Abortion-Keep Legal, Yes or No?

mickeyrat

this is fantastic....

https://twitter.com/KentKSmith/status/1725891663044681987?t=GaTi05COUvoj_Hfp32As8g&s=19

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/abortion-ohio-constitutional-amendment-republicans-courts-fb1762537585350caeee589d68fe5a0d   Ohio voters just passed abortion protections. Whether they take effect is now up to the courts

 

Ohio voters just passed abortion protections. Whether they take effect is now up to the courts

By JULIE CARR SMYTH

Today

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio’s new constitutional projections for abortion access and other reproductive rights are supposed to take effect Dec. 7, a month after voters resoundingly passed them. That prospect seems increasingly uncertain.

Existing abortion-related lawsuits are moving again through the courts now that voters have decided the issue, raising questions about how and when the amendment will be implemented.

The amendment declared an individual’s right to “make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions” and passed with a strong 57% majority. It was the seventh straight victory in statewide votes for supporters of abortion access nationally since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned constitutional protections.

But the amendment did not repeal any existing Ohio laws, providing an opening for Republican elected officials and anti-abortion groups to renew their efforts to halt, delay or significantly water it down.

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“A lot of that hard work of figuring out what state laws are inconsistent with the amendment and what state laws can remain, does tend to devolve to the courts,” said Laura Hermer, a professor of law at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, who studies access to health coverage and care in the U.S. "It’s difficult to imagine that the Legislature will say, ‘All right, you win. We’re going to repeal the heartbeat ban' and so forth.”

The state Legislature is controlled by Republicans whose leaders opposed the November ballot amendment, which was known as Issue 1. The Ohio Supreme Court also is controlled by Republicans, who have a 4-3 majority, and will be the final judge of constitutional questions. Several of the Republican justices have taken actions or made statements that have caused abortion rights organizations and ethics attorneys to question their objectivity on the subject.

Minority Democrats in the Ohio House announced legislation two days after the election aimed at avoiding a piecemeal approach to implementing the amendment. Among other steps, they called for repealing the state’s ban on most abortions after fetal cardiac activity is detected, which is around six weeks, and a 24-hour waiting period.

“There are over 30 different restrictions in place," said state Rep. Beth Liston, a physician and co-author of the Reproductive Care Act. "And I think that it is important that we don't require citizens to go to court for every restriction, and, quite frankly, that we don't let harm occur in the interim.”

House Minority Leader Allison Russo was careful not to criticize the high court, which holds sway over the fate of those laws.

“My hope is they will uphold the rule of law and the constitution,” she said.

Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy last week ordered lawyers for the state and a group of abortion clinics to tell the court how they believe the measure’s passage has affected a case involving Ohio’s ban on most abortions once fetal cardiac activity is detected, which has been on hold since October 2022.

A day after voters approved the amendment, U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett made a similar request of the parties in a long-running federal lawsuit challenging a set of state restrictions imposed on abortion providers’ operations. They included a requirement that clinics obtain agreements with a nearby hospital for emergency patient transfers, as well as a prohibition against public hospitals entering into those agreements.

At least three other Ohio abortion laws also have been on hold in the courts.

Passing legislation to bring Ohio law in line with the new constitutional amendment has been a non-starter with Republican lawmakers, who mostly opposed it and took extraordinary steps to defeat it.

With a primary election in their GOP-heavy districts only months away, they are facing fierce pressure from anti-abortion groups to go in the other direction and either pass laws countering the amendment or using their supermajorities to strip courts of their power to interpret it.

“The (Ohio) Constitution specifically says reigning in out-of-control courts is the legislators' job," the anti-abortion group Faith2Action argues in a recently released video. “So let's call on the legislators to do their job, to use their constitutionally granted right to represent us and to keep pro-abortion judges from repealing Ohio laws based on an amendment that doesn't even mention a single Ohio law.”

The video argues that the “right to life” created in Ohio's constitution is inalienable and that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade punted the abortion issue to “the people's elected representatives.”

But in his concurring opinion in that ruling, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote that constitutional amendments were among the avenues for deciding the future of abortion access.

“Moreover, the Constitution authorizes the creation of new rights — state and federal, statutory and constitutional," Kavanaugh wrote. "But when it comes to creating new rights, the Constitution directs the people to the various processes of democratic self-government contemplated by the Constitution — state legislation, state constitutional amendments, federal legislation, and federal constitutional amendments.”

For now, Republican Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens has said legislation targeting the power of state courts will not be considered. GOP Senate President Matt Huffman has ruled out lawmakers pushing for an immediate repeal of Issue 1, as had once been suggested, saying nothing like that should be tried, at least in 2024.

How Attorney General Dave Yost will proceed also is being closely watched.

In a legal analysis of Issue 1 that the Republican published before the election, Yost said the amendment created a new standard for protecting abortion access that “goes beyond” the law of the land under Roe v. Wade.

“That means that many Ohio laws would probably be invalidated ... and others might be at risk to varying degrees,” he wrote.

Hermer, the law professor, said that statement is convenient for lawyers fighting to implement the constitutional amendment but such an analysis isn't legally binding for Yost.

“He doesn’t necessarily have to stand down, but, of course, having already said that, it’s going to make it a bit more difficult to hold those sorts of positions,” she said.

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/texas-abortion-roe-568c09dc8794c341095189362ece9004   Texas judge grants pregnant woman permission to get an abortion despite state’s ban

 

Texas judge grants pregnant woman permission to get an abortion despite state’s ban

By PAUL J. WEBER

41 mins ago

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas judge on Thursday gave a pregnant woman whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis permission to get an abortion in an unprecedented challenge over bans that more than a dozen states have enacted since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

The lawsuit by Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two from the Dallas area, is believed to be the first time since the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that a woman anywhere in the country has asked a court to approve an immediate abortion.

It was unclear how quickly or whether Cox will receive the procedure. State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, an elected Democrat, said she would grant a temporary restraining order that would allow Cox to have an abortion under what are narrow exceptions to Texas' ban. That decision is likely to be appealed by the state, which argued that Cox does not meet the criteria for a medical exception.

In a brief hearing Thursday, her attorneys told Gamble that Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant, went to an emergency room this week for a fourth time during her pregnancy.

Cox and her husband both attended the hearing via Zoom but did not address the court. Doctors have told Cox that if the baby’s heartbeat were to stop, inducing labor would carry a risk of a uterine rupture because of her prior cesareans sections, and that another C-section at full term would would endanger her ability to carry another child.

“The idea that Ms. Cox wants so desperately to be a parent and this law may have her lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice," Gamble said.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Cox, has said this lawsuit is believed to be the first of its kind since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Since that landmark ruling, Texas and 12 other states rushed to ban abortion at nearly all stages of pregnancy. Opponents have sought to weaken those bans, including an ongoing Texas challenge over whether the state's law is too restrictive for women with pregnancy complications.

“I do not want to continue the pain and suffering that has plagued this pregnancy or continue to put my body or my mental health through the risks of continuing this pregnancy,” Cox wrote in an editorial published in The Dallas Morning News. “I do not want my baby to arrive in this world only to watch her suffer.”

Although Texas allows exceptions under the ban, doctors and women have argued that the requirements are so vaguely worded that physicians still won't risk providing abortions, lest they face potential criminal charges or lawsuits.

State officials had asked Gamble to deny the request, arguing that Cox has not shown her life is in imminent danger and that she is therefore unable to qualify for an exception to the ban.

“There are no facts pled which demonstrate that Ms. Cox is at any more of a risk, let alone life-threatening, than the countless women who give birth every day with similar medical histories,” the state wrote in court filings ahead of Thursday's hearing.

Spokespersons for Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did not immediately return messages addressing whether the state will appeal. Cox's attorneys have argued that the risks to her health will worsen unless courts acts swiftly.

The decision was handed down just two days after Cox filed the lawsuit, which says doctors told her the baby will likely be stillborn or live for a week at most.

Cox had cesarean sections with her previous pregnancies. She learned she was pregnant for a third time in August and was told weeks later that her baby was at a high risk for a condition known as trisomy 18, which has a very high likelihood of miscarriage or stillbirth and low survival rates, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed a week after the Texas Supreme Court heard arguments about whether the ban is too restrictive for women with pregnancy complications. That case is among the biggest ongoing challenges to abortion bans in the U.S., although a ruling from the all-Republican court may not come for months.

In July, several Texas women gave emotional testimony about carrying babies they knew would not survive and doctors unable to offer abortions despite their spiraling conditions. A judge later ruled that Texas’ ban was too restrictive for women with pregnancy complications, but that decision was swiftly put on hold after the state appealed.

More than 40 woman have received abortions in Texas since the ban took effect, according to state health figures, none of which have resulted in criminal charges. There were more than 16,000 abortions in Texas in the five months prior to the ban taking effect last year.

gimmesometruth27

mickeyrat said:

https://apnews.com/article/texas-abortion-roe-568c09dc8794c341095189362ece9004   Texas judge grants pregnant woman permission to get an abortion despite state’s ban

 

Texas judge grants pregnant woman permission to get an abortion despite state’s ban

By PAUL J. WEBER

41 mins ago

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas judge on Thursday gave a pregnant woman whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis permission to get an abortion in an unprecedented challenge over bans that more than a dozen states have enacted since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

The lawsuit by Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two from the Dallas area, is believed to be the first time since the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that a woman anywhere in the country has asked a court to approve an immediate abortion.

It was unclear how quickly or whether Cox will receive the procedure. State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, an elected Democrat, said she would grant a temporary restraining order that would allow Cox to have an abortion under what are narrow exceptions to Texas' ban. That decision is likely to be appealed by the state, which argued that Cox does not meet the criteria for a medical exception.

In a brief hearing Thursday, her attorneys told Gamble that Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant, went to an emergency room this week for a fourth time during her pregnancy.

Cox and her husband both attended the hearing via Zoom but did not address the court. Doctors have told Cox that if the baby’s heartbeat were to stop, inducing labor would carry a risk of a uterine rupture because of her prior cesareans sections, and that another C-section at full term would would endanger her ability to carry another child.

“The idea that Ms. Cox wants so desperately to be a parent and this law may have her lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice," Gamble said.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Cox, has said this lawsuit is believed to be the first of its kind since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Since that landmark ruling, Texas and 12 other states rushed to ban abortion at nearly all stages of pregnancy. Opponents have sought to weaken those bans, including an ongoing Texas challenge over whether the state's law is too restrictive for women with pregnancy complications.

“I do not want to continue the pain and suffering that has plagued this pregnancy or continue to put my body or my mental health through the risks of continuing this pregnancy,” Cox wrote in an editorial published in The Dallas Morning News. “I do not want my baby to arrive in this world only to watch her suffer.”

Although Texas allows exceptions under the ban, doctors and women have argued that the requirements are so vaguely worded that physicians still won't risk providing abortions, lest they face potential criminal charges or lawsuits.

State officials had asked Gamble to deny the request, arguing that Cox has not shown her life is in imminent danger and that she is therefore unable to qualify for an exception to the ban.

“There are no facts pled which demonstrate that Ms. Cox is at any more of a risk, let alone life-threatening, than the countless women who give birth every day with similar medical histories,” the state wrote in court filings ahead of Thursday's hearing.

Spokespersons for Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did not immediately return messages addressing whether the state will appeal. Cox's attorneys have argued that the risks to her health will worsen unless courts acts swiftly.

The decision was handed down just two days after Cox filed the lawsuit, which says doctors told her the baby will likely be stillborn or live for a week at most.

Cox had cesarean sections with her previous pregnancies. She learned she was pregnant for a third time in August and was told weeks later that her baby was at a high risk for a condition known as trisomy 18, which has a very high likelihood of miscarriage or stillbirth and low survival rates, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed a week after the Texas Supreme Court heard arguments about whether the ban is too restrictive for women with pregnancy complications. That case is among the biggest ongoing challenges to abortion bans in the U.S., although a ruling from the all-Republican court may not come for months.

In July, several Texas women gave emotional testimony about carrying babies they knew would not survive and doctors unable to offer abortions despite their spiraling conditions. A judge later ruled that Texas’ ban was too restrictive for women with pregnancy complications, but that decision was swiftly put on hold after the state appealed.

More than 40 woman have received abortions in Texas since the ban took effect, according to state health figures, none of which have resulted in criminal charges. There were more than 16,000 abortions in Texas in the five months prior to the ban taking effect last year.

last night texas supreme court stepped in and blocked this.

what now?

seems the cruelty of the texas government is the issue here.

mickeyrat

gimmesometruth27 said:

mickeyrat said:

https://apnews.com/article/texas-abortion-roe-568c09dc8794c341095189362ece9004   Texas judge grants pregnant woman permission to get an abortion despite state’s ban

 

Texas judge grants pregnant woman permission to get an abortion despite state’s ban

By PAUL J. WEBER

41 mins ago

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas judge on Thursday gave a pregnant woman whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis permission to get an abortion in an unprecedented challenge over bans that more than a dozen states have enacted since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

The lawsuit by Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two from the Dallas area, is believed to be the first time since the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that a woman anywhere in the country has asked a court to approve an immediate abortion.

It was unclear how quickly or whether Cox will receive the procedure. State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, an elected Democrat, said she would grant a temporary restraining order that would allow Cox to have an abortion under what are narrow exceptions to Texas' ban. That decision is likely to be appealed by the state, which argued that Cox does not meet the criteria for a medical exception.

In a brief hearing Thursday, her attorneys told Gamble that Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant, went to an emergency room this week for a fourth time during her pregnancy.

Cox and her husband both attended the hearing via Zoom but did not address the court. Doctors have told Cox that if the baby’s heartbeat were to stop, inducing labor would carry a risk of a uterine rupture because of her prior cesareans sections, and that another C-section at full term would would endanger her ability to carry another child.

“The idea that Ms. Cox wants so desperately to be a parent and this law may have her lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice," Gamble said.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Cox, has said this lawsuit is believed to be the first of its kind since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Since that landmark ruling, Texas and 12 other states rushed to ban abortion at nearly all stages of pregnancy. Opponents have sought to weaken those bans, including an ongoing Texas challenge over whether the state's law is too restrictive for women with pregnancy complications.

“I do not want to continue the pain and suffering that has plagued this pregnancy or continue to put my body or my mental health through the risks of continuing this pregnancy,” Cox wrote in an editorial published in The Dallas Morning News. “I do not want my baby to arrive in this world only to watch her suffer.”

Although Texas allows exceptions under the ban, doctors and women have argued that the requirements are so vaguely worded that physicians still won't risk providing abortions, lest they face potential criminal charges or lawsuits.

State officials had asked Gamble to deny the request, arguing that Cox has not shown her life is in imminent danger and that she is therefore unable to qualify for an exception to the ban.

“There are no facts pled which demonstrate that Ms. Cox is at any more of a risk, let alone life-threatening, than the countless women who give birth every day with similar medical histories,” the state wrote in court filings ahead of Thursday's hearing.

Spokespersons for Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did not immediately return messages addressing whether the state will appeal. Cox's attorneys have argued that the risks to her health will worsen unless courts acts swiftly.

The decision was handed down just two days after Cox filed the lawsuit, which says doctors told her the baby will likely be stillborn or live for a week at most.

Cox had cesarean sections with her previous pregnancies. She learned she was pregnant for a third time in August and was told weeks later that her baby was at a high risk for a condition known as trisomy 18, which has a very high likelihood of miscarriage or stillbirth and low survival rates, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed a week after the Texas Supreme Court heard arguments about whether the ban is too restrictive for women with pregnancy complications. That case is among the biggest ongoing challenges to abortion bans in the U.S., although a ruling from the all-Republican court may not come for months.

In July, several Texas women gave emotional testimony about carrying babies they knew would not survive and doctors unable to offer abortions despite their spiraling conditions. A judge later ruled that Texas’ ban was too restrictive for women with pregnancy complications, but that decision was swiftly put on hold after the state appealed.

More than 40 woman have received abortions in Texas since the ban took effect, according to state health figures, none of which have resulted in criminal charges. There were more than 16,000 abortions in Texas in the five months prior to the ban taking effect last year.

last night texas supreme court stepped in and blocked this.

what now?

seems the cruelty of the texas government is the issue here.

yep. going to make it so its guaranteed she can never get pregnant again. how very pro-life...

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/texas-abortion-ban-supreme-court-decision-10767891a475e7ce2c82b1404450908a   Texas Supreme Court pauses lower court's order allowing pregnant woman to have an abortion

 

Texas Supreme Court pauses lower court's order allowing pregnant woman to have an abortion

By PAUL J. WEBER

Today

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas Supreme Court on Friday night put on hold a judge's ruling that approved an abortion for a pregnant woman whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis, throwing into limbo an unprecedented challenge to one of the most restrictive bans in the U.S.

The order by the all-Republican court came more than 30 hours after Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two from the Dallas area, received a temporary restraining order from a lower court judge that prevents Texas from enforcing the state's ban in her case.

In a one-page order, the court said it was temporarily staying Thursday's ruling “without regard to the merits." The case is still pending.

“While we still hope that the Court ultimately rejects the state’s request and does so quickly, in this case we fear that justice delayed will be justice denied,” said Molly Duane, an attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Cox.

Cox's attorneys have said they will not share her abortion plans, citing concerns for her safety. In a filing with the Texas Supreme Court on Friday, her attorneys indicated she was still pregnant.

Cox was 20 weeks pregnant this week when she filed what is believed to be the first lawsuit of its kind since the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that overturned Roe v. Wade. The order issued Thursday only applied to Cox and no other pregnant Texas women.

Cox learned she was pregnant for a third time in August and was told weeks later that her baby was at a high risk for a condition known as trisomy 18, which has a very high likelihood of miscarriage or stillbirth and low survival rates, according to her lawsuit.

Furthermore, doctors have told Cox that if the baby’s heartbeat were to stop, inducing labor would carry a risk of a uterine rupture because of her two prior cesareans sections, and that another C-section at full term would would endanger her ability to carry another child.

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued that Cox does not meet the criteria for a medical exception to the state's abortion ban, and he urged the state's highest court to act swiftly.

“Future criminal and civil proceedings cannot restore the life that is lost if Plaintiffs or their agents proceed to perform and procure an abortion in violation of Texas law,” Paxton's office told the court.

He also warned three hospitals in Houston that they could face legal consequences if they allowed Cox's physician to provide the abortion, despite the ruling from state District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, who Paxton called an “activist” judge.

On Friday, a pregnant Kentucky woman also filed a lawsuit demanding the right to an abortion. The plaintiff, identified as Jane Doe, is about eight weeks pregnant and she wants to have an abortion in Kentucky but cannot legally do so because of the state’s ban, the suit said.

Unlike Cox's lawsuit, the Kentucky challenge seeks class-action status to include other Kentuckians who are or will become pregnant and want to have an abortion.

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/ResisterSis20/status/1733671009566220289?t=7JQPaKvMM9uZ6eKnOXuU-g&s=19

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-abortion-medication-drug-mifepristone-f763b93ef632e1767fd696caec686c21   The Supreme Court will rule on limits on a commonly used abortion medication

 

The Supreme Court will rule on limits on a commonly used abortion medication

By MARK SHERMAN

Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to take up a dispute over a medication used in the most common method of abortion in the United States, its first abortion case since it overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

The justices will hear appeals from the Biden administration and the maker of the drug mifepristone asking the high court to reverse an appellate ruling that would cut off access to the drug through the mail and impose other restrictions, even in states where abortion remains legal. The restrictions include shortening from the current 10 weeks to seven weeks the time during which mifepristone can be used in pregnancy.

The nine justices rejected a separate appeal from abortion opponents who challenged the Food and Drug Administration's initial approval of mifepristone as safe and effective in 2000.

The case will be argued in the spring, with a decision likely by late June, in the middle of the 2024 presidential and congressional campaigns.

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Mifepristone, made by New York-based Danco Laboratories, is one of two drugs used in medication abortions, which account for more than half of all abortions in the United States. More than 5 million people have used it since 2000.

The Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion in June 2022. That ruling has led to bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy in 14 states, with some exceptions, and once cardiac activity can be detected, which is around six weeks, in two others.

Abortion opponents filed their challenge to mifepristone the following November and initially won a sweeping ruling six months later revoking the drug’s approval entirely. The appeals court 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 justices blocked that ruling from taking effect while the case played out, though Justices Samuel Alito, the author of last year’s decision overturning Roe, and Clarence Thomas said they would have allowed some restrictions to take effect while the case proceeded.

Women seeking to end their pregnancies in the first 10 weeks without more invasive surgical abortion can take mifepristone, along with misoprostol. The FDA has eased the terms of mifepristone’s use over the years, including allowing it to be sent through the mail in states that allow access.

In its appeal, the Democratic administration said the appeals court, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, ignored the FDA’s scientific judgment about mifepristone’s safety and effectiveness since its approval in 2000.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday that the appellate ruling “threatens to undermine the FDA’s scientific, independent judgment and would reimpose outdated restrictions on access to safe and effective medication abortion.”

Lawyers for the anti-abortion medical groups and individual physicians who have challenged the use of mifepristone had urged the Supreme Court to turn away the appeals.

“The modest decision below merely restores the common-sense safeguards under which millions of women have taken chemical abortion drugs,” wrote lawyers for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which describes itself as a Christian law firm. The lead attorney on the Supreme Court filing is Erin Hawley, wife of Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of President Donald Trump in Texas, initially revoked FDA approval of mifepristone.

Responding to a quick appeal, two more Trump appointees on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the FDA’s original approval would stand for now. But Judges Andrew Oldham and Kurt Engelhardt said most of the rest of Kacsmaryk’s ruling could take effect while the case winds through federal courts.

Besides reducing the time during which the drug can be taken and halting distribution through the mail, patients who are seeking medication abortions would have had to make three in-person visits with a doctor. Women also might have been required to take a higher dosage of the drug than the FDA says is necessary.

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.

___

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/WEWS/status/1735677363466207621?t=qKDiXd4mSmdZDo4HfFMzdg&s=19

Halifax2TheMax

Welcome to the Dark Ages, ladies. “I am your retribution.”

She miscarried in her bathroom. Now she’s charged with abuse of a corpse.

Brittany Watts was still hooked to an IV, sick for almost a week from a potentially fatal miscarriage, when a detective from the Warren Police Department in Ohio stepped into her hospital room. He assured her that she wasn’t in any trouble.

For more than an hour, Detective Nick Carney interviewed Watts, 33, about the details of that morning and the whereabouts of the nearly 22-week-old fetus that was declared nonviable two days earlier. As Watts described miscarrying in her bathroom, a nurse at Mercy Health — St. Joseph Warren Hospital rubbed her shoulders and told her everything would be okay, Watts told The Washington Post in a series of text messages.

Two weeks later, Carney arrested Watts on charges of felony abuse of a corpse for how she handled the remains from her pregnancy. If indicted and found guilty, she faces up to a year in prison along with a fine of up to $2,500, her lawyer said.

To describe Watts’s experience, The Washington Post reviewed police reports, call recordings and more than 600 pages of medical records, interviewed her lawyer, and spoke to Watts via text message.

The arrest has outraged health-care professionals and reproductive rights activists — many of whom fear that the stigmatization and criminalization of women’s reproductive-related outcomes is expanding in the 18 months since the Supreme Court reversed a nearly 50-year precedent that gave women the constitutional right to an abortion. Even before restrictions from the Dobbsdecision took hold, low-income women and women of color, particularly Black women, were disproportionately criminalized while pregnant.

As many as 30 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriages, usually in the first trimester and often before a woman knows she is pregnant. Late miscarriages, such as Watts’s, are relatively rare, and doctors say that there’s no clear guidance for how fetal remains should be handled. In the past seven years, Ohio is among several states that enacted laws mandating that products of pregnancy be buried or cremated, although these rules typically apply to a health-care setting such as a clinic or doctor’s office rather than individuals who experience a pregnancy loss at home or elsewhere. A judge last year blocked Ohio’s law from being enforced pending a legal battle.

“Moving this over to the individual after a miscarriage just heightens the question, ‘What are they supposed to do?’ ” said Dov Fox, a national health law and bioethics expert at the University of San Diego School of Law. “If it’s already difficult for hospitals, for individuals facing difficult circumstances and navigating pregnancy loss to undertake the medical system is not just a tall order but a prohibitive one.”

Watts later learned through her lawyer that the nurse who had reassured her had reported her to the police.

Neither health-care workers nor law enforcement officials dispute that Watts’s pregnancy loss was natural, and the coroner’s report determined that the fetus was uninjured, but a Trumbull County grand jury is now investigating her case.

Watts said that along with mourning her loss, she is also dealing with how her “life was turned upside down” the day law enforcement was asked to intervene.

“I am grieving the loss of my baby,” she told The Post this week. “I feel anger, frustration and, at times, shameful.”

Watts, a medical receptionist at a different hospital, had woken in pain on the morning of Sept. 22. At her home in Warren, Ohio, about an hour east of Cleveland, she tried walking around indoors, but it didn’t lessen the pressure she felt in her abdomen.

Watts was in her bathroom when she delivered a roughly 15-ounce fetus over the toilet. At the time, she said, she “didn’t know that at 5:48 a.m. [her] life would change forever.” The delivery left a mess of blood, stool, tissue and other bodily fluid, clogging the toilet. Watts scooped out what she believed was stopping the toilet and placed it outdoors, near the garage, cleaned the bathroom and showered, records show.

To maintain appearances to her mother, whom she had not told about the pregnancy, Watts drove to a hair appointment, said Traci Timko, Watts’s attorney. The hairdresser noticed Watts’s pale face and immediately called her mother to take her to the hospital. It was Watts’s fourth pregnancy-related trip to the hospital that week.

When a hospital nurse asked Watts where the fetus was, Watts told her, and later the police, that the fetus was outdoors, near the garage; Watts added that she didn’t look inside the toilet to make sure. A hospital note written and signed by the nurse said, “Advised by risk management to contact Warren City Police to investigate the possibility of the infant being in a bucket at the patient’s residence.” The next record shows that the nurse called the police.

“I had a mother who had a delivery at home and came in without the baby and she says the baby’s in her backyard in a bucket,” the nurse said, according to a call recording obtained by The Post. “I need to have someone go find this baby, or direct me on what I need to do.”

A spokesperson for Mercy Health, Maureen Richmond, declined to comment “out of respect for patient privacy.”

Demonized’ for an everyday occurrence

Two weeks later, on Oct. 5, Detective Carney drove to Watts’s home and placed her under arrest. Watts said that, until then, she didn’t even realize she had been charged with “abuse of a corpse.” The law, which outlines that “No person, except as authorized by law, shall treat a human corpse in a way that would outrage reasonable community sensibilities,” has been used before in Ohio in relation to women’s reproductive health.

In 2019, a Warren County, Ohio, woman was found guilty of abuse of a corpse in connection with the death of her newborn daughter; her defense lawyer said the baby was stillborn. A judge put the woman on probation for three years, but her probation was terminated after roughly a year, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

According to Olwyn Conway, a professor of law at Ohio State University, “abuse of a corpse” historically falls under a broader law against grave robbing. Given the statute’s history, she questions whether prosecutors are applying the law as it was intended.

Prosecutions stemming from pregnancy loss occurred in the Roe v. Wade era, but post-Dobbs,“prosecutors feel they have more leeway” to pursue such cases under statutes such as abuse of a corpse or concealment of a birth, said Kylee Sunderlin, legal support director of If/When/How, a nonprofit network of reproductive justice lawyers.

Those statues, Sunderlin said, tend to be ambiguous, archaic and never intended to be used against someone who experiences a pregnancy loss.

Timko said that Watts is being punished because police and prosecutors do not understand the natural and common process of a miscarriage.

Watts, who has no criminal record, is being “demonized for something that goes on every day,” Timko said at the hearing in Warren Municipal Court on Nov. 2, according to WKBN. The city of Warren is part of Trumbull County.

George Sterbenz, a forensic pathologist, testified that an autopsy found no injury to the fetus and that the fetus had died before passing through the birth canal. “This fetus was going to be nonviable … and the fetus was too young to be delivered,” Sterbenz said.

Warren Assistant Prosecutor Lewis Guarnieri, who did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment, said in court that the case is about what happened after the miscarriage.

“The issue isn’t how the child died, when the child died — it’s the fact that the baby was put into a toilet, large enough to clog up a toilet, left in that toilet, and she went on [with] her day,” he said.

Sunderlin and others who criticize Watts’s arrest question the public safety value of her prosecution.

“This is a prosecutor believing that they’re the arbiters of what’s in the public interest,” Sunderlin said. “But they’re prosecuting someone over a pregnancy outcome. Who are they actually protecting?”

Timko said the case is now about defining the term “corpse.” Ohio’s laws do not define corpse, and without a definition, the public is left to argue the issue, she said.

“In most cases, criminal law applies to persons who are defined as humans who are viable,” Timko said. “In Brittany’s case, she knew the fetus was not viable.”

No clear guidance

Before police began to investigate Watts, the medical office receptionist had spent the three previous days in and out of the hospital as her pregnancy faltered.

By the time she first visited the hospital on Sept. 19, Watts already suspected she was miscarrying. She was passing large clots of blood and describing her pain as intense, according to her medical records. Doctors confirmed her suspicions, telling her that although there was fetal cardiac activity, the pregnancy was not viable. Watts left the hospital that day against medical advice, telling the doctor she could “better process what was happening to her at home.”

The next morning, Watts returned, expecting to be induced to deliver her preterm pregnancy. Abortion is currently legal up to 22 weeks of pregnancy in Ohio. For the next eight hours, doctors and officials determined the ethics of inducing labor for a woman who had been diagnosed with preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM), had no detectable amniotic fluid, was bleeding vaginally and had advanced cervical dilation.

One doctor was particularly blunt about the urgency of inducing Watts’s delivery: “My recommendation instead of waiting until mom is on death’s door before proceeding with treatment, [is] to deliver this baby” by inducing, the doctor wrote.

Seven hours later, Watts still had not been induced. She wanted to leave, according to medical records. Finally, when the doctor returned to the hospital room to discuss the induction plan, records state, Watts’s bed was empty and her IV bag was draped over the railing.

At home, the pain and bleeding wouldn’t let up, prompting Watts to briefly return to the hospital the next day, but she again left against medical advice after not being able to see her OB/GYN soon enough.

It was during Watts’s next visit to the hospital, on Sept. 22, that her status would change from patient to potential criminal suspect.

Although miscarriage is common, it is nonetheless an isolating experience, doctors say. When it comes to fetal remains, the guidance outside a health-care setting is murky.

“As to the disposal of fetal remains after abortion or miscarriage at home, I know of nothing,” Fox, the University of San Diego School of Law bioethics expert, said of guidelines. “This is not an area where you’re going to find best practices from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention” or the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists.

Cassing Hammond, an OB/GYN and associate professor at Northwestern University’s medical school, said that an outcome such as Watts’s — a second-trimester rupture of membranes — is not uncommon.

“While her process for the disposal of remains may be unusual, the actual clinical scenario the patient faced is not unusual and is something any pregnant person could confront,” Hammond said. And although OB/GYNs would prefer people be in a health-care setting during a second-trimester pregnancy loss, “anyone experiencing a miscarriage has the possibility of passing that at home.”

“The right person for the patient to call is the doctor, not the police,” Hammond added. “Calling the police on a patient going through this kind of traumatic experience is not therapeutic.”

For Watts, the trauma of miscarrying could stretch well into next year as she awaits the decision of a grand jury tasked with poring over one of her most life-altering moments. Apart from the emotional upheaval, Watts is struggling to pay the medical and legal bills that have mounted in the past few months.

Although she is filled with anxiety waiting for the grand jury to decide whether she should be indicted for alleged “abuse of corpse,” she said she is grateful for support from her community and people across the world.

“I pray that my story makes a difference, and no other woman ever faces this reality,” she said. “However, if it comes to that, she has my support.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/12/15/ohio-woman-miscarriage-abuse-of-corpse-grand-jury/

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/realTuckFrumper/status/1740022997971615953?t=vA8gxiPngBMRJy9aCqTLig&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/francismmaxwell/status/1748457369590190230?t=HQ7aH2Z3m5DbCeZaQDY26g&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/JoJoFromJerz/status/1748540784289128703?t=WrjhWoZyJ5hGyTMpOn4rYQ&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/JoJoFromJerz/status/1749230452886380965?t=0e9R_S9IyTrbAAaM311G-Q&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/VoteGloriaJ/status/1749562856952017189?t=WPkTODiqn--Aki-kIurONA&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/DavidPepper/status/1750290127429972092?t=Sf8Bp_Gl54err2eeA5pJLg&s=19

Halifax2TheMax

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.”  

Lerxst1992

There’s no doubt overturning Roe was a political gift to the Dems.

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/abortion-ballot-initiatives-voters-democracy-2024-602ebb8a74d7ae45163d79c065a23ef0   Republican legislatures in some states are trying to keep abortion off the ballot

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.

---

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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.

 

mickeyrat

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2024/01/republican-ohio-senate-hopefuls-celebrated-supreme-court-returning-abortion-to-states-then-ohioans-passed-abortion-rights.html

 

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

• 
  

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By

• Andrew J. Tobias, cleveland.com

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.