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How many POOTWH supporters on here that live in those 14 states would want their sister, girlfriend, wife, mother or aunt to deliver them their rapist’s niece/nephew, friend, stepson/stepdaughter, sibling or cousin? You going to raise them as your own? Be honest. From Letter From An American:
More news dropped today about the damage MAGA Republicans are doing to the United States. A report published today in JAMA Internal Medicine estimates that in the 14 states that outlawed abortion after the Supreme Court's June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, 64,565 women became pregnant after being raped, “but few (if any) obtained in-state abortions legally.”
Republican legislatures in some states are trying to keep abortion off the ballot
By CHRISTINE FERNANDO
Today
CHICAGO (AP) — Legislative efforts in Missouri and Mississippi are attempting to prevent voters from having a say over abortion rights, building on anti-abortion strategies seen in other states, including last year in Ohio.
Democrats and abortion rights advocates say the efforts are evidence that Republican lawmakers and abortion opponents are trying to undercut democratic processes meant to give voters a direct role in forming state laws.
“They’re scared of the people and their voices, so their response is to prevent their voices from being heard," said Laurie Bertram Roberts, executive director of Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund. “There’s nothing democratic about that, and it’s the same blueprint we’ve seen in Ohio and all these other states, again and again.”
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022, voters in seven states have either protected abortion rights or defeated attempts to curtail them in statewide votes. Democrats have pledged to make the issue a central campaign topic this year for races up and down the ballot.
A proposal passed Wednesday by the Mississippi House would ban residents from placing abortion initiatives on the statewide ballot. Mississippi has among the toughest abortion restrictions in the country, with the procedure banned except to save the life of the woman or in cases of rape or incest.
In response to the bill, Democratic Rep. Cheikh Taylor said direct democracy “shouldn’t include terms and conditions.”
“Don’t let anyone tell you this is just about abortion,” Taylor said. “This is about a Republican Party who thinks they know what’s best for you better than you know what’s best for you. This is about control. So much for liberty and limited government.”
The resolution is an attempt to revive a ballot initiative process in Mississippi, which has been without one since 2021 when the state Supreme Court ruled that the process was invalid because it required people to gather signatures from the state’s five previous U.S. House districts. Mississippi dropped to four districts after the 2000 census, but the initiative language was never updated.
Republican Rep. Fred Shanks said House Republicans would not have approved the resolution, which will soon head to the Senate, without the abortion exemption. Some House Republicans said voters should not be allowed to vote on changing abortion laws because Mississippi originated the legal case that overturned Roe v. Wade.
“It took 50 years … to overturn Roe v. Wade,” said Mississippi House Speaker Jason White, a Republican. “We weren’t going to let it just be thrown out the window by folks coming in from out of state, spending 50 million bucks and running an initiative through.”
But Mississippi Democrats and abortion access organizations panned the exemption as limiting the voice of the people.
“This is an extremely undemocratic way to harm access to reproductive health care," said Sofia Tomov, operations coordinator with Access Reproductive Care Southeast, a member of the Mississippi Abortion Access Coalition. "It’s infringing on people’s ability to participate in the democratic process.”
In Missouri, one of several states where an abortion rights initiative could go before voters in the fall, a plan supported by anti-abortion groups would require initiatives to win a majority vote in five of the state’s eight congressional districts, in addition to a simple statewide majority.
The proposal comes days after a Missouri abortion-rights campaign launched its ballot measure effort aiming to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. Missouri abortion rights groups also have criticized Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, saying he is attempting to impede the initiative by manipulating the measure's ballot summary. A Missouri appeals court recently found the summaries were politically partisan and misleading.
When asked during a recent committee hearing if the GOP proposal was an attempt to get rid of direct democracy, Republican state Rep. Ed Lewis said “I think that our founding fathers were about as fearful of direct democracy as we should be. That’s why they created a republic.”
Sam Lee, lobbyist for Campaign Life Missouri, testified on Tuesday for the need for provisions like this that make sure “the rights of the minority aren’t trampled on.”
“The concern of our founders, and the concern of many people throughout the decades and years, is to avoid having a tyranny of the majority,” he said.
Democratic Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo said controlling who can vote and on what subjects has been “the highest priority of the Republican Party for the last 20 years."
“This is how democracies die,” he said in an interview. “We are watching it in real time. This is the scariest moment that I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
Democratic Rep. Joe Adams criticized the plan in part by alleging that the state's congressional and legislative districts are gerrymandered to favor Republicans. That would make it nearly impossible for an abortion measure to be approved under the proposed legislation.
Attempts to keep abortion measures off the ballot in Missouri and Mississippi follow a similar blueprint in other states to target the ballot initiative process, a form of direct democracy available to voters in only about half the states.
Florida’s Republican attorney general has asked the state Supreme Court to keep a proposed abortion rights amendment off the ballot as an abortion-rights coalition this month reached the necessary number of signatures to qualify it for the 2024 ballot.
In Nevada, a judge on Tuesday approved an abortion-rights ballot measure petition as eligible for signature-gathering, striking down a legal challenge by anti-abortion groups attempting to prevent the question from going before voters.
Ohio abortion rights advocates have said last year’s statewide vote to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution was as much about abortion as it was a referendum on democracy itself. They said Republicans tried to obstruct the democratic process before the vote and attempted to ignore the will of voters after the amendment passed.
Ohio Republicans called a special election in August attempting to raise the threshold for passing future constitutional amendments from a simple majority to 60%. That effort was defeated at the polls and was widely seen as aiming to undermine the abortion amendment.
After Ohio voters approved the abortion protections last year, Republican lawmakers pledged to block the amendment from reversing the state's restrictions. Some proposed preventing Ohio courts from interpreting any cases related to the amendment.
“It wasn’t just about abortion," Deirdre Schifeling, chief political and advocacy officer of the ACLU, said last fall after the Ohio amendment passed. "It’s about, ‘Will the majority be heard?’"
__
Associated Press writers Summer Ballentine in Jefferson City, Missouri, and Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi, contributed to this report.
___
The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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Republican Ohio Senate hopefuls celebrated Supreme Court returning abortion to states. Then Ohioans passed abortion rights
Updated: Jan. 27, 2024, 5:31 a.m.|
Published: Jan. 27, 2024, 5:30 a.m.
Republican
Senate candidates (from left to right) Frank LaRose, Bernie Moreno and
Matt Dolan appear on stage together on Jan. 22, 2024 for a debate hosted
by WJW Fox 8 in Cleveland.WJW FOX 8 TV
COLUMBUS,
Ohio — Ohio’s Republican Senate candidates, like other abortion
opponents, previously celebrated the end of Roe v. Wade as a way to send
abortion back to the states for voters to decide.
But
as abortion rights have demonstrated widespread public support in the
post-Roe era, capped by the November passage of an abortion rights
measure in Ohio, they’re now much more apt to say the issue requires
federal intervention.
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Hey, did you hear? Embryos are “children.” Thanks for letting us know, Alabama.
taking that top its logical conclusion, jerking off is now illegal, being those are pre-children.....
Also, pregnant woman are counted twice in the census. You an also now drive in the HOV lane. A pregnant woman may claim a deduction on her taxes. Lots of new benefits.
Hey, did you hear? Embryos are “children.” Thanks for letting us know, Alabama.
Imagine a burning building. In Room A are dozens of embryos. In Room B is one infant. Who should you run in save? Gotta go with the numbers, I guess.
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
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In nearly 90 minutes of arguments, a consensus appeared to emerge that the abortion opponents who challenged the FDA's approval of the medication, mifepristone, and subsequent actions to ease access to it, lack the legal right or standing to sue.
Such a decision would leave in place the current rules that allow patients to receive the drug through the mail, without any need for an in-person visit with a doctor, and to take the medication to induce an abortion through 10 weeks of pregnancy. Should the court take the no-standing route, it would avoid the more politically sensitive aspects of the case.
The high court’s return to the abortion thicket is taking place in a political and regulatory landscape that was reshaped by its abortion decision in 2022 that led many Republican-led states to ban or severely restrict abortion.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, said the court should dismiss the case and make clear that anti-abortion doctors and organizations don’t “come within 100 miles” of having standing.
Even three justices who were in the majority to overturn Roe posed skeptical questions about standing to the lawyer for the abortion opponents. Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh are former President Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court appointees.
Barrett, for example, seemed to doubt that the doctors identified by lawyer Erin Hawley could show that were actually harmed by the FDA's actions, one of the requirements for showing standing.
“The difficulty, to me, is that the affidavits do read more like conscience objections,” Barrett said.
Kavanaugh had only one question during the entire session and it too seemed to be focused on the technical issue of standing. He asked Prelogar to confirm that “under federal law, no doctors can be forced against their consciences to perform or assist in an abortion.”
Abortion opponents are asking the justices to ratify a ruling from a conservative federal appeals court that would limit access to mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortions.
That ruling had immediate political consequences, and the outcome in the current case, expected by early summer, could affect races for Congress and the White House.
Another abortion case already is on the docket. Next month, the justices will hear arguments over whether a federal law on emergency treatment at hospitals must include abortions, even in states that have otherwise banned them.
The scene outside the Supreme Court was lively Tuesday morning, with demonstrators occupying the streets surrounding the court and groups on both sides of the issue marching and chanting. The police blocked traffic surrounding the court as well.
The practical consequences of a ruling for abortion opponents would be dramatic, including possibly halting the delivery of mifepristone through the mail and at large pharmacy chains, and ending increasingly popular telehealth visits at which the drug can be prescribed.
President Joe Biden's administration and drug manufacturers warn that such an outcome also could undermine the FDA's drug approval process more widely by inviting judges to second-guess the agency's scientific judgments. The Democratic administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, which makes mifepristone, say that the drug is among the safest the FDA has ever approved.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden appointee who joined the court just after the last abortion case, signaled her agreement with some of those arguments when she asked Jessica Ellsworth, Danco's lawyer. whether she has concerns “about judges parsing medical and scientific studies.”
The abortion opponents argue that the FDA's decisions in 2016 and 2021 to relax restrictions on getting the drug were unreasonable and, as Hawley wrote in her clients' main legal brief, “jeopardize women's health across the nation.” She argued Tuesday that she was asking the court to affirm a ruling that “merely restored long-standing and crucial protections under which millions of women used abortion drugs.” Her husband, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, and one of their children were in the courtroom to watch her first arguments.
The mifepristone case began five months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Abortion opponents initially won a sweeping ruling nearly a year ago from U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump nominee in Texas, which would have revoked the drug’s approval entirely. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left intact the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone. But it would reverse changes regulators made in 2016 and 2021 that eased some conditions for administering the drug.
The Supreme Court put the appeals court’s modified ruling on hold, then agreed to hear the case, though Justices Samuel Alito, the author of the decision overturning Roe, and Clarence Thomas would have allowed some restrictions to take effect while the case proceeded.
In arguments highly focused on technical legal issues, Alito and Thomas asked some of the few questions Tuesday on the substance of the case, including about sending mifepristone through the mail.
They referred to the Comstock Act, a rarely used, 151-year-old criminal law that has been revived by anti-abortion advocates seeking to block the delivery of mifepristone through the U.S. mail. Addressing Ellsworth, Thomas said the law is “fairly broad, and it specifically covers drugs such as yours.”
Even if the court doesn't address the Comstock Act in its ruling, some abortion rights advocates fear that a future administration that favors abortion restrictions could invoke the law to roll back access to mifepristone.
Mifepristone is one of two drugs, along with misoprostol, used in medication abortions. Their numbers have been rising for years. More than 6 million people have used mifepristone since 2000. Mifepristone is taken first to dilate the cervix and block the hormone progesterone, which is needed to sustain a pregnancy. Misoprostol is taken 24 to 48 hours later, causing the uterus to contract and expel pregnancy tissue.
Health care providers have said that if mifepristone is no longer available or is too hard to obtain, they would switch to using only misoprostol, which is somewhat less effective in ending pregnancies.
___
Associated Press writers Amanda Seitz and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.
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That anyone would vote for this bullshit artist, never mind giving him money.
Trump backtracks after suggesting he’s open to states restricting birth control access
The former president said he would “never advocate" imposing limits on contraception, after promising to release a “comprehensive policy” on the issue soon.
Former president Donald Trumpdeclared on Tuesday that he did not support a ban on birth control, despite his responses in a television interview earlier in the day that suggested he was open to states restricting access to contraceptives.
“I HAVE NEVER, AND WILL NEVER ADVOCATE IMPOSING RESTRICTIONS ON BIRTH CONTROL, or other contraceptives,” Trump wrote on his social media platform.
His post was a reversal of comments he made in an interview with KDKA News in Pittsburgh when he was asked whether he supported any restrictions on a person’s right to contraception.
“We’re looking at that, and I’m going to have a policy on that very shortly, and I think it’s something that you’ll find interesting,” Trump said. “I think it’s a smart decision. But we’ll be releasing it very soon.”
Pressed if that meant he would support states if they wanted to ban certain forms of birth control, including the morning-after pill, Trump did not answer directly but said he would be releasing more details “within a week or so.”
“Things really do have a lot to do with the states, and some states are going to have different policy than others,” Trump said.
A Trump campaign official who was asked about the interview pointed out that Trump said in a recent Time magazine interview that he would make an announcement in the near future regarding mifepristone, a prescription medication most commonly used as part of a two-drug regimen for abortions.
According to video of the full KDKA News interview reviewed by The Washington Post, Trump was not asked specifically about mifepristone or other abortion medication, but rather about birth control methods. The interview also touched on Trump’s hush money trial in New York, the steel industry, the economy and mail-in ballots.
President Biden’s reelection campaign, which has already sought to hammer Trump on the issue of reproductive rights, immediately seized on Tuesday’s interview, releasing clips on its social media accounts that highlighted Trump’s openness to allowing restrictions on contraceptives.
“Women across the country are already suffering from Donald Trump’s post-Roe nightmare, and if he wins a second term, it’s clear he wants to go even further by restricting access to birth control and emergency contraceptives,” Biden campaign spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika said in a statement.
Reproductive rights have become a critical election issue in the past two years, one that has tended to benefit Democrats. Since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022, every state ballot measure that has sought to preserve or expand abortion access has been successful, while those that have sought to restrict abortion access have failed — even in states that skew conservative.
Access to contraception in particular is popular among Americans. According to a 2023 Gallup poll, 88 percent of Americans said birth control was morally acceptable, including 86 percent of Republicans, 88 percent of independents and 93 percent of Democrats.
In the KDKA News interview, Trump was also asked whether he would veto legislation if Congress were to pass a federal 15-week abortion ban. Trump did not rule it out but said he did not think there would be any reason for such legislation.
“It’s really not up to Congress,” Trump said. “It’s up to a whole group of people beyond Congress.”
In the interview Tuesday, Trump boasted several times that he was able to overturn Roe, something he said people had told him was not possible.
“We did something that everybody wanted … we got rid of Roe v. Wade, which brought it back to the states,” Trump said, later adding: “It’s brought this issue, and it’s really calmed it down.”
Comments
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More news dropped today about the damage MAGA Republicans are doing to the United States. A report published today in JAMA Internal Medicine estimates that in the 14 states that outlawed abortion after the Supreme Court's June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, 64,565 women became pregnant after being raped, “but few (if any) obtained in-state abortions legally.”
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
CHICAGO (AP) — Legislative efforts in Missouri and Mississippi are attempting to prevent voters from having a say over abortion rights, building on anti-abortion strategies seen in other states, including last year in Ohio.
Democrats and abortion rights advocates say the efforts are evidence that Republican lawmakers and abortion opponents are trying to undercut democratic processes meant to give voters a direct role in forming state laws.
“They’re scared of the people and their voices, so their response is to prevent their voices from being heard," said Laurie Bertram Roberts, executive director of Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund. “There’s nothing democratic about that, and it’s the same blueprint we’ve seen in Ohio and all these other states, again and again.”
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022, voters in seven states have either protected abortion rights or defeated attempts to curtail them in statewide votes. Democrats have pledged to make the issue a central campaign topic this year for races up and down the ballot.
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A proposal passed Wednesday by the Mississippi House would ban residents from placing abortion initiatives on the statewide ballot. Mississippi has among the toughest abortion restrictions in the country, with the procedure banned except to save the life of the woman or in cases of rape or incest.
In response to the bill, Democratic Rep. Cheikh Taylor said direct democracy “shouldn’t include terms and conditions.”
“Don’t let anyone tell you this is just about abortion,” Taylor said. “This is about a Republican Party who thinks they know what’s best for you better than you know what’s best for you. This is about control. So much for liberty and limited government.”
The resolution is an attempt to revive a ballot initiative process in Mississippi, which has been without one since 2021 when the state Supreme Court ruled that the process was invalid because it required people to gather signatures from the state’s five previous U.S. House districts. Mississippi dropped to four districts after the 2000 census, but the initiative language was never updated.
Republican Rep. Fred Shanks said House Republicans would not have approved the resolution, which will soon head to the Senate, without the abortion exemption. Some House Republicans said voters should not be allowed to vote on changing abortion laws because Mississippi originated the legal case that overturned Roe v. Wade.
“It took 50 years … to overturn Roe v. Wade,” said Mississippi House Speaker Jason White, a Republican. “We weren’t going to let it just be thrown out the window by folks coming in from out of state, spending 50 million bucks and running an initiative through.”
But Mississippi Democrats and abortion access organizations panned the exemption as limiting the voice of the people.
“This is an extremely undemocratic way to harm access to reproductive health care," said Sofia Tomov, operations coordinator with Access Reproductive Care Southeast, a member of the Mississippi Abortion Access Coalition. "It’s infringing on people’s ability to participate in the democratic process.”
In Missouri, one of several states where an abortion rights initiative could go before voters in the fall, a plan supported by anti-abortion groups would require initiatives to win a majority vote in five of the state’s eight congressional districts, in addition to a simple statewide majority.
The proposal comes days after a Missouri abortion-rights campaign launched its ballot measure effort aiming to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. Missouri abortion rights groups also have criticized Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, saying he is attempting to impede the initiative by manipulating the measure's ballot summary. A Missouri appeals court recently found the summaries were politically partisan and misleading.
When asked during a recent committee hearing if the GOP proposal was an attempt to get rid of direct democracy, Republican state Rep. Ed Lewis said “I think that our founding fathers were about as fearful of direct democracy as we should be. That’s why they created a republic.”
Sam Lee, lobbyist for Campaign Life Missouri, testified on Tuesday for the need for provisions like this that make sure “the rights of the minority aren’t trampled on.”
“The concern of our founders, and the concern of many people throughout the decades and years, is to avoid having a tyranny of the majority,” he said.
Democratic Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo said controlling who can vote and on what subjects has been “the highest priority of the Republican Party for the last 20 years."
“This is how democracies die,” he said in an interview. “We are watching it in real time. This is the scariest moment that I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
Democratic Rep. Joe Adams criticized the plan in part by alleging that the state's congressional and legislative districts are gerrymandered to favor Republicans. That would make it nearly impossible for an abortion measure to be approved under the proposed legislation.
Attempts to keep abortion measures off the ballot in Missouri and Mississippi follow a similar blueprint in other states to target the ballot initiative process, a form of direct democracy available to voters in only about half the states.
Florida’s Republican attorney general has asked the state Supreme Court to keep a proposed abortion rights amendment off the ballot as an abortion-rights coalition this month reached the necessary number of signatures to qualify it for the 2024 ballot.
In Nevada, a judge on Tuesday approved an abortion-rights ballot measure petition as eligible for signature-gathering, striking down a legal challenge by anti-abortion groups attempting to prevent the question from going before voters.
Ohio abortion rights advocates have said last year’s statewide vote to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution was as much about abortion as it was a referendum on democracy itself. They said Republicans tried to obstruct the democratic process before the vote and attempted to ignore the will of voters after the amendment passed.
Ohio Republicans called a special election in August attempting to raise the threshold for passing future constitutional amendments from a simple majority to 60%. That effort was defeated at the polls and was widely seen as aiming to undermine the abortion amendment.
After Ohio voters approved the abortion protections last year, Republican lawmakers pledged to block the amendment from reversing the state's restrictions. Some proposed preventing Ohio courts from interpreting any cases related to the amendment.
“It wasn’t just about abortion," Deirdre Schifeling, chief political and advocacy officer of the ACLU, said last fall after the Ohio amendment passed. "It’s about, ‘Will the majority be heard?’"
__
Associated Press writers Summer Ballentine in Jefferson City, Missouri, and Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi, contributed to this report.
___
The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Republican Ohio Senate hopefuls celebrated Supreme Court returning abortion to states. Then Ohioans passed abortion rights
Republican Senate candidates (from left to right) Frank LaRose, Bernie Moreno and Matt Dolan appear on stage together on Jan. 22, 2024 for a debate hosted by WJW Fox 8 in Cleveland.WJW FOX 8 TV
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio’s Republican Senate candidates, like other abortion opponents, previously celebrated the end of Roe v. Wade as a way to send abortion back to the states for voters to decide.
But as abortion rights have demonstrated widespread public support in the post-Roe era, capped by the November passage of an abortion rights measure in Ohio, they’re now much more apt to say the issue requires federal intervention.
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Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
taking that top its logical conclusion, jerking off is now illegal, being those are pre-children.....
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This IVF thing is a complete disaster for millions of couples across the country.
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed likely to preserve access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, in the court’s first abortion case since conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.
In nearly 90 minutes of arguments, a consensus appeared to emerge that the abortion opponents who challenged the FDA's approval of the medication, mifepristone, and subsequent actions to ease access to it, lack the legal right or standing to sue.
Such a decision would leave in place the current rules that allow patients to receive the drug through the mail, without any need for an in-person visit with a doctor, and to take the medication to induce an abortion through 10 weeks of pregnancy. Should the court take the no-standing route, it would avoid the more politically sensitive aspects of the case.
The high court’s return to the abortion thicket is taking place in a political and regulatory landscape that was reshaped by its abortion decision in 2022 that led many Republican-led states to ban or severely restrict abortion.
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Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, said the court should dismiss the case and make clear that anti-abortion doctors and organizations don’t “come within 100 miles” of having standing.
Even three justices who were in the majority to overturn Roe posed skeptical questions about standing to the lawyer for the abortion opponents. Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh are former President Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court appointees.
Barrett, for example, seemed to doubt that the doctors identified by lawyer Erin Hawley could show that were actually harmed by the FDA's actions, one of the requirements for showing standing.
“The difficulty, to me, is that the affidavits do read more like conscience objections,” Barrett said.
Kavanaugh had only one question during the entire session and it too seemed to be focused on the technical issue of standing. He asked Prelogar to confirm that “under federal law, no doctors can be forced against their consciences to perform or assist in an abortion.”
Abortion opponents are asking the justices to ratify a ruling from a conservative federal appeals court that would limit access to mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortions.
That ruling had immediate political consequences, and the outcome in the current case, expected by early summer, could affect races for Congress and the White House.
Another abortion case already is on the docket. Next month, the justices will hear arguments over whether a federal law on emergency treatment at hospitals must include abortions, even in states that have otherwise banned them.
The scene outside the Supreme Court was lively Tuesday morning, with demonstrators occupying the streets surrounding the court and groups on both sides of the issue marching and chanting. The police blocked traffic surrounding the court as well.
The practical consequences of a ruling for abortion opponents would be dramatic, including possibly halting the delivery of mifepristone through the mail and at large pharmacy chains, and ending increasingly popular telehealth visits at which the drug can be prescribed.
President Joe Biden's administration and drug manufacturers warn that such an outcome also could undermine the FDA's drug approval process more widely by inviting judges to second-guess the agency's scientific judgments. The Democratic administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, which makes mifepristone, say that the drug is among the safest the FDA has ever approved.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden appointee who joined the court just after the last abortion case, signaled her agreement with some of those arguments when she asked Jessica Ellsworth, Danco's lawyer. whether she has concerns “about judges parsing medical and scientific studies.”
The abortion opponents argue that the FDA's decisions in 2016 and 2021 to relax restrictions on getting the drug were unreasonable and, as Hawley wrote in her clients' main legal brief, “jeopardize women's health across the nation.” She argued Tuesday that she was asking the court to affirm a ruling that “merely restored long-standing and crucial protections under which millions of women used abortion drugs.” Her husband, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, and one of their children were in the courtroom to watch her first arguments.
The mifepristone case began five months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Abortion opponents initially won a sweeping ruling nearly a year ago from U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump nominee in Texas, which would have revoked the drug’s approval entirely. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left intact the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone. But it would reverse changes regulators made in 2016 and 2021 that eased some conditions for administering the drug.
The Supreme Court put the appeals court’s modified ruling on hold, then agreed to hear the case, though Justices Samuel Alito, the author of the decision overturning Roe, and Clarence Thomas would have allowed some restrictions to take effect while the case proceeded.
In arguments highly focused on technical legal issues, Alito and Thomas asked some of the few questions Tuesday on the substance of the case, including about sending mifepristone through the mail.
They referred to the Comstock Act, a rarely used, 151-year-old criminal law that has been revived by anti-abortion advocates seeking to block the delivery of mifepristone through the U.S. mail. Addressing Ellsworth, Thomas said the law is “fairly broad, and it specifically covers drugs such as yours.”
Even if the court doesn't address the Comstock Act in its ruling, some abortion rights advocates fear that a future administration that favors abortion restrictions could invoke the law to roll back access to mifepristone.
Mifepristone is one of two drugs, along with misoprostol, used in medication abortions. Their numbers have been rising for years. More than 6 million people have used mifepristone since 2000. Mifepristone is taken first to dilate the cervix and block the hormone progesterone, which is needed to sustain a pregnancy. Misoprostol is taken 24 to 48 hours later, causing the uterus to contract and expel pregnancy tissue.
Health care providers have said that if mifepristone is no longer available or is too hard to obtain, they would switch to using only misoprostol, which is somewhat less effective in ending pregnancies.
___
Associated Press writers Amanda Seitz and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.
___
Follow the AP's coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
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Arizona House votes to repeal controversial 1864 abortion ban, with help of 3 Republicans
https://www.yahoo.com/news/republicans-join-arizona-democrats-vote-194400753.html
and as you can predict, the 3 republicans that voted to overturn it are going to be primaried.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
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Trump backtracks after suggesting he’s open to states restricting birth control access
The former president said he would “never advocate" imposing limits on contraception, after promising to release a “comprehensive policy” on the issue soon.
Former president Donald Trumpdeclared on Tuesday that he did not support a ban on birth control, despite his responses in a television interview earlier in the day that suggested he was open to states restricting access to contraceptives.
“I HAVE NEVER, AND WILL NEVER ADVOCATE IMPOSING RESTRICTIONS ON BIRTH CONTROL, or other contraceptives,” Trump wrote on his social media platform.
His post was a reversal of comments he made in an interview with KDKA News in Pittsburgh when he was asked whether he supported any restrictions on a person’s right to contraception.
“We’re looking at that, and I’m going to have a policy on that very shortly, and I think it’s something that you’ll find interesting,” Trump said. “I think it’s a smart decision. But we’ll be releasing it very soon.”
Pressed if that meant he would support states if they wanted to ban certain forms of birth control, including the morning-after pill, Trump did not answer directly but said he would be releasing more details “within a week or so.”
“Things really do have a lot to do with the states, and some states are going to have different policy than others,” Trump said.
A Trump campaign official who was asked about the interview pointed out that Trump said in a recent Time magazine interview that he would make an announcement in the near future regarding mifepristone, a prescription medication most commonly used as part of a two-drug regimen for abortions.
According to video of the full KDKA News interview reviewed by The Washington Post, Trump was not asked specifically about mifepristone or other abortion medication, but rather about birth control methods. The interview also touched on Trump’s hush money trial in New York, the steel industry, the economy and mail-in ballots.
President Biden’s reelection campaign, which has already sought to hammer Trump on the issue of reproductive rights, immediately seized on Tuesday’s interview, releasing clips on its social media accounts that highlighted Trump’s openness to allowing restrictions on contraceptives.
“Women across the country are already suffering from Donald Trump’s post-Roe nightmare, and if he wins a second term, it’s clear he wants to go even further by restricting access to birth control and emergency contraceptives,” Biden campaign spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika said in a statement.
Reproductive rights have become a critical election issue in the past two years, one that has tended to benefit Democrats. Since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022, every state ballot measure that has sought to preserve or expand abortion access has been successful, while those that have sought to restrict abortion access have failed — even in states that skew conservative.
Access to contraception in particular is popular among Americans. According to a 2023 Gallup poll, 88 percent of Americans said birth control was morally acceptable, including 86 percent of Republicans, 88 percent of independents and 93 percent of Democrats.
In the KDKA News interview, Trump was also asked whether he would veto legislation if Congress were to pass a federal 15-week abortion ban. Trump did not rule it out but said he did not think there would be any reason for such legislation.
“It’s really not up to Congress,” Trump said. “It’s up to a whole group of people beyond Congress.”
For months, Trump sent muddled signals on the issue of reproductive rights before releasing a video last month in which he said he thought states should decide abortion rights— even as he continued to take credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who would go on to overturn Roe. The statement was yet another pivot in the former president’s stance on reproductive rights, which has shifted through the decades.
In the interview Tuesday, Trump boasted several times that he was able to overturn Roe, something he said people had told him was not possible.
“We did something that everybody wanted … we got rid of Roe v. Wade, which brought it back to the states,” Trump said, later adding: “It’s brought this issue, and it’s really calmed it down.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/05/21/trump-contraception-restrictions-policy/
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