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      Five sets of fetal remains found in anti-abortion activist’s home, DC police say

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      Five sets of fetal remains found in anti-abortion activist’s home, DC police sayLauren Handy claims she gained access to organ bank at university in Seattle but authorities haven’t disclosed source of fetuses Five sets of human fetal remains were recovered from the Washington DC home of an anti-abortion activist after a raid, the capital’s Metropolitan police department confirmed to the Guardian on Thursday.The activist, a woman named Lauren Handy, 28, is a leader of the group Progressive Anti-Abortion uprising (PAAU) and has described herself as a “Catholic anarchist” in the past.Local television station WUSA9 reported remains were carried out in red biohazard bags on Wednesday. Handy’s only comment at the time was: “People will freak out when they hear.”Although the authorities have not disclosed the source of the fetal remains, Handy recently claimed to have gained access to an organ bank at the University of Washington in Seattle. Separately, she was indicted on Wednesday for forcing entry into a Washington DC abortion clinic in 2020 October.“On March 9th myself & [sic] fellow activists gained access to University of Washington’s fetal organ labs & freezers,” Handy claimed on Twitter on 23 March. She also retweeted pictures posted by PAAU that show the contents of a walk-in deep freezer.The university said it plans to release a statement but would not confirm whether the pictures were authentic. It also said that university authorities were investigating whether anything was missing from the lab.On Wednesday, federal prosecutors indicted Handy on charges of blockading a Washington DC abortion clinic, where she allegedly claimed to be a patient to gain entry. She and eight co-defendants could face up to 11 years in prison and $350,000 in fines if found guilty.The news comes as conservative states across the country rush to limit women’s access to abortion, in anticipation of a forthcoming supreme court decision expected to severely curtail women’s right to terminate a pregnancy.Conversely, some Democratic-led states have worked to enshrine the right to abortion in state law.Current federal law requires states to allow abortion until a fetus can survive outside the womb, generally regarded as 24 weeks gestation, because of a decision in the 1973 landmark supreme court case Roe v Wade.TopicsAbortionWashington DCUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Idaho copies extreme Texas law and bans abortion after six weeks

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      Idaho copies extreme Texas law and bans abortion after six weeksOutrage as state becomes first in US to pass ban modelled on Texas law that allows family members to sue abortion providers Idaho has become the first US state to pass an abortion ban modeled after a controversial Texas law that prohibits abortions after about six weeks or when a heartbeat is detected.Blue states seek to protect abortion rights before supreme court decisionRead moreThe news comes with abortion rights under assault across the US – despite clear majority support for such rights. The conservative-dominated US supreme court is thought likely to overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which established the right, later this year.On Monday, Idaho house members passed the ban 51-14. No Democrats supported the legislation. The Senate has approved the bill and the Republican governor, Brad Little, is expected to sign it.Abortion rights groups called on Little to use his veto.Planned Parenthood called the bill a copycat of the Texas bill that became law last May and was controversially left in place by the supreme court.“Idaho’s anti-abortion lawmakers ignored public opinion and rushed through this legislation, looking to capitalize on the US supreme court’s failure to block Texas’s ban,” Planned Parenthood said, adding that the bill’s proponents have been open about wanting Idaho to become “the next Texas”.Jennifer M Allen, chief executive of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, an Idaho nonprofit, said: “Little must do the right thing, listen to the medical community and veto this legislation before it forces Idaho patients to leave the state for critical, time-sensitive care or remain pregnant against their will.”The Idaho bill would also allow family members to sue doctors who perform procedures after six weeks of pregnancy, before most people know they are pregnant. The bill provides a minimum reward of $20,000 plus legal fees within four years of the abortion for successful suits, compared to minimum $10,000 and legal costs under the Texas law.Unlike the Texas law, the Idaho bill provides some exceptions in cases of rape or incest. While a rapist could not sue practitioners under Idaho’s new bill, family members could. Victims would have to file a police report and provide it to a doctor before they could get the procedure.“This bill is not clever, it’s absurd,” said Democratic representative Lauren Necochea, adding that the rape and incest exemptions were “not meaningful”.Last year, Little signed a “heartbeat” bill into law, but it included a “trigger provision” that stopped it being in effect until a federal court approved it, which has not happened.Several Republican-run states have taken steps to restrict abortion rights. Among them, bills in Missouri would permit lawsuits against those who help someone cross state lines to get an abortion. Terminating non-viable pregnancies would be a criminal offense.The Oklahoma senate recently passed six anti-abortion measures, including a copycat of the Texas ban. In February, the Arizona senate passed an abortion ban that would prohibit the procedure after 15 weeks, similar to the law passed in Mississippi, which is expected to lead the supreme court to overturn Roe v Wade.TopicsIdahoAbortionUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden’s State of the Union address: a perfect summation of his presidency | Moira Donegan

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      Biden’s State of the Union address: a perfect summation of his presidencyMoira DoneganThe US president has good intentions, with only halting, sporadic, uncreative, and trepidatious efforts to actually enact them There’s always something a bit grim about the State of the Union. A setpiece of American political theater, the annual speech by the president to a joint session of Congress is choreographed to eliminate any chance of accidental sincerity. The president speaks in carefully calibrated spin; every word sounds like it has been focus-grouped. Members of the opposition party make a show of their animosity, vamping for the cameras with either staid, dignified displeasure or ravenous hatred, depending on where they are running for re-election. No one’s mind is changed and little new information is delivered. By its nature, the speech is meant to describe the status quo. It is not meant to change it.State of the Union: Joe Biden pledges to make Putin pay for Ukraine invasionRead moreThis year, President Biden had a particularly grim task. After months and months of negotiations with Senator Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, proved fruitless, his sweeping economic agenda, the Build Back Better Plan, appears to be dead. The two voting rights bills that would have helped secure the franchise for Black Americans and protect the integrity of future elections were killed when Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, declined to support an exemption to the filibuster, meaning that the erosion of voting rights in Republican-controlled states is likely to advance unchallenged. Many economic indicators are strong, but with inflation running rampant, this means little to working families, who see their paychecks covering less and less of what they need. This spring, the US supreme court will hand down opinions that will drastically reshape American government and American lives, including the case from Mississippi, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, that will overturn Roe v Wade. The midterms are coming, and in Europe, a pointless and brutal war of self-aggrandizement has been launched by an erratic and mendacious dictator with a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons.Perhaps it was to be expected, then, that Biden’s speech was wide-ranging in tone, frenziedly ambitious in its agenda, and light on specifics. He opened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, condemning the murderous ambitions of Vladimir Putin and praising the courage of the unexpectedly resilient Ukrainian military and civilian volunteer forces to rapturous applause. The Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova, was in attendance as a guest of the first lady, and she received the night’s first standing ovation, her hand placed over her heart from her balcony seat, as lawmakers below fluttered her country’s blue and yellow flag. Homages to the Ukrainian struggle were everywhere in the House chamber, with a number of women lawmakers dressed in blue and yellow ensembles, men and women alike wearing stickers of the Ukrainian flag on their lapels, and others fielding subtler signals of solidarity: when the camera lingered on Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, she had a cloth sunflower, the Ukrainian national symbol, pinned to her collar.Biden boasted of the devastating impact of western economic sanctions on the Russian economy, reaffirmed his support for Nato, and vowed to deploy the justice department to seize yachts belonging to Putin’s friends. Promisingly, it seems as if concerns over growing Russian aggression might spark a renewed interest in energy independence that could help the US and Europe break their addiction to Russian oil and gas. Speaking of the recent return of significant numbers of American troops to Central Europe for the first time in years, Biden reaffirmed his commitment to preventing a direct military confrontation with Russia, and emphasized that the troops would be there not to attack the Russians, but to protect Nato allies. One suspects that Putin will not appreciate the distinction.When Biden moved on to domestic policy, the crowd quickly became divided. As he touted his American Rescue Plan, last year’s Covid relief package, boos erupted from the Republican side when Biden noted that the 2017 Republican tax cuts had primarily benefitted the very rich. It was a theme he maintained as he turned to his bipartisan infrastructure law, the $1tn legislative achievement that provides funds for the maintenance and repair of the nation’s physical infrastructure – roads, bridges, airports, commuter trains, and internet. Biden touted a series of shovel-ready projects he claims will go into effect this year and emphasized the bill’s ability to encourage the return of the American manufacturing sector.Domestic manufacturing was largely his prescription for fighting inflation, too. Biden introduced his broader economic agenda with a call to make more stuff in the US, and to use the federal government’s purchasing power to support those American-made goods. This segue led into a litany of briefly visited agenda items, such as allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices; cutting the cost of childcare for working class families so that more women could return to the paid workforce; establishing a 15% minimum corporate tax rate; and supporting the labor-strengthening Pro Act.Many of these proposals seemed less like Biden was putting forward achievable goals for the next year of his presidency and more like he was shifting through the wreckage of his disastrous Build Back Better negotiations with Manchin, searching for some workable leftovers. Most of the items he proposed had already been presented to Congress; none of them had been able to get through the obstructionism of the Republican party and the Manchin-Sinema block. These things would substantially improve the lives of Americans, but it was clear he had no plan for how to implement any of them.This was true especially for abortion rights. Though reproductive choice advocates had long urged Biden to say the word “abortion” in public – he has never done so as president – he referred tonight only offhandedly to the importance of reproductive rights. There was no mention of the fact that Roe v Wade has been nullified in the state of Texas for six months, as of Tuesday. There was no mention of the fact that the Reproductive Health Act, an attempt to legislatively secure the federal right to an abortion, failed in the Senate this week. There was no mention of the fact that of the five supreme court justices present at the speech, three of them – John Roberts, Brett Kavanagh, and Amy Coney Barrett – will vote to eliminate that right in a few short months. “We have to protect a woman’s right to choose,” said Biden, not offering any ideas as to just how that right might be protected. The camera cut momentarily to Amy Coney Barrett, who pursed her lips as thin as paper.In this way, the speech was a perfect summation of Biden’s presidency: good intentions, with only halting, sporadic, uncreative, and trepidatious pursuit of actually enacting them. Unlike his predecessor, Biden tends to stay on script, but the State of the Union speech featured several ad libs – a product, some suspected, of the multiple revisions the speech was subjected to at the last minute, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine placed new demands on the broadcast. The last of these was probably the most apropos: “Go get him,” Biden told the nation. Him who? Get him how? It didn’t make sense, but so little of this does.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsJoe BidenOpinionUS politicsAbortionUS economyUS domestic policyUS foreign policyUkrainecommentReuse this content More

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      How the Fight Over Abortion Rights Has Changed the Politics of South Texas

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      In the Laredo region, long a Democratic stronghold, that single issue appears to be driving the decision for many voters, the majority of whom are Catholic.LAREDO, Texas — Like the majority of her neighbors in the heavily Latino community of Laredo, Angelica Garza has voted for Democrats for most of her adult life. Her longtime congressman, Henry Cuellar, with his moderate views and opposition to abortion, made it an easy choice, she said.But as up-and-coming Democratic candidates in her patch of South Texas have leaned ever more liberal, Ms. Garza, a dedicated Catholic, cast a ballot for Donald Trump in 2016, primarily because of his anti-abortion views.In choosing Mr. Trump that year and again in 2020, Ms. Garza joined a parade of Latino voters who are changing the political fabric of South Texas. In the Laredo region, where about nine out of 10 residents are Catholic, many registered voters appear to be driven largely by the single issue of abortion.“I’m willing to vote for any candidate that supports life,” said Ms. Garza, 75. “That’s the most important issue for me, even if it means not voting for a Democrat.”With a pivotal primary election just a week away, Ms. Garza is ready to to turn away from Democrats. Pointing at a wall covered in folkloric angel figurines at the art store she owns in Laredo, she explained why: “They are babies, angels, and I don’t think anyone has the right to end their life. We have to support life.”Angelica Garza voted for Donald Trump in 2016 because of his anti-abortion views.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesVoters like Ms. Garza are worrying Democratic leaders, whose once tight grip and influence on the Texas-Mexico border region has loosened in recent electoral cycles. Republicans have claimed significant victories across South Texas, flipping Zapata County, south of Laredo on the bank of the Rio Grande, and a state district in San Antonio. They also made gains in the Rio Grande Valley, where the border counties delivered so many votes for Mr. Trump in 2020 that they helped negate the impact of white voters in urban and suburban areas of the state who voted for Joe Biden.Much is at stake in Laredo, the most populous city of the 28th Congressional District, where Latinos are a majority, and which stretches from the eastern tip of San Antonio and includes a western chunk of the Rio Grande Valley. Since the district was drawn nearly three decades ago, the seat has been held by Democrats. Mr. Cuellar has represented the district since 2005. His moderate and sometimes conservative views — he was the only Congressional Democrat to vote against a U.S. House bill that would have nullified the state’s near-total ban on abortion that went into effect last September — have frequently endeared him to social conservatives and Republicans.But he now finds himself locked in a tight fight against a much more liberal candidate backed by the progressive wing of the party that includes Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Mr. Cuellar, whose home was raided last month by the F.B.I. as part of an investigation that neither he nor the government has disclosed, beat his opponent, Jessica Cisneros, by four percentage points in 2020.Should he lose the primary on March 1 to Ms. Cisneros, a 28-year-old immigration lawyer who supports abortion rights, the path to flip the House of Representatives could very well run through South Texas, as Republicans have vowed an all-in campaign focused on religious and other conservative values. More

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      The Supreme Court Fails Black Voters in Alabama

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      You know the Rubicon has been crossed when the Supreme Court issues a conservative voting rights order so at odds with settled precedent and without any sense of the moment that Chief Justice John Roberts feels constrained to dissent.This is the same John Roberts who in 1982, as a young lawyer in the administration of President Ronald Reagan, fought a crucial amendment to the Voting Rights Act of 1965; whose majority opinion in 2013 gutted one-half of the Voting Rights Act and who joined an ahistoric opinion last summer that took aim at the other half; and who famously complained in dissent from a 2006 decision in favor of Latino voters in South Texas that “it is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”Yes, that Chief Justice Roberts. What the 5-to-4 majority did was that far out of line.The unsigned order that drew the chief justice’s dissent Monday night blocked the decision by a special three-judge Federal District Court ordering the Alabama Legislature to draw a second congressional district in which Black residents constitute a majority. Alabama’s population is 27 percent Black. The state has seven congressional districts. The lower court held that by packing some Black voters into one district and spreading others out over three other districts, the state diluted the Black vote in violation of the Voting Rights Act.The Supreme Court will hear Alabama’s appeal of the district court order in its next term, so the stay it granted will mean that the 2022 elections will take place with district lines that the lower court unanimously, with two of the three judges appointed by President Donald Trump, found to be illegal.Chief Justice Roberts objected that the ordinary standards under which the Supreme Court grants a stay of a lower court opinion had not been met. “The district court properly applied existing law in an extensive opinion with no apparent errors for our correction,” he wrote. Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, also dissented in a more extensive opinion that accused the majority of using the court’s emergency “shadow docket” not only to intervene improperly on behalf of the state but also to change voting rights law in the process.This is no mere squabble over procedure. What happened Monday night was a raw power play by a runaway majority that seems to recognize no stopping point. It bears emphasizing that the majority’s agenda of cutting back on the scope of the Voting Rights Act is Chief Justice Roberts’s agenda too. He made that abundantly clear in the past and suggested it in a kind of code on Monday with his bland observation that the court’s Voting Rights Act precedents “have engendered considerable disagreement and uncertainty regarding the nature and contours of a vote dilution claim.” But in his view, that was an argument to be conducted in the next Supreme Court term while permitting the district court’s decision to take effect now.While the majority as a whole said nothing, Justice Brett Kavanaugh took it upon himself to offer a kind of defense. Only Justice Samuel Alito joined him. Perhaps the others — Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — chose not to sign onto his rude reference to Justice Kagan’s “catchy but worn-out rhetoric about the ‘shadow docket.’ ” Or perhaps his “To reiterate: The court’s stay order is not a decision on the merits” rang a little hollow when, as Justice Kagan pointed out, “the district court here did everything right under the law existing today” and “staying its decision forces Black Alabamians to suffer what under that law is clear vote dilution.”In other words, when it comes to the 2022 elections, for Black voters in Alabama the Supreme Court’s procedural intervention is the equivalent of a ruling on the merits.Or maybe the others couldn’t indulge in the hypocrisy of Justice Kavanaugh’s description of the standards for granting a stay. The party asking for a stay, he wrote, “ordinarily must show (i) a reasonable probability that this court would eventually grant review and a fair prospect that the court would reverse, and (ii) that the applicant would likely suffer irreparable harm absent the stay.”But wait a minute. Weren’t those conditions clearly met back in September when abortion providers in Texas came to the court seeking a stay of the Texas vigilante law, S.B. 8, which was about to go into effect? That law, outlawing abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and authorizing anyone anywhere in the country to sue a Texas abortion provider for damages, was flagrantly unconstitutional, and the law was about to destroy the state’s abortion infrastructure. But did Justice Kavanaugh or any of the others in Monday’s majority vote to grant the requested stay? They did not. Chief Justice Roberts did.It’s impossible not to conclude that what we see at work is not some neutral principle guiding the Supreme Court’s intervention but simply whether a majority likes or doesn’t like what a lower court has done. In his opinion, Justice Kavanaugh sought to avoid that conclusion by arguing that when it comes to election cases, the Supreme Court will more readily grant a stay to counteract “late judicial tinkering with election laws.” But there was no late “tinkering” here. The legislature approved the disputed plan in November, after six days of consideration, and the governor signed it. The district court conducted a seven-day trial in early January and on Jan. 24 issued its 225-page opinion. The election is months away — plenty of time for the legislature to comply with the decision.Disturbing as this development is, it is even more alarming in context. Last July, in a case from Arizona, the court took a very narrow view of the Voting Rights Act as a weapon against vote denial measures, policies that have a discriminatory effect on nonwhite voters’ access to the polls. That case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, was brought under the act’s Section 2, which prohibits voting procedures that give members of racial minorities “less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” Justice Alito’s opinion for a 6-to-3 majority set a high bar for showing that any disputed measure is more than just an ordinary burden that comes with turning out to vote.It was an unusual case, in that Section 2 has much more typically been used as it was in Alabama, to challenge district lines as causing vote dilution. Obviously, at the heart of any Section 2 case is the question of how to evaluate the role of race. In its request for a stay, Alabama characterized the district court of having improperly “prioritized” race, as opposed to other districting factors, in ordering a second majority Black district. In response, the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, representing the Alabama plaintiffs, called this a mischaracterization of what the district court had actually done when it took account of the compactness and cohesion of the Black community and the history of white Alabama voters refusing to support Black candidates.Stripped to its core, Alabama is essentially arguing that a law enacted to protect the interests of Black citizens bars courts from considering race in evaluating a redistricting plan. Justice Kagan’s dissenting opinion contained a warning that granting the stay amounted to a tacit acceptance of that startling proposition. She said the stay reflected “a hastily made and wholly unexplained prejudgment” that the court was “ready to change the law.”The battle over what Section 2 means has been building for years, largely under the radar, and now it is front and center. The current Supreme Court term is all about abortion and guns. The next one will be all about race. Along with the Alabama case, Merrill v. Milligan, the Harvard and University of North Carolina admissions cases are also on the docket — to be heard by a Supreme Court that, presumably, for the first time in history, will have two Black justices, and all in the shadow of the midterm elections. The fire next time.Linda Greenhouse, the winner of a 1998 Pulitzer Prize, reported on the Supreme Court for The Times from 1978 to 2008. She is the author of “Justice on the Brink: The Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Rise of Amy Coney Barrett, and Twelve Months That Transformed the Supreme Court.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Tens of thousands ‘march for life’ in Washington as fate of Roe v Wade looms

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      Tens of thousands ‘march for life’ in Washington as fate of Roe v Wade loomsCourt’s conservative supermajority appears open to reversing Roe, overturning nearly 50 years of precedent since 1973 decision In 1974, on the first anniversary of the Roe v Wade supreme court decision, abortion opponents gathered on the National Mall in Washington to “march for life”. They vowed to return each year until the ruling, which established the right to abortion, was no longer the law of the land.Supreme court declines to speed challenge to Texas abortion limitsRead moreOn Friday, anti-abortion activists from across the country braved sub-zero temperatures and the coronavirus pandemic to assemble in Washington, more hopeful than ever that this would be their last march to a court where the fate of Roe will soon be decided.“We are hoping and praying that this year, 2022, will bring a historic change for life,” Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, told a crowd tens of thousands strong and waving signs that read “I am the post-Roe generation” and “The future is anti-abortion”.Praising followers for standing against what she called the “single-most critical rights abuse of our time”, Mancini said they sent a clear message to the supreme court: “Roe is not settled law.”Chris Smith, a Republican congressman from New Jersey, described the mood as one of “fresh hope and heightened expectations”. The court’s conservative supermajority appears open to reversing Roe, thereby overturning nearly 50 years of precedent since the 1973 decision.“There’s optimism in the air, there is a sense that a significant hurdle to protect the unborn is about to move,” he said.The rally took place a day before the 49th anniversary of the Roe decision. The theme of the march, also in its 49th year, was “equality begins in the womb.” Speakers told rally-goers that their cause was bound up with the struggles for racial justice and gender equality and described abortion as “the ultimate form of discrimination”.The march typically draws about 100,000 abortion opponents by the busload to Washington. But this year’s march took place amid a wave of Omicron infections in the nation’s capital that limited turnout.Some activists said on social media they would not attend because of a new mandate in Washington requiring anyone over the age of 12 to show vaccination proof before entering restaurants, conference centers and other public places.Still, the event attracted a large and enthusiastic crowd, priests, pastors and busloads of high school students, among them. Together after the rally they marched to the supreme court singing hymns and chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Roe v Wade has got to go!”The jubilant demonstration comes as the supreme court reviews a case involving a Mississippi law which bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a direct challenge to Roe. At oral arguments, several members of the court’s conservative bloc appeared open to not only upholding the ban, but to overruling Roe entirely. A decision is expected by the end of June, months before the midterm elections.“We’ve been building to this moment,” said Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia who spoke on a virtual panel organized by the March. Her group was active in helping confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court, part of a decades-long legal strategy by abortion opponents to remake the nation’s federal court system.“We heard justices say that precedent shouldn’t be upheld if it was incorrectly decided in the first place,” Cobb said. “That’s a big deal.”Several Republican lawmakers appeared on stage and virtually to voice their unwavering support for the anti-abortion cause, declaring that the movement was “winning this battle”.Last year, states enacted more than 100 new abortion restrictions, a record, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports reproductive rights and tracks state-level legislation. The group has called 2021 “the worst year for abortion rights in almost half a century”, and estimates that 26 US states are “certain or likely” to immediately ban abortion if Roe is overturned.And conservative states are already laying the groundwork for new restrictions as fights over issues like telemedicine and abortion pills gain momentum.Though the anti-abortion movement has made significant legal and policy gains in recent decades, public opinion polls have consistently found that a majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or some circumstances.“If Roe falls, the battle lines will change,” Mancini said. “But make no mistake, the fight for life will need to continue in the states.”Kelly and Greg King, a married couple from Los Angeles, who were attending the event for a third time, said the supreme court decision would likely push their state to expand abortion access. They worry about plans to make California a “sanctuary” for out-of-state patients seeking reproductive care in a post-Roe legal landscape.Clear-eyed about the state’s progressive politics, Kelly King said she would focus her efforts on “changing hearts” rather than changing policy.“Abortion has become … ” Kelly King said, searching for the word. “Normalized,” her husband chimed in. “Yes, normalized,” she said. “That’s the problem.”Hours before marchers arrived on the National Mall, the supreme court declined to accelerate a legal challenge to a Texas law that has effectively banned abortions in the second-largest state.Yet among the speakers, there were few references to that victory or to the Texas law, which is deeply unpopular, including among Republicans.Pro-choice supporters also marked the anniversary, using the occasion to “sound the alarm” on the threat posed to reproductive rights.Mini Timmaraju, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, warned that a “small but vocal minority” was “determined to undermine the will of the majority of people in this country who support reproductive freedom”.“They falsely claim to be supporters of ‘equality’ all while working ardently to block abortion access and end the legal right to abortion,” she said in a statement. “Make no mistake – this movement’s end goals would only criminalize and endanger people based on pregnancy outcomes, furthering inequality.”At the White House, press secretary Jen Psaki noted the anniversary of Roe v Wade during her press briefing, saying that “reproductive healthcare has been under extreme and relentless assault ever since, especially in recent months”.She said the Biden administration was committed to working with Congress to pass federal legislation essentially enshrining into law a woman’s right to an abortion. The Democratic-controlled House passed the bill last year, but it remains stalled in the Senate, where it faces a Republican filibuster.“We’re deeply committed to making sure everyone has access to care and we will defend it with every tool we have,” Psaki said.At the rally, the presence of Make America Great Again hats was a reminder of the mutually beneficial relationship forged between Christian conservatives and Donald Trump, who became the first sitting president to attend the event in 2020.As they gathered, Trump voiced his allegiance: “As you gather together today for the March for Life, I am with you in spirit!”While many of the speakers anticipated the end of Roe, several demonstrators said they would continue to attend future marches until its mission “to make abortion unthinkable” was achieved.“I just pray every year that this is the last year we’re here,” said Janice LePage, who works for the youth ministry in the Archdiocese of St Louis. “I’m praying that the following year will be a march of celebration.”TopicsAbortionWashington DCUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Sarah Weddington, attorney who won Roe v Wade abortion case, dies aged 76

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      Sarah Weddington, attorney who won Roe v Wade abortion case, dies aged 76Texan lawyer and Linda Coffee won landmark 1973 case, safeguarding right now under threat from US supreme court

      How dismantling Roe v Wade would threaten other rights
      Sarah Weddington, an attorney who argued and won the Roe v Wade supreme court case which established the right to abortion in the US, has died aged 76.Susan Hays, a Democratic candidate for Texas agriculture commissioner, announced the news on Twitter on Sunday and the Dallas Morning News confirmed it.“Sarah Weddington died this morning after a series of health issues,” Hays wrote. “With Linda Coffee, she filed the first case of her legal career, Roe v Wade, fresh out of law school. She was my professor … the best writing instructor I ever had, and a great mentor.“At 27 she argued Roe to [the supreme court] (a fact that always made me feel like a gross underachiever). Ironically, she worked on the case because law firms would not hire women in the early 70s, leaving her with lots of time for good trouble.”The court ruled on Roe v Wade in 1973. Nearly 50 years later the right it established is under threat from a supreme court packed with hardline conservatives, in part thanks to a Texas law that drastically restricts access and offers incentives for reporting women to authorities.In 2017, speaking to the Guardian, Weddington predicted such a turn of events. “If [Neil] Gorsuch’s nomination is approved, will abortion be illegal the next day? No. One new judge won’t necessarily make much difference. But two or three might.”After steering Gorsuch on to the court – and a seat held open by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell when Barack Obama was president – Donald Trump installed Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Barrett replaced the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion of women’s rights.Weddington found her way to Roe v Wade soon after graduating from law school at the University of Texas. Represented by Weddington and Coffee, Norma McCorvey became the plaintiff known as “Jane Roe” in Roe v Wade. McCorvey became an evangelical Christian and opponent of abortion. She died in 2017.In her Guardian interview, Weddington discussed arguing the case in federal court. “I was very nervous,” she said. “It was like going down a street with no street lights. But there was no other way to go and I didn’t have any preconceived notions that I would not win.”She won, but the case continued.“Henry Wade, the district attorney, unwittingly helped us,” she said. “At a press conference, he said, ‘I don’t care what any court says; I am going to continue to prosecute doctors who carry out abortion.’ There was a procedural rule that said if local elected officials continue to prosecute after a federal court had declared a law unconstitutional, there would be a right to appeal to the supreme court.”‘Historical accident’: how abortion came to focus white, evangelical angerRead moreBefore the court in Washington, Weddington said: “It was impossible to read the justices’ faces. The attorney on the other side started by saying something inappropriate about arguing a case against a beautiful woman. He thought the judges would snicker. But their faces didn’t change a bit.“I had to argue it twice in the supreme court: in 1971 and again in 1972. On 22 January 1973 I was at the Texas legislature when the phone rang. It was a reporter from the New York Times. ‘Does Miss Weddington have a comment today about Roe v Wade?’ my assistant was asked. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Should she?’“It was beginning to be very exciting. Then we got a telegram from the supreme court saying that I had won 7-2 and that they were going to air-mail a copy of the ruling. Nowadays, of course, you’d just go online.“I was ecstatic, and more than 44 years later we’re still talking about it.”Weddington later revealed that she had an abortion herself, in 1967. “Just before the anaesthesia hit,” she said, “I thought: ‘I hope no one ever knows about this.’ For a lot of years, that was exactly the way I felt. Now there’s a major push to encourage women to tell their stories so people will realise that it is not a shameful thing. One out of every five women will have an abortion.”Weddington predicted: “Whatever else I do in my life, the headline on my obituary is always going to be ‘Roe v Wade attorney dies’.”In fact she achieved much more, as Hays detailed in her tweets on Sunday. “Those career doors shut to her led her to run for office, getting elected as the first woman from Travis county in the [Texas legislature] in 1972 (along with four other women elected to the House: Kay Bailey, Chris Miller, Betty Andujar and Senfronia Thompson).“She was general counsel of the United States Department of Agriculture under [Jimmy] Carter and enjoyed her stint in DC. Federal judicial nominations for Texas were run by her as a high-ranking Texan in the administration.“A Dallas lawyer she knew sought a bench. She had interviewed with him while at UT law. He’d asked her, ‘What will we tell our wives if we hire you?’ She told him he was wasting their time and hers and walked out of the interview. He did not get the judgeship.“Ever the proper preacher’s daughter, she would never tell me who the lawyer was. People don’t know that about Sarah. She was such a proper Methodist minister’s daughter. One of the few people I couldn’t cuss in front of.”Hays also paid tribute to Weddington as a teacher and a member of a “Great Austin Matriarchy” that also included the former Texas governor Ann Richards and the columnist Molly Ivins.In her Guardian interview, Weddington indicated she was at peace with being remembered for Roe v Wade. “I think most women of my generation can recall our feelings about the fight,” she said. “It’s like young love. You may not feel exactly the same, but you remember it.”TopicsRoe v WadeAbortionUS politicsUS healthcareUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      The supreme court’s abortion ruling is even more unsettling than it may seem | Moira Donegan

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      The supreme court’s abortion ruling is even more unsettling than it may seemMoira DoneganIn allowing Texas’s outrageous abortion ban to stay in place, the court signaled that it is willing to sacrifice its own legitimacy and power in order to destroy Roe Don’t be fooled by the supreme court’s nominal hedging on its endorsement of SB8, the Texas abortion ban that deputizes private citizens to sue anyone who assists in an abortion after six weeks’ gestation. In a ruling on Friday, the court held that a lawsuit by Texas abortion providers could go forward – but only on narrow grounds. Only those state officials responsible for licensing medical providers may be sued, the court ordered – no one else involved in the state’s practical maintenance of SB8 is liable. The ruling said, for instance, that the providers could not sue court clerks, those bureaucrats tasked with actually docketing the lawsuits that would enforce SB8.For providers, it seems that the best possible outcome for the suit now is that they may be able to secure an injunction preventing medical providers from being delicensed. These perplexing limits placed by the court on which parties can be sued to challenge SB8 ensures that though the suit against the law will be at least partly allowed to go forward, it will be largely toothless.In the meantime, SB8 will remain law. Women in Texas are effectively banned from securing a legal abortion in the state, even though the still-standing Roe v Wade decision says that they have a right to one. It’s likely that SB8 will remain in effect at least for the duration of Roe’s lifetime – meaning that Texas women will not be able to obtain legal abortions after six weeks for the foreseeable future. Many of the initial media responses to the court’s opinion emphasized that since the suit was allowed to go forward, on technical grounds, the ruling was a narrow win for the abortion providers. But in reality Friday was a massive win for the rightwing Texas government, and for anti-choice forces nationwide.That SB8 has been allowed to take effect – now for the second time – by the supreme court reflects the justices’ eagerness to gut abortion rights. The fact of the matter is that the court is already set to overturn Roe and allow states to ban abortion outright. That much was clear to anyone who listened to last week’s oral arguments in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, a case surrounding the constitutionality of a 15-week ban in Mississippi, which devolved into grim misogynist spectacle as the Republican appointees held court on the supposed ease of giving infants up for adoption and their own robust comfort with overturning long-settled precedent.That ruling is scheduled to come down in late May or early June. When it does, a slim majority of states are expected to ban abortion, either immediately or very soon thereafter. That means that soon SB8 – and the copycat bills that it has inspired in states like Florida and Arkansas – won’t be necessary for the anti-choice lobby to achieve their aims. Instead of concocting an elaborate enforcement process in which rogue anti-woman vigilantes enforce their abortion bans, the states will be able to enforce their bans themselves.SB8, then, and the supreme court’s embrace of it, can be understood not only as a harbinger of the justices’ deep contempt for the abortion right, but also of their childish impatience to exert this contempt upon American women. They can’t even wait six months. They want to ban abortion right now. In pursuit of this goal, the supreme court has proven itself willing to undermine its own capacity to oversee state laws, to enforce federal supremacy, and to protect constitutional rights.The anti-choice substance of the court’s decision in SB8 was not surprising; its embrace of Texas’s tactics perhaps was. Aside from its direct attempt to undermine women’s rights, SB8 also took aim at judicial authority. By banning abortion long before viability, the law flouted the supreme court’s precedents in Roe and Planned Parenthood v Casey. But that much a slew of vehemently anti-choice justices would probably forgive: all six of the Republican appointees clearly believe that Roe was wrongly decided, and at least five of them (all but Roberts, who seems more trepidatious) appear eager to overturn it. But in its novel enforcement mechanism, SB8 sought specifically to evade judicial review – not just to give the court an opportunity to overturn its own precedent, but to make it so that within Texas borders supreme court precedent didn’t matter.In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor compared SB8 to the views of John C Calhoun – a nineteenth-century pro-slavery campaigner who argued that states have the right to nullify federal laws that they do not like. America fought its civil war in no small part over this question. By first allowing the SB8 to go into effect, in September, and then by gutting the lawsuit against it this Friday, the supreme court has, shockingly, endorsed a scheme to undermine its own power, and granted a state the ability to evade federal precedent. Nullification, it seems, is back in style.For years, court watchers have wondered whether the justices’ institutionalist instincts would overcome their misogynist ones: if the Court had to choose between maintaining its own power and legitimacy, and overturning Roe, which would it choose? Now, it seems, we have our answer.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionRoe v WadeUS supreme courtLaw (US)AbortioncommentReuse this content More