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The Alabama Republican senator Tommy Tuberville is “prepared to burn the military down” with his block on promotions in protest of Pentagon policy on abortion, the Connecticut Democratic senator Chris Murphy said.“I think everybody’s been hoping that Senator Tuberville would back down,” Murphy told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday.“And I think we have to come to the conclusion that that is not happening and that he is prepared to burn the military down.“Maybe Republicans were hopeful that leading up to the August break he would relent. He didn’t, and we now have to adjust our strategy.”Last year, the conservative-dominated US supreme court removed the federal right to abortion. Since February, Tuberville has been protesting Pentagon policy that allows service members to travel for abortion care if their state does not provide it.His method is to place a hold on all promotions to senior ranks that are subject to Senate confirmation, usually a pro forma process carried out with unanimous consent.Senior military leadership is increasingly severely affected, the US Marine Corps and US Army without permanent leaders and the joint chiefs of staff facing a similar predicament when the current chair, Gen Mark Milley, steps down next month.Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina now running for the Republican presidential nomination, also said Tuberville should back down.“We do not have a chief of staff of the army for a first time in 200 years,” Haley told the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “More than 300 vacancies. It’s a mess.”Haley said Hewitt should call Tuberville “and ask him to stop screwing up the military, because we’re on the brink of a conflict with China and we cannot have this”.Joe Biden has called for Tuberville to step down. So have hundreds of military spouses. Tuberville has refused. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, has said he does not support Tuberville’s protest but has not moved to stop it. Senate rules give individuals the ability to hold up proceedings. Furthermore, Tuberville retains support among his own party, in both chambers of Congress.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Tuesday, Murphy said Republicans should support a temporary change to Senate rules, in order to process promotions that are now held up.“I just think we have to start thinking creatively about breaking this logjam,” he said. “There is no world in which we can use floor time for these nominations. It’s logistically impossible.”Murphy also said Tuberville, a former football coach and now a prominent Trump supporter, “is not going to back down” because “he thinks he’s become a celebrity folk hero in the fringe right.“He’s having the time of his life. If you want the military to function, you’re going to have to find a creative way to get around this guy.” More
When the US supreme court upended the federal right to abortion enshrined in Roe v Wade, the immediate task before Democrats seemed simple: keep abortion legal in as many states as possible.But over a year since Roe’s demise, some leaders in the reproductive rights movements worry that Democrats have tunnel vision, focusing their messaging and resources entirely on the legal tug-of-war over abortion bans in the midwest and south.“Voters want to understand: what are you going to do to make things better? They don’t want to just hear, oh, we’re not going to ban abortion. That’s important, but that’s not good enough,” said Andrea Miller, president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health, which supports abortion rights.Miller said the fight to keep abortion legal is just one frontier in the larger battle for reproductive healthcare. She spent the past year pushing blue states to pass legislation that makes abortion easily accessible, affordable and without stigma for patients and providers.In recent months, Maryland has emerged as an example of how Democratic lawmakers can take proactive steps to bolster abortion access, even in states where the procedure is and will likely remain legal.Maryland is one of just eight states that require private insurers to cover abortion care with no cost-sharing.In April 2022, in anticipation of the supreme court ruling on abortion, Maryland Democrats passed a bill that allows nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, and other medical health professionals to supervise abortions.“Before, we would only allow doctors to do it, even though nurse practitioners, midwives, all these other medical professionals are able to handle the similar things like miscarriages and deliveries,” said Maryland House Delegate Joseline Peña-Melnyk, one of the bill’s sponsors.The law also directs the state to invest $3.5m a year for abortion-care training.If Roe fell, Maryland’s solidly Democratic legislature could ward off any attempts at criminalizing abortion patients or providers. But keeping abortion legal was not good enough. Peña-Melnyk and her colleagues wanted to ensure that Maryland’s abortion clinics would have the capacity to deal with an inevitable surge of out-of-state patients.“This case ending Roe didn’t come out of nowhere, we saw it coming, so when the legislative session started in 2022, we started preparing,” Peña-Melnyk said.She said Maryland’s investment in reproductive healthcare helped prepare the state for the coming months, when West Virginia, Ohio and other neighbors enacted a dizzying web of abortion restrictions.The push to bolster abortion resources in Maryland is part of what attracted Dr Anne Banfield to the state.Dr Banfield spent over a decade of her career as an OB-GYN at a rural hospital in West Virginia. She relocated to Maryland in spring 2022, just after a leaked draft opinion revealed that the supreme court was poised to upend abortion rights.“When I was in West Virginia, there was this constant hum in the background of, oh, what are the politicians going to do next,” she said. “You don’t realize how much that negatively impacts your overall outlook until the pressure is gone.”One year after Banfield moved, Maryland governor Wes Moore signed a new set of protections for abortion providers and patients, including a measure that shields the state’s doctors from legal liability if they provide an abortion to out-of-state patients.“Listen, we are a rural hospital, it is a place that typically has challenges recruiting providers,” Banfield said.But in the past few months, Banfield said she has been able to hire recent graduates from top residency programs.“I can look at these candidates and say, this is a place where you can come and practice full-spectrum reproductive healthcare,” she said. “Here is a place where you will be protected.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStates without affirmative protections for patients and providers could see increased “brain drain”, with doctors like Banfield relocating to places like Maryland. Reproductive health workers are increasingly wary of states that do not proactively push to make abortion more affordable and freely accessible, beyond basic questions about legality.Hanan Jabril, a full-spectrum doula and abortion rights organizer in Wisconsin, is preparing to apply to medical school in hopes of becoming an OB-GYN.“Where I’m applying, where I want to end up, it’s something I’ve been thinking about for years, and the political climate of different states is a huge part of that decision,” said Jabril. “States like Wisconsin are just hemorrhaging residents in OB-GYN especially, because the work is being criminalized by these bans.”When Roe was overturned last year, an 1849 law banning abortion went back into effect in Wisconsin. The 19th century ban is currently facing a legal challenge that is expected to land before the Wisconsin supreme court.Jabril was part of a coalition of progressive organizers that helped elect a liberal justice to the state supreme court in April. With a liberal majority on the court, Wisconsin is poised to overturn the state’s 1849 law.But Jabril said that overturning the ban on abortion isn’t good enough.“It’s important, but I think people forget that this fight didn’t start last year,” they said.Jabril said there are cost barriers to accessing abortion that have long predated the overturn of Roe. Because of the Hyde amendment, passed in 1977, states are banned from using federal Medicaid dollars to pay for abortions, with very narrow exceptions.Of the 32 states following the Hyde amendment, just four states help pay for abortion in cases where a pregnancy could cause long-lasting damage to a patient’s physical health.Jabril wants to train and practice medicine in a state like Maryland or Illinois, which has voluntarily opted to use state dollars to cover all or most medically necessary abortion.“People don’t realize how much more there is to abortion access than just, the law says it’s OK,” said Jabril. “If you can’t pay for it, or if there’s no provider within driving distance, then abortion is still not accessible.” More
Abortion providers in Iowa have filed a lawsuit to block state Republicans’ latest attempt to ban the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, before most people even know they are pregnant.Last week, Iowa lawmakers passed a six-week ban on abortion in a rare special legislative session, called by Governor Kim Reynolds, who signed the bill on Friday afternoon. The law takes immediate effect, further shrinking the options available to people seeking abortions in the midwest.“In a rare and historic special session, the Iowa legislature voted for a second time to reject the inhumanity of abortion and pass the fetal heartbeat law,” Reynolds said on Friday.The move to restrict abortion in Iowa came less than one month after a deadlocked state supreme court blocked enforcement of a near-identical six-week ban. Reproductive justice advocates across the country condemned Reynolds’ decision to call a special session on abortion.“Every dirty trick in the book is being used to pass these extremely unpopular abortion bans,” said Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity (Urge), a progressive advocacy group that supports abortion rights.“They don’t want to do it in the light of day, that’s why we’re seeing these special sessions, that’s why we’re seeing bans passed in the middle of the night,” she added.Abortion providers in Iowa said they were unsurprised that the state GOP used a unique legislative tool for the sole purpose of restricting reproductive freedom. Francine Thompson, executive director of the Emma Goldman Clinic – one of two abortion providers in Iowa and a plaintiff in the new lawsuit – said the ban’s passage was expected yet appalling.She said there was a cruel irony to the timing of the governor’s announcement of the special session, which came just after Independence Day, “a day we typically associate with celebrating our freedom from oppressive and tyrannical governments”.Staff at the Emma Goldman Clinic spent hours this week on the phones with nervous patients confused by the legal status of abortion in Iowa.“Since Dobbs, the phone lines are always jammed,” Thompson said. “The most recent calls are not really in an attempt to get seen before the law goes into effect, but are clients seeking information to wade through the chaos of rapidly changing access and the myriad of restrictions in surrounding states.”The six-week ban is confusing, in part, because it closely resembles a 2018 law that was blocked by an Iowa district judge years before Roe v Wade was overturned. Earlier this year, Reynolds asked the Iowa supreme court to reverse the district judge’s decision. The state justices split 3-3, leaving the lower court’s order in place, meaning the 2018 ban remains unenforceable.The lawsuit against the new six-week ban is expected to reach the Iowa supreme court, which last year ruled that the state constitution does not guarantee the right to abortion.But last month, the 3-3 deadlock happened after one justice, Dana Oxley, opted to recuse herself from the case because of a conflict of interest with her old law firm. It is unclear if Justice Oxley will recuse herself again, causing another split ruling.Iowa Republican lawmakers might not care about the outcome of the legal battle. They win political points with their core, conservative voter base simply by reconvening at the state capital to pass an abortion ban.“Because of gerrymandering, Iowa Republicans aren’t really worried about losing to a Democrat, but they are at a real risk of being primaried,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at University of California, Davis.If the ban is struck down, Republicans can blame the courts, a convenient boogeyman in the tug-of-war over state abortion law. The good-faith attempt to pass a six-week ban is enough to reassure anti-abortion lobbying groups and socially conservative donors.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionZiegler said ideological posturing is especially important for Governor Reynolds ahead of the Iowa caucus, which helps select the Republican presidential nominee. Reynolds’ endorsement could therefore change the future of her party.But first, Ziegler said, the governor “needs to prove her conservative credentials” on abortion.Reynolds signed the ban at the Family Leadership Summit, a gathering of evangelical Christians and social conservatives in Des Moines. The event attracted 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls such as Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, and the former vice-president Mike Pence.Just as Reynolds was signing the six-week ban, attorneys for Planned Parenthood and the Emma Goldman Clinic asked an Iowa judge to temporarily block the six-week ban from taking effect while litigation proceeds. That decision is expected this week.Dr Emily Boevers, an Iowa OB-GYN at one of the state’s last remaining rural hospitals, braced for an anxious weekend. She volunteers her weekends providing abortion care at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Iowa City, though she does not offer abortions in her everyday work at the hospital.Boevers is one of two OB-GYNs in her home county – the other is expected to retire this fall. She is worried that the six-week ban could drive doctors in her specialty out of Iowa, worsening the region’s existing shortage of maternal healthcare providers.“North of me, there is not another hospital for 50 miles,” said Boevers.She said the criminalization of abortion brings “a level of hostility towards obstetric care in all its components” that will “invariably harm” the already dwindling OB-GYN workforce in Iowa.“Forcing experts in women’s health to withhold care from our patients, it goes against many of our moral codes,” Boevers said. “As an obstetrician-gynecologist, I trust my patients to make the best decision for their situation.” More
Iowa’s state legislature voted on Tuesday night to ban most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, a time before most women know they are pregnant. Republican lawmakers, who hold a majority in both the Iowa house and senate, passed the anti-abortion bill after the governor, Kim Reynolds, called a special session to seek a vote on the ban. The bill passed with exclusively Republican support in a rare one-day legislative burst lasting more than 14 hours More
Iowa’s state legislature voted on Tuesday night to ban most abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy, a time before most people know they are pregnant.Republican lawmakers, which hold a majority in both the Iowa house and senate, passed the anti-abortion bill after the governor, Kim Reynolds, called a special session to seek a vote on the ban.The bill passed with exclusively Republican support in a rare, one-day legislative burst lasting more than 14 hours.The legislation will take immediate effect after the governor signs it on Friday and will prohibit abortions after the first sign of cardiac activity – usually around six weeks, with some exceptions for cases of rape or incest. It will allow for abortions up until 20 weeks of pregnancy only under certain conditions of medical emergency. Abortions in the state were previously allowed up to 20 weeks.“The Iowa supreme court questioned whether this legislature would pass the same law they did in 2018, and today they have a clear answer,” Reynolds said in a statement. “The voices of Iowans and their democratically elected representatives cannot be ignored any longer, and justice for the unborn should not be delayed.”The legislation is the latest in a raft of anti-abortion laws passed in states across the country since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year, ending the nationwide constitutional right to abortion. A number of states, including a swath of the southern US, have passed full bans on abortion without exceptions for cases of rape or incest.Preparations were already under way to quickly file legal challenges in court and get the measure blocked, once Reynolds signs it into law.A similar six-week ban that the legislature passed in 2018 was blocked by the state’s supreme court one year later. Since that decision, however, Roe has been overturned and a more conservative court ruled that abortion is no longer a constitutionally protected right in Iowa. The court was split 3-3 last month on whether to remove the block on the 2018 law, a deadlock which resulted in Reynolds seeking to pass new legislation in a special session this week.“The ACLU of Iowa, Planned Parenthood and the Emma Goldman Clinic remain committed to protecting the reproductive rights of Iowans to control their bodies and their lives, their health and their safety – including filing a lawsuit to block this reckless, cruel law,” the ACLU of Iowa’s executive director, Mark Stringer, said in a statement.In the meantime, Planned Parenthood North Central States has said it will refer patients out of state if they’re scheduled for abortions in the next few weeks. The organization, the largest abortion provider in the state, will continue to provide care to patients who present before cardiac activity is detected.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs state lawmakers debated the bill, crowds of protesters gathered in the capitol rotunda in support of reproductive rights and chanted “vote them out” at Republican legislators. A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa survey from last year showed that around 61% of Iowans were generally in favor of abortion access, a number that tracks with nationwide beliefs about the right to abortion.During a public hearing on Tuesday before the vote, lawmakers heard from advocates both for and against the bill who gave brief statements in the chambers. A range of medical professionals and reproductive rights activists urged the legislature to reconsider the bill, warning that it would cause immense societal harm, reduce bodily autonomy and prevent physicians from caring for patients.“You would be forcing a woman to a lifelong obligation which affects her education, career, family and community,” Amy Bingaman, an obstetrician and gynecologist, told lawmakers.Advocates of the bill, many from Christian organizations and hardline anti-abortion activist groups, thanked lawmakers during the hearing and touted the bill as a victory for their movement.The Associated Press contributed to this report More
Since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade a year ago, reproductive rights have become an even more contentious issue in an already polarized landscape. With more than 1,500 politicians – mostly men – helping ban abortions since Roe fell, Catholic and pro-choice organizations are increasingly trying to carve out space for themselves in the nationwide dialogue to center their own messaging: that being Catholic and pro-choice are not mutually exclusive.One organization trying to dismantle religious stigma surrounding abortions is Catholics For Choice, a Washington-DC based Catholic abortion rights advocacy group. For CFC, the belief in individual reproductive rights comes as a result of the Catholic faith, not in spite of.Speaking to the Guardian shortly after president Joe Biden – a Catholic – said at a recent fundraiser in Maryland that although he is “not big on abortion, he believes that Roe v Wade “got it right”, CFC president Jamie Manson said that despite Biden’s “good model of not imposing one’s religious beliefs on civil law”, his message echoed rightwing sentiments.“President Biden is playing into a narrative that says, in spite of my faith, I support this. It’s a rightwing narrative that we should not give any energy to. It also creates shame and stigma around abortion,” said Manson.In the US, 63% of Catholic adults say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a 2022 survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Additionally, 68% say that Roe v Wade should have been left as is. In a separate survey conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, 24% of abortion patients identified as Catholic.“Catholics overwhelmingly support abortion is because their faith taught them the values of social justice, of the power of individual conscience and of religious freedom… Catholic women who participate richly in the life of the church are having abortions and they have to hear from an all-male hierarchy that when they choose abortion, they’re participating in homicide,” said Manson.“That message is profoundly spiritually violent,” she said, adding, “This is a real pastoral crisis in the church that Catholics don’t want to look at. Every time a high-profile Catholic says, ‘Even though in spite of my faith I support abortion,’ it reinforces that stigma… We need to dismantle this narrative.”To Manson, there are three important ideas deeply embedded in the Catholic tradition which help fuel her organization’s pro-choice beliefs.“The first one is this notion of individual conscience. The catechism says explicitly in all that we say and do, our individual conscience is what tells us what is just and right, not the church. So even if what our conscience tells us to be just and right conflicts with church teaching, we have to go with our conscience,” she said.The next idea is the tradition of social justice, said Manson, which contradicts with the profoundly negative impacts that abortion bans have on already marginalized communities.“Abortion bans and restrictions disproportionately harm people who are already suffering injustices like racism, poverty, immigration laws and domestic violence. The very people that we as Catholics are supposed to prioritize – the marginalized – are the ones who have their suffering exacerbated by abortion bans and restrictions. So there is a deep conflict with our social justice tradition,” Manson said.The third and perhaps the most oft-repeated idea to Manson and other pro-choice faith leaders is religious pluralism.“Catholic teaching supports and respects religious pluralism. And what rightwing Catholics are trying to do is have their theological ideas codified into civil law. By doing that, they’re infringing on the religious freedom of everyone else. Our religious freedom guarantees not only our right to practice our beliefs, but our right to be free of the beliefs of others and so abortion bans and restrictions take away religious freedom,” she said.With far-right Catholic lawmakers continuing to double down on their anti-abortion stances and conservative Christian legal nonprofits funding anti-abortion organizations, the communities that CFC tries to focus on are those that are silent about their support for abortion.“We focus on that population because the majority already are there with us. They’re just afraid to speak about it publicly and that’s because again, of the shame, stigma and punishment that comes from the church when you dare to question this teaching,” Manson explained.“We prefer to cater to that population and we give them information that they need to strengthen their own arguments from a place of faith,” she added.The other focus group of CFC is what Manson calls the “movable middle”, which consists of people who do not know how they feel about abortion and do not feel welcome in the two polarized populations within the abortion debate.“There’s a lot of disinformation that the right wing has put out about abortion over the last 50 years and so we provide them with actual facts. We give them a space to discern how they feel about abortion and make a safe place for people for whom it is a complex issue,” Manson said.Another challenge for organizations like CFC is dismantling certain narratives that automatically enmesh the Catholic faith with anti-abortion stances.“We have to have progressive pro-choice, faithful voices speaking back and centered in the movement now… We really need to counter religious narratives and people who can do that best are religious people. People have to bear in mind the five justices that struck down Roe last year were all Catholic,” said Manson. “We really are fighting a religious force so we have to center religious voices…and take back the narrative that we’ve ceded to this Christian right wing and say, ‘No, because of my faith, I support abortion’ and welcome people who feel conflicted about it rather than making them feel like they’re creating stigma.”Manson added that she doesn’t think the pro-choice movement has done this well “and really needs to if we’re going to transform hearts and minds around this issue”.“I think that they have to center faith voices [because] right now, faith voices are marginalized,” she said. “We need to widen our circle in the pro-choice movement and not create these absolutes and gate-keep each other on messaging.” More
Despite their unpopularity with the American public, former Republican vice-president and 2024 White House hopeful Mike Pence doubled down Sunday on his hard-line support of staunch abortion restrictions, saying: “We just can’t rest or relent until we restore the sanctity of life.”Pence – in an interview on Fox News Sunday – made clear that he viewed bringing the elimination of abortion “to the center of American law” as both essential and “a winning issue” for the Republican party trying to wrest back control of the Oval Office.“I’m pro-life, and I don’t apologize for it,” Pence boasted to host Shannon Bream, even though polling shows most Americans favor keeping the termination of pregnancies legal in most cases.The Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling that the US supreme court handed down one year ago Saturday in effect left it up to states to decide whether abortion should be legal within their boundaries. Many states have taken steps to severely limit access to abortion, setting off a seismic shift in how doctors are training to provide reproductive care to how far patients in need of attention must travel.Pence on Sunday hailed the Dobbs decision as “a historic victory” which sent the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling establishing federal abortion rights “to the ash heap of history”. But he also suggested it didn’t go far enough and reiterated a call he had publicly made days earlier for his fellow Republicans to rally behind setting “a minimum standard” and implementing a nationwide ban on abortions beyond 15 weeks.The former US congressman, Indiana governor, and vice-president to Donald Trump argued that failing to do so would leave the nation more closely aligned with “western countries in Europe” on the topic of abortion than with North Korea, China and Iran. “I fully support that,” said Pence, a professed evangelical.Pence’s beliefs on abortion put him at stark odds with Trump, who has signaled that he regards a national abortion ban as a vote-loser which he is unlikely to support.Many of the other declared candidates for the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic presidential incumbent Joe Biden’s re-election campaign have been less frank about their positions on abortion.Notably, Florida governor Ron DeSantis – the closest challenger to the frontrunner Trump – signed a six-week ban in his state, which pundits predict could be a problem for him in a general showdown with Biden.Biden’s administration has taken steps to widen access to abortion, and promises to defend such procedures helped Democrats keep a majority in the Senate as well as lose fewer House seats than projected during last year’s midterms.Pence on Sunday also evaded answering whether he would consider pardoning Trump if he won the 2024 presidency and his ex-boss was convicted of criminal charges pending against him.“I don’t know why the other people running for president in the Republican primary assume that the president will be found guilty,” Pence said when asked if he would pardon Trump.Trump is facing federal charges that he improperly stored government secrets at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after he and Pence were defeated by the Biden-Kamala Harris ticket in 2020.Separately, he is also facing state charges in New York over hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels after a sexual encounter that she has described having with Trump. Presidential pardons would not apply to state charges.The ex-president has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him.Trump’s presidency ended with his supporters attacking the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 and demanding – among other things – Pence’s execution by hanging. At the time of the attack, the pro-mob Trump incorrectly maintained that Pence could have used his ceremonial role at a joint session of Congress certifying the results of the 2020 election to single-handedly undermine Biden’s victory. More
