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      Arizona Republicans denounce revived 1864 abortion ban in sudden reversal

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      Hours after Arizona’s supreme court declared on Tuesday that a 160-year-old abortion ban is now enforceable, Republicans in the state took a surprising stance for a party that has historically championed abortion restrictions – they denounced the decision.“This decision cannot stand,” said Matt Gress, a Republican state representative. “I categorically reject rolling back the clock to a time when slavery was still legal and we could lock up women and doctors because of an abortion.”First passed when Arizona was still a territory, the ban only permits abortions to save a patient’s life and does not have exceptions for rape or incest.“Today’s Arizona supreme court decision reinstating an Arizona territorial-era ban on all abortions from more than 150 years ago is disappointing to say the least,” said TJ Shope, a Republican state senator.“I oppose today’s ruling,” added Kari Lake, a Republican running to represent Arizona in the US Senate and a loyalist of Donald Trump. Lake called on the state legislature to “come up with an immediate commonsense solution that Arizonans can support”.Since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, leading the GOP to stumble in the 2022 midterms and abortion rights supporters to win a string of ballot measures, including in purple and red states, Republicans have struggled to find a way to talk about abortion without turning off voters. But their response to the ruling on the 1864 ban may mark their fastest and strongest rebuke of abortion bans since Roe fell.“This is an earthquake that has never been seen in Arizona politics,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican consultant in Arizona, of the decision. “This will shake the ground under every Republican candidate, even those in safe legislative or congressional seats.”The 1864 ban is not currently in effect, and may not go into effect for weeks due to legal delays. Abortion is currently allowed in Arizona up until 15 weeks of pregnancy.Some of the criticisms of the Tuesday ruling came from politicians who had previously supported the 1864 ban or cheered the end of Roe v Wade. Lake previously called the ban a “great law”, according to PolitiFact. David Schweikert, an Arizona congressman who is facing one of the most competitive House races in the country this November, said on Tuesday that he does not support the ruling and wants the state legislature to “address this issue immediately”, but in 2022 said the fall of Roe “pleased” him.The speaker of the Arizona state house and the president of the state senate, who are both Republicans, also released a joint statement saying that they would be “listening to our constituents to determine the best course of action for the legislature”. In contrast, on the day Roe fell, the Republican-controlled state senate released a statement declaring that the 1864 ban was in effect immediately. That statement unleashed confusion and chaos among abortion providers in Arizona, prompting them to stop offering the procedure out of an abundance of caution.“They are trying to play it both ways. They’re trying to have this illusion that they’re moderate to get votes, because they know that Arizonans do not want a total ban,” said Dr Gabrielle Goodrick, one of the providers who temporarily stopped performing abortions when Roe fell. “This is just ridiculous. Now they’re saying that they oppose it? Yeah, yeah – a little too late.”Arizona is one of roughly a dozen states where voters may be able to directly decide abortion rights come November. Activists in the state have now collected more than half a million signatures in favor of giving Arizona residents a chance to vote on a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution.Democrats hope that turnout for this proposal, which has yet to be officially added to the ballot, will also lead to surge in support for their candidates, including Joe Biden. A similar dynamic is at play in Florida, whose state supreme court recently paved the way for a six-week abortion ban, and where voters will be able to vote in November to constitutionally protect abortion.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe decision also exposed the deepening rift between Republicans and their longtime allies in the anti-abortion movement. As Arizona Republicans raced to distance themselves from the long-dormant law, abortion opponents cheered the decision.“We celebrate the Arizona supreme court’s decision that allows the state’s pro-life law to again protect the lives of countless, innocent unborn children,” said Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Jake Warner, who argued the case before the court in favor of the ban.Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who disappointed religious conservatives on Monday when he said states should decide their own abortion laws, did not immediately weigh in on the Arizona ruling.Abortion rights are popular in Arizona: nearly one-third of Arizona voters in the 2022 midterm elections said abortion was the issue that mattered most in helping them decide who to vote for, according to exit polling. By a 2 to 1 margin, voters in the state said abortion should be legal, and 40% said they felt “angry” about the supreme court decision ending the federal right to an abortion.A poll conducted in late February by the Phoenix-based firm, Noble Predictive Insights, found that 40% of Arizona voters expected Trump, if elected, to attempt to ban abortion altogether, while 45% expected Biden, if re-elected, to increase access.Vice-president Kamala Harris will go to Arizona later this week, in a visit that was planned ahead of the Tuesday decision. She blamed the impending state ban on Trump, whose three supreme court appointees voted to eliminate the federally guaranteed right to an abortion.“Arizona just rolled back the clock to a time before women could vote – and, by his own admission, there’s one person responsible: Donald Trump,” Harris said in a campaign statement. “The alarm is sounding for every woman in America: if he has the opportunity, Donald Trump would sign off on a national abortion ban.” More

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      in Elections

      Arizona Abortion Ban: What We Know

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      The state’s highest court reinstated an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions. Here’s what to know about the ruling.Arizona’s highest court reinstated an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions, a decision that could have far-reaching consequences for women’s health care and election-year politics in a critical battleground state.Here’s what to know about the ruling, the law and its possible impact.What is the 1864 law?The law, which was on the books long before Arizona achieved statehood in 1912, outlaws abortion from the moment of conception, except when necessary to save the life of the mother, and it makes no exceptions for rape or incest. It bans all types of abortions, including medication abortions.Until now, abortion had been legal in Arizona through 15 weeks of pregnancy. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade nearly two years ago, supporters and opponents of abortion rights in Arizona had been fighting in court over whether the 1864 law, which had sat dormant for decades, could be enforced, or whether it had been effectively neutered by decades of other state laws that regulate and restrict abortion.Doctors prosecuted under the law could face fines and prison terms of two to five years for providing, supplying or administering care to a pregnant woman.What does the ruling say?On April 9, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in a 4-to-2 decision that the pre-statehood law was “now enforceable.”The court said that because the federal right to abortion had been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, there was no federal or state law preventing Arizona from enforcing the near-total ban. It noted that the State Legislature had not created a right to abortion when it passed the 15-week ban in 2022.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      On Abortion, Trump Chose Politics Over Principles. Will It Matter?

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      With his video statement on Monday, Donald Trump laid bare how faulty a messenger he had always been for the anti-abortion cause.When Donald J. Trump ran for president in 2016, the leaders of the anti-abortion movement extracted a series of promises from him in exchange for backing his nomination.They demanded Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. They insisted that he defund Planned Parenthood. They pushed for a vice president who was a champion of their cause. And each time, he said yes.But that was then.With Roe v. Wade left on the “ash heap of history,” as anti-abortion leaders are fond of saying, they find themselves no longer calling the shots. Their movement remains mighty in Republican-controlled statehouses and with conservative courts, but it is weaker nationally than it has been in years. Many Republican strategists and candidates see their cause, even the decades-old term “pro-life,” as politically toxic. And on Monday, their biggest champion, the man whom they call the “most pro-life president in history,” chose politics over their principles — and launched a series of vitriolic attacks on some of their top leaders.With his clearest statement yet on the future of abortion rights since the fall of Roe in 2022, Mr. Trump laid bare how faulty a messenger he had always been for the anti-abortion cause. When he first flirted with a presidential run in 1999, Mr. Trump was clear about his position on abortion: “I’m very pro-choice,” he said. He reversed that stance a dozen years later: “Just very briefly, I’m pro-life,” he told attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011.His support shifted again after the Supreme Court’s decision. While he bragged about appointing three of the justices who overturned Roe, he blamed the movement for Republican losses in the midterm elections. He mused aloud about the idea of a federal ban, but refused to give it the kind of ringing endorsement anti-abortion leaders wanted.In his four-minute video statement on Monday, Mr. Trump said that states and their voters should decide abortion policies for themselves, in language that sounded like a free-for-all to the staunchest abortion opponents. He backed access to fertility treatments such as I.V.F., and supported exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Trump Says Abortion Will Be Left to the States. Don’t Believe Him.

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      When Donald Trump was asked about the recent Florida Supreme Court decision upholding his adopted state’s abortion ban, he promised that he would announce where he stands this week, a sign of how tricky the politics of reproductive rights have become for the man who did more than any other to roll them back. Sure enough, on Monday, he unveiled his latest position in a video statement that attempted to thread the needle between his anti-abortion base and the majority of Americans who want abortion to be legal.Trump’s address was, naturally, full of lies, including the absurd claim that “all legal scholars, both sides,” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, and the obscene calumny that Democrats support “execution after birth.” But the most misleading part of his spiel was the way he implied that in a second Trump administration, abortion law will be left entirely up to the states. “The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land, in this case the law of the state,” said Trump.Trump probably won’t be able to dodge the substance of abortion policy for the entirety of a presidential campaign; eventually, he’s going to have to say whether he’d sign a federal abortion ban if it crossed his desk and what he thinks of the sweeping abortion prohibitions in many Republican states. But let’s leave that aside for the moment, because when it comes to a second Trump administration, the most salient questions are about personnel, not legislation.Before Monday, Trump had reportedly considered endorsing a 16-week national abortion ban, but the fact that he didn’t should be of little comfort to voters who want to protect what’s left of abortion rights in America. Should Trump return to power, he plans to surround himself with die-hard MAGA activists, not the establishment types he blames for undermining him during his first term. And many of these activists have plans to restrict abortion nationally without passing any new laws at all.Key to these plans is the Comstock Act, the 19th-century anti-vice law named for the crusading bluenose Anthony Comstock, who persecuted Margaret Sanger, arrested thousands, and boasted of driving 15 of his targets to suicide. Passed in 1873, the Comstock Act banned the mailing of every “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article,” including “every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine or thing” intended for “producing abortion.” Until quite recently, the Comstock Act was thought to be moot, made irrelevant by a series of Supreme Court decisions on the First Amendment, contraception and abortion. But it was never actually repealed, and now that Trump’s justices have scrapped Roe, his allies believe they can use Comstock to go after abortion nationwide.“We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books,” Jonathan F. Mitchell, Texas’ former solicitor general and the legal mind behind the state’s abortion bounty law, told The New York Times in February. Mitchell is very much a MAGA insider; he represented Trump in the Supreme Court case arising from Colorado’s attempt to boot the ex-president off the ballot as an insurrectionist. As The Times has reported, Mitchell is on a list of lawyers vetted by America First Legal, a nonprofit led by the Trump consigliere Stephen Miller, as having the “spine” to serve in a second Trump administration.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump to sue judge in effort to avert hush-money trial – as it happened

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      Donald Trump will sue the judge overseeing his hush money trial, which is over allegations that Trump forged financial records in an attempt to cover up a sex scandal, the New York Times first reported.The latest lawsuit from Trump is a last-minute attempt to delay the trial, which is set to begin 15 April in New York City.According to the Times, Trump’s legal team has now filed an action against Judge Juan Merchan, though the lawsuit itself is not public.Two sources with knowledge on the suit told the Times on Monday that Trump’s attorneys are asking an appeals court to delay the trial and also attacking a gag order that Merchan placed on Trump.Merchan previously denied Trump’s request to delay the trial until the US supreme court reviews his claims around presidential immunity involving a separate criminal case.That concludes today’s US politics live blog.Here’s what happened today:
      Biden announced several student loan forgiveness proposals during remarks in Madison, Wisconsin. One of his biggest proposals will cancel debt for those with more than $20,000 in interest or anyone who started paying off student loans more than two decades ago.
      Former vice-president Mike Pence criticized Trump’s stance on abortion, calling it a “slap in the face” to the anti-abortion movement. In a lengthy post to Twitter/X, Pence said that Trump had previously sent Roe v Wade “to the ash heap” by securing supreme court judges who were anti-abortion, but criticized his “retreat” from “pro-life Americans” with his latest decision.
      Jake Sullivan will host a meeting at the White House on Monday for families of US hostages held in Gaza, Punchbowl News reported. The latest meeting comes amid ongoing attempts to bring hostages home.
      Trump indicated that he will sue the judge overseeing his hush money trial in New York City, the New York Times first reported. Trump is accused of forging financial records to cover up a sex scandal. The trial is set to begin 15 April.
      Senator Lindsey Graham denounced Trump’s position on abortion and vowed to continue advocating for a 15-week abortion ban. In a statement Monday, Graham said he “respectfully [disagrees]” on Trump’s stance that abortion is an issue of states’ rights.
      Thank you for following along.Vice-president Kamala Harris said that Trump would sign off on a national abortion ban, when asked about Trump’s statement that abortion access should be left up to the states.While talking with reporters before boarding Air Force 2, Harris said:
      Let’s all be very clear – if he were to be put back in a position where he could sign off on a law, he would sign off on a national abortion ban. Let’s be very clear about that.
      From CBS News:Americans – and the rest of the world – are keeping an eye on the state of the US presidential race. Almost every day multiple new polls emerge and they nearly all agree – this race is close. Two more polls came on Monday, one (from I&I/TIPP) had Joe Biden up by three points, while the other (from Emerson) had Trump winning by one.Go back a little further and over the last nine polls Biden has been winning in five of them, three of them had Trump ahead and one was a tie. The overall average still has Trump slightly ahead by just 0.3 points. That seems to represent a pattern of the last few weeks – Biden is ticking very slowly up. Of course, the vagaries of the US election system and its electoral college mean the polls are no straight predictor of a winner. Trump has (recently) been stronger in core battleground states.Pence blasts Trump’s abortion positionFormer vice-president Mike Pence has blasted his old boss’s position on abortion, saying that it is a “a slap in the face” of many anti-abortion campaigners.The Hill reports that Pence tweeted in the wake of Trump saying the issue should be decided by individual states – a blow to those who hoped he might back some form of more national ban.“President Trump’s retreat on the Right to Life is a slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans who voted for him in 2016 and 2020,” Pence wrote in his post, before praising the steps their administration took to further the anti-abortion effort.Pence tweeted: “By nominating and standing by the confirmation of conservative justices, the Trump-Pence Administration helped send Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history where it belongs and gave the pro-life movement the opportunity to compassionately support women and unborn children.”Biden commented on attempts from Republican lawmakers and the US supreme court to end his loan forgiveness program.“But then some of my Republican friends and elected officials [in] special interest sued us. And the supreme court blocked us,” Biden said, as the crowd booed.“But that didn’t stop us,” Biden added.Read about the supreme court’s actions against student loan forgiveness here:Biden’s student loan forgiveness proposals have already gotten a nod of endorsement from top Democrats.Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont called the proposals a “big deal”, emphasizing that millions of Americans face “outrageous [levels] of student debt”.Biden announced several major actions with regards to student loans during his speech.Biden said his administration will propose a new rule to cancel up to $20,000 in interest for people who owe more than when they began paying their off loan.Biden will also cancel student debt for those who started paying their student loans more than two decades ago.“This relief can be life-changing,” Biden said.Biden has begun his remarks on student loan forgiveness, discussing the impact that it has on millions of Americans.“A lot can’t repay for even decades after being [out of] school,” Biden said.“Too many people feel the strain and stress … because even if they get by, they still have this crushing, crushing debt,” he addedBiden added that student debt also negatively impacts the local economy, as many people are unable to afford homes.Biden’s remarks on student loan forgiveness are set to begin shortly in Madison, Wisconsin.Stay tuned for updates!More Democrats have warned that Trump will sign a national abortion ban if elected president in 2024.Elizabeth Warren said Trump bragged he’s “proudly the person responsible” for overturning Roe.“He’d sign a national abortion ban as president, & his allies plan to get it done even without Congress,” the Massachusetts senator added.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, noted that Trump’s stance on abortion has frequently changed, alluding that it could become more hard line.The White House has not been briefed on the date of Israel’s invasion of Rafah, Reuters reports.State department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday that the White House has not received a date for the military operation after Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu said that a day has been chosen.Miller emphasized that the US does not support an invasion of Rafah, where many people in Gaza are currently displaced amid the ongoing genocide in the territory.Jake Sullivan will host a meeting at the White House on Monday for families of US hostages held in Gaza, Punchbowl News reported.The national security adviser will also meet with Israeli opposition Yair Lipid, who is visiting Washington this week.Earlier today, White House spokesperson John Kirby said that Hamas is currently considering a deal that could release more hostages and lead to a six-week ceasefire.Trump’s position on abortion sparked a myriad of reactions from both sides of the political aisle. On Monday, Trump said that abortion is an issue of states’ rights, refusing to back a 15-week abortion ban that is popular amid Republicans.Democrats have warned that Trump will sign a national abortion ban, further limiting reproductive rigts. Meanwhile, anti-abortion advocates and GOP members have publicly criticized Trump for refusing to support an national limit.Biden squarely blamed Trump “for creating the cruelty and the chaos that has enveloped America since the Dobbs decision”.Here’s what else has happened today:
      Biden is on route to Madison Wisconsin, where he will deliver remarks on his latest student loan forgiveness plan. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Biden will continue “fighting on behalf of borrowers” despite pushback from “Republican officials”.
      Trump has indicated that he will sue the judge overseeing his hush money trial in New York City, the New York Times first reported. Trump is accused of forging financial records to cover up a sex scandal.
      The White House announced that Hamas is reviewing a proposal that could lead to the release of hostages and a six-week ceasefire amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
      Ahead of Biden’s speech on student loans, Jean-Pierre said that Biden will continue to pursue student loan forgiveness despite pushback from “Republican officials”.“While we can’t prevent them from filing lawsuits against this plan, the president will never stop fighting on behalf of borrowers,” Jean-Pierre said.Republican states have previously tried to fight Biden’s attempts to wipe student loan debt, even falsely claiming that they would be financially impacted by the loan forgiveness scheme.Jean-Pierre had choice words for Trump and Senate Republicans about abortion following Trump clarifying his position.Jean-Pierre blamed Republicans for “extreme abortion bans” happening in GOP-led states, during Monday’s gaggle.“The only reason that extreme abortion bans are now in effect all over the country is because of the judges the previous president and Senate republicans put in the court,” Jean-Pierre said.“The only reason that women are being [denied] life saving and even unrelated procedures and turned away from emergency rooms…is because of the judges the previous president and Senate republicans put in the court,” she added.Jean-Pierre added that bans on IVF, a consequence of the Alabama state supreme court ruling, are because of judges selected by Trump.“We need to be clear eyed here,” Jean-Pierre added, regarding the potential impact on reproductive rights if Trump is elected.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is hosting a gaggle aboard Air Force One, as Biden travels to Wisconsin to give remarks on student loan forgiveness.Stay tuned for further updates.Donald Trump will sue the judge overseeing his hush money trial, which is over allegations that Trump forged financial records in an attempt to cover up a sex scandal, the New York Times first reported.The latest lawsuit from Trump is a last-minute attempt to delay the trial, which is set to begin 15 April in New York City.According to the Times, Trump’s legal team has now filed an action against Judge Juan Merchan, though the lawsuit itself is not public.Two sources with knowledge on the suit told the Times on Monday that Trump’s attorneys are asking an appeals court to delay the trial and also attacking a gag order that Merchan placed on Trump.Merchan previously denied Trump’s request to delay the trial until the US supreme court reviews his claims around presidential immunity involving a separate criminal case. More

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      in US Politics

      Republicans want to use an 1873 law to ban abortion. Congress must overturn that law | Moira Donegan

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      They don’t need Congress. The anti-abortion movement is preparing to ban abortion nationwide as soon as a Republican takes the White House, and under a bizarre legal theory, they don’t think they even need congressional approval to do it. That’s because anti-choice radicals have begun to argue that an 1873 anti-obscenity law, the Comstock Act, effectively bans the mailing, sale, advertisement or distribution of any drug or implement that can be used to cause an abortion.For a long time, this was a fringe theory, only heard in the corners of the anti-choice movement with the most misogynist zealotry and the flimsiest concerns for reason. After all, the Comstock Act has not been enforced for more than half a century: many of its original provisions, banning contraception, were overturned; other elements, banning pornography and other “obscene” material, have been essentially nullified on free speech grounds.And, for decades, its ban on abortifacients was voided by Roe v Wade. Now that the US supreme court has thrown out the national abortion right, the anti-choice movement is reviving the long-forgotten law, claiming that the Comstock Act – named after a man who hunted down pornographers, threw early feminists in jail and bragged about driving abortion providers to suicide – should still be considered good law.It’s not a solid legal theory, but like a lot of flimsily reasoned, violently sexist and once-fringe arguments, it is now getting a respectful hearing at the supreme court. At last month’s oral arguments in a case regarding the legality of the abortion drug mifepristone, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas both mentioned Comstock, implying that someone – perhaps the FDA, perhaps drug companies – was obliged to suppress abortion medication under the law. Comstock was not at issue in the mifepristone case, but the comments from the justices were not really about the case before them. Rather, they were a signal, a message meant for the conservative legal movement: if you bring us a case that seeks to ban abortion under Comstock, the judges were saying, we will vote for it.So it is a bit puzzling why, in an election year that promises to be dominated by outrage over abortion bans and the erosion of women’s rights, Democrats have not done more to convey the dangers of Comstock to the public. Admittedly, the problem is somewhat complicated and obscure, not quite the kind of thing that can fit on a bumper sticker. But voters have shown that they are willing to pay prolonged attention to the abortion issue: the continued political salience of Dobbs almost two years after the decision has proved this.Democrats have an opportunity, this election year, to corner Republicans on an unpopular issue, to make a case to the voters about the uses of giving them continued electoral power, and to articulate a vision for a modern, pluralist and tolerant society in which women can aspire to a meaningfully equal citizenship and in which ordinary citizens are endowed with the privacy and dignity to control their own sexual lives – without interference from the pantingly prurient Republican party.This election cycle, Democrats must take the obvious stand, and do what is right both in terms of politics and in terms of policy: they must call, en masse, for the repeal of the Comstock Act. Anything less would be political malpractice.It’s not as if Comstock is not being thoroughly embraced by the other side. In addition to its revival by the conservative legal movement and anti-choice activists, Comstock has found enthusiastic backers both in conservative thinktanks and among members of Congress. The rightwing Heritage Foundation cited a maximalist approach to Comstock interpretation and enforcement – and the nationwide total abortion ban that would result – as one of their priorities in their “Project 2025”, a policy plan for a coming Trump administration. Meanwhile, in an amicus brief issued to the supreme court in the mifepristone case, 119 Republican representatives and 26 Republican senators asked the court to ban abortion nationwide using Comstock.These conservatives know that their abortion bans are unpopular; they know that voters do not support the overturning of Roe v Wade, and will never vote for the total abortion bans that they aim for. This is precisely why they are seeking to achieve their ends through the judiciary, the one branch of the federal government that is uniquely immune to democratic accountability. And it is why, rather than attempting to ban abortion through the regular legislative process, they are seeking to do so via the revival of a long-forgotten statute, ignoring that Comstock has been void for decades to exploit the fact that it is technically still on the books.To their credit, a few Democratic lawmakers have begun to vocally campaign to overturn Comstock. The first was Cori Bush, of Missouri, who called for the repeal of what she termed the “zombie statute” in the hours after Comstock was mentioned at the court’s mifepristone oral arguments.She was joined days later by Senator Tina Smith, of Minnesota, who wrote in a New York Times op-ed that she wanted to repeal the law and “take away Comstock as a tool to limit reproductive freedom”. Smith says that she is working to form a coalition of Democratic House and Senate members to “build support and see what legislation to repeal the Comstock Act might look like”. Smith says that she wants to wait to see what, if anything, the supreme court says on the matter in its mifepristone decision, expected by the end of June.There is no need to wait. It is unlikely that any bill to repeal Comstock will get the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate; it is impossible that any such bill would make its way through the Republican-controlled House. But this means that Democrats have nothing to lose in waging a political campaign to draw attention to Comstock, and to force their Republican colleagues to take a stand on it. Voters deserve to know what they’re in for if a Republican captures the White House – and they deserve to know what the Republicans on their ballot think about their own rights to dignity, equality, privacy and sexual self-determination.There might be no item on the current political agenda that more aptly symbolizes the Republican worldview than Comstock. Never really workably enforced and long ignored as out of date, Comstock has come to stand in, in the rightwing imagination, for a virtuous, hierarchically ordered past that can be restored in a sexually repressive and tyrannically misogynistic future.This past never existed, not really, but the fantasy of it now has power in many corners of our law: among the reasons given by Samuel Alito in his majority opinion overturning Roe v Wade was his estimation that the right to an abortion was not “deeply rooted in America’s history and traditions”. This grimly nostalgic Republican aim to allow only those freedoms delineated in “history and tradition” would foreclose an America that adapts with time, that allows new forms of freedom to emerge from history.Comstock is a relic, and a relic is what the Republican right wants to turn America into. Democrats have a chance to make a case for it to be something else – something more like a democracy.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      in US Politics

      ‘Extreme’ US anti-abortion group ramps up lobbying in Westminster

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      A rightwing Christian lobby group that wants abortion to be banned has forged ties with an adviser to the prime minister and is drawing up ­policy briefings for politicians.The UK branch of the US-based Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has more than doubled its spending since 2020 and been appointed a stakeholder in a parliamentary group on religious freedoms in a role that grants it direct access to MPs.The ADF’s efforts to boost its UK influence are revealed as part of an Observer analysis that shows a surge in activity within the wider anti-­abortion movement.Ahead of a historic vote on abortion later this spring, in which MPs will vote on a law that would abolish the criminal offence associated with a woman ending her own pregnancy in England and Wales, several anti-abortion campaign groups have expanded their teams, ramped up advertising and coordinated mass letter-writing campaigns targeting MPs.The findings have led to calls for greater transparency and accountability over the groups’ funding and lobbying activities. The ADF in particular is an influential player on the US Christian right and part of a global network of hardline evangelical groups that were a driving force behind the repeal of Roe v Wade – the supreme court ruling that gave women the constitutional right to abortion and was overturned in 2022.The group – which also supports outlawing sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ+ adults and funds US fringe groups attacking gay, trans and abortion rights – has faced claims its funding is not transparent due to its use of donor advised funds: a loophole in US charity law that allows people to give millions anonymously.The latest financial accounts for its UK entity ADF International UK, published last week, show it spent almost £1m in the year to June 2023, up from £392,556 in 2020, and that its income almost doubled between 2022 and 2023, from £553,823 to £1,068,552.ADF International UK, which has argued publicly against decriminalising abortion, has sought to develop closer relationships with MPs. Its latest accounts show a focus of its UK activity has been attempting to engage with “significant decision-makers” and that staff provided “briefing material and legal analysis” to several MPs ahead of a vote on introducing buffer zones to prevent anti-abortion activity outside abortion clinics.In September 2023 it spent £1,737.92 flying the prime minister’s special envoy on freedom of religion and beliefs, Fiona Bruce MP, paying for her hotel and travel to attend an unspecified conference. Last month Bruce – who reports directly to Rishi Sunak – appeared at an event sponsored by ADF International on religious freedom, speaking remotely alongside two members of the charity.Number 10 did not respond to questions about the links between the ADF and Bruce, who declared the donations in the MPs register of interests and previously voted against legalising abortion and same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. Calls and emails to her office went unanswered late last week.View image in fullscreenHeidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said the ADF had “ramped up its spending” in the UK and Europe “aggressively” in recent years and that there was “no transparency” around “where the money’s actually coming from”. She said its relationship with MPs raised “huge concerns”. “Why are politicians openly working with an organisation that has such a hateful agenda?”Rose Whiffen, senior research officer at Transparency International UK, said the donations to Bruce raised questions about conflicts of interest and that her association with the group could give it credibility in the UK.Andrew Copson, chief executive of Humanists UK, said it was “very concerning” that the UK’s envoy on religious freedoms was “accepting donations from organisations that use religious liberty as a way of denying others their human rights”. “The Christian nationalist movement is increasingly investing in the UK on a number of fronts, and all supporters of freedom and choice should take seriously the threat to human rights that this represents,” he said.ADF International UK said it was committed to protecting “liberties dear to the British people” including free speech and freedom of religion, and that its stance on abortion aimed to “protect the lives of both mother and baby in every pregnancy”. “Like much of the British public, we are concerned about political initiatives to further liberalise abortion law,” a spokesperson added.The charity, which has an office in Westminster, said it received funds from many countries, like “many UK charities on both sides of the abortion debate”; that claims it was not transparent about its funders were “baseless” and that it complied with all charity regulations. It did not comment on its link to the PM’s special envoy.View image in fullscreenJonathan Lord, co-chair of the British Society of Abortion Care Providers and a consultant gynaecologist, said: “We’ve known for some time that these extreme groups from America are infiltrating the UK, having been emboldened following the US supreme court’s actions removing women’s right to abortion there. However the scale of their spending and influence in the UK is disturbing, especially as we know they are actively lobbying MPs and want to restrict women’s reproductive rights, whether that is fertility treatment, contraception or access to abortion.”Other anti-abortion groups have also ramped up activity here in recent months. Right to Life, a leading UK anti-abortion charity, has been coordinating a lobbying campaign encouraging people to write to their MPs to tighten abortion laws, and spent £117,000 on Facebook ads in 2023, 10 times the amount in 2020.The charity – whose overall spending overall has risen from £200k in 2019 to £705k last year – also provides the secretariat to the Pro-Life all-party parliamentary group and aims to “deepen and expand relationships with parliamentarians”, according to its latest accounts. It is currently advertising vacancies for eight full-time staff and says in one ad that the role will include “producing briefings” for MPs and peers.The Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform UK – another anti-abortion group, which notoriously launched a billboard campaign featuring graphic images in pro-choice MP Stella Creasy’s constituency – has increased its staff numbers from four to 12 since 2017. Due to its status as a small company, it does not have to publish details of its income but said it was happy to engage in public debate about its “funding, growth and activities” and that its targeting of Creasy “does not equate to animosity towards her as a fellow human being”.MPs are due to vote in the coming weeks on proposed changes to abortion law that would see abortion decriminalised in England and Wales, as it is in Northern Ireland, Australia, France and New Zealand. Under a Victorian-era law that remains in place today, it is an offence to procure your own abortion. There are exemptions under the 1967 Abortion Act, which permits abortion in cases where two doctors agree that continuing the pregnancy would be risky for the physical or mental health of the woman. But the old law was never repealed and is still used today to prosecute and jail women for terminating pregnancies without sign-off from medics or after the 24-week limit.The proposal on decriminalisation from backbench Labour MP Diana Johnson has cross-party support and is expected to pass. However some in the Labour party fear it could be counterproductive and further embolden anti-abortion campaigning on related issues, such as the remote access to abortion that was introduced during the pandemic.A government spokesperson said abortion was an “extremely sensitive issue” with “strongly held views on all sides of the discussion”, and that MPs would have a free vote on the proposed law change. “By longstanding convention, any change to the law in this area would be a matter of conscience for individual MPs rather than the government,” a spokesperson said. More

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      Florida just crushed abortion rights. But it also created a tool to fight back | Moira Donegan

      by

      It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the Florida state supreme court would not have allowed Governor Ron DeSantis’s six-week abortion ban to go into effect. In a challenge to a previous 15-week ban, the court’s seven judges, all of whom were appointed by DeSantis, overturned 35 years of precedent this week in order to find that the right to privacy enshrined in the state constitution does not protect the right to an abortion, as Florida state law has acknowledged it does since 1989.The court’s approval of the 15-week ban will allow a stricter, previously stayed six-week ban to go into effect on 1 May. Justice Charles Canady did not recuse himself from the case, despite calls for him do so from no less an authority than the Florida supreme court’s former chief justice, Barbara Pariente. Justice Canady’s wife, the state representative Jennifer Canady, is a legislative co-sponsor of the newly approved six-week ban. There is no rape or incest exception.The harm this decision will do to women across the American south is immeasurable. Like many states, Florida dramatically restricted access to abortion in 2022, in the wake of the US supreme court’s Dobbs v Jackson decision that overturned Roe v Wade. Florida’s 15-week abortion ban, signed into law by DeSantis in April 2022, went into effect just days after the ruling. Despite those new restrictions, however, abortion remained much more available in Florida than it did elsewhere in the south.The south-east corner of the continental United States is home to some of the most restrictive abortion bans. A woman living in Florida finds herself without a right to an abortion at any stage of pregnancy as far west as Texas and Oklahoma and as far north as Missouri, Indiana and West Virginia. Abortion is also banned outright in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee; it is banned after six weeks in Georgia and South Carolina. Florida’s 15-week ban was a dramatic reduction of women’s healthcare rights from the pre-Dobbs status quo. But due to the even more sadistic anti-choice zealotry of its neighbors, it was among the most permissive states in the region.Under these circumstances, Florida became a haven for abortion seekers. Despite the new 15-week ban, abortions soared in Florida in the year after Dobbs, as women from across the south fled their homes in search of the care that was still legal in the Sunshine state. According to the abortion and contraception data project #WeCount, the number of abortions in Florida increased by a total of 20,460 in the 12 months following the Dobbs decision. Now, both Floridian women and those who traveled from out of state for care will be forced to look further afield, to more distant and more expensive locations, in search of legal abortions. Many will not be able to get them.View image in fullscreenBut in addition to this catastrophe for women’s rights, the Florida court also upended this fall’s election in the state. That’s because, in a narrow vote, the justices allowed a ballot measure to appear before voters this fall that would enshrine abortion rights explicitly in the state constitution.The proposed constitutional amendment would declare Floridians have a right to an abortion before “viability”, the medically imprecise but politically palatable standard that governed the Roe v Wade legal regime for 30 years and is usually interpreted to allow abortion until about 24 weeks of pregnancy. After that, women whose medical providers declare their pregnancies a danger to their health would also be able to receive abortions.The ballot measure would need to receive approval from at least 60% of Florida voters in order to be enshrined in the state constitution. But if the measure is successful, it would invalidate both the six- and 15-week bans, and could theoretically be used to expand abortion access even beyond pre-Dobbs levels.The addition of the abortion rights ballot measure to the November election has dramatically changed the political calculus in Florida overnight. Long the home of a growing sunbelt Republican base and an uncommonly weak state Democratic party, Florida has been considered a shoo-in for Donald Trump, who won the state by three points in 2020. But abortion ballot measures have proven a persistent electoral winner, with measures to preserve or expand access to the procedure winning every time they have been put to voters since Dobbs – including in heavily Republican districts such as Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio, as well as in swing states like Michigan.And the salience of abortion to an election has been an excellent predictor of Democratic success since Dobbs, with the 2022 midterms and subsequent special elections all delivering Democratic victories whenever the abortion question is at the front of voters’ minds.In Florida, the new ballot measure may not just influence the presidential election, but the re-election bid of the Republican senator Rick Scott – a one-time governor and fierce abortion rights opponent who has said that he would have signed the six-week ban if he were still in the governor’s mansion. That stance has come under harsh criticism in Florida, where even the comparatively less strict 15-week ban has had horrible human costs.Anya Cook, a Florida woman whose water broke too early in her pregnancy, almost died from blood loss after the 15-week ban prevented her doctors from administering miscarriage care. Deborah Dorbert was forced to remain pregnant for months after her fetus was given a fatal diagnosis; she delivered an infant who died in her arms. These stories have made an indelible impression on the public. In Florida, more than 60% of voters say that they oppose the six-week ban. Now that it is slated to actually go into effect, that opposition is likely to grow.If the post-Dobbs era has shown us anything, it is that abortion is controversial only in theory. When faced with the material consequences of banning it, Americans find themselves unequivocally on freedom’s side.Democrats, then, may find that they have an unusual asset in the Republican opposition to abortion. The bans are consistently unpopular, and the issue has proved persistently salient, moving voters to the polls even two years after the Dobbs decision. But this political boon for the Democrats has come at an unbearable cost: women’s health, happiness and freedom.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More