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.

Justice Alito has become the object of some major trolling. The Satanic Temple, headquartered in Salem, Massachusetts, has named a New Mexico abortion clinic after Alito’s mom. It’s actually called: The Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic.

It’s not clear whether members of the Satanic Temple really worship—or even believe in—Satan or if they’re simply partaking in an elaborate kayfabe designed to one day coax a facial expression out of Mike Pence. Either way, they’re doing some great work.

The temple is known for its cheeky PR campaigns and pro-secular-government initiatives, which include supporting reproductive freedom, advocating for church-state separation, and doing other “Satanic good works.” And if they can piss off Samuel Alito in the process? Well, that should earn them at least one extra tea saucer of fly-pocked gruel in hell.

The Satanic Temple (TST) describes the clinic’s services in its press release:

Patients undergo a confidential screening and virtual appointment before having their prescriptions sent to the clinic’s pharmacy partner, who will mail the medications in a discreet package. The pharmacy’s fees will fall around $90 USD in order to keep prices at a minimum. TST Health’s licensed medical staff will be available for patient questions and concerns and will initiate follow-up communications with patients. In addition, the clinic has a dedicated patient hotline that is on call 24/7. 

So this is for real.

They administer a non-medical burn to Justice Alito.

TST Health has named the facility “The Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic.” “In 1950, Samuel Alito’s mother did not have options, and look what happened,” said Malcolm Jarry, the cofounder of TST. “Prior to 1973, doctors who performed abortions could lose their licenses and go to jail. The clinic’s name serves to remind people just how important it is to have the right to control one’s body and the potential ramifications of losing that right.” 

[strawlessandbraless]

With access to safe abortion and contraceptives being increasingly restricted, I just wanted to say a big ole happy international women’s day to the massive rise in vasectomies. You love to see it 💃🏻