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      Biden warns women’s lives in danger after supreme court overturns Roe v Wade – live

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      President Joe Biden has decried the supreme court’s decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion, warning that it risks the health of women nationwide.“The court has done what it has never done done before: expressly take away a constitutional right that is so fundamental to so many Americans,” Biden said in a speech from the White House. “It’s a sad day for the court and for the country.”01:29“Now with Roe gone, let’s be very clear, the health and life of women in this nation are now at risk.”Amanda Gorman, first national youth poet laureate, wrote this in reaction to today’s ruling: We will not be delayed.We will not be masqueradeTo the tale of a handmade.We will not let Roe v. Wade slowly fade.Because when we show up today,We’re already standing upWith the tomorrow we made.Let’s get to work: https://t.co/BNVLVLM6Ji— Amanda Gorman (@TheAmandaGorman) June 24, 2022
      Lisa Murkowski, one of two Senate Republicans who supports abortion rights, said she would “work with a broader group” to restore rights. The Alaska senator said: .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I am continuing to work with a broader group to restore women’s freedom to control their own health decisions wherever they live. Legislation to accomplish that must be a priority.But the sentiment is unlikely to get her very far. Encoding abortion protections will require support from all the Senate Democrats and 10 Republicans. Dozens of elected prosecutors across the US have signed a letter pledging not to prosecute abortions, including officials in states with “trigger laws” that are in the process of banning abortion. DAs pledging not to prosecute abortion in states with trigger laws + bans include officials in St Louis, MO; Jefferson Co in Alabama; Dallas, Travis, Bexar, Nueces, Fort Bend counties in Texas; Genesee, Hinds, Washtenaw, Ingham, Marquette counties in Mich; and Hinds County, Miss pic.twitter.com/vGkUKnGJnG— Sam Levin (@SamTLevin) June 24, 2022
      A total of 83 district attorneys and state attorneys general agreed to the commitment, saying they were united in their belief that “prosecutors have a responsibility to refrain from using limited criminal legal system resources to criminalize personal medical decisions”, adding, “As such, we decline to use our offices’ resources to criminalize reproductive health decisions and commit to exercise our well settled discretion and refrain from prosecuting those who seek, provide, or support abortions.”In addition to commitments from officials in blue states that have laws defending abortion rights, the signatories include local district attorneys in Missouri, Texas, Michigan and Mississippi. Even with Roe in effect, prosecutors across the US have brought criminal charges against people for pregnancy loss and other outcomes, and advocates say this kind of criminalization will significantly escalate with the Roe decision overturned. She was jailed for losing a pregnancy. Her nightmare could become more commonRead moreWhere are abortions now banned?In nine states, bans on abortion took effect today, following the ruling. These states include: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah and Wisconsin. In other states, bans on abortions in most cases will take effect in 30 days. And in some others, legislatures and legal bodies will determine how to proceed – convening to legislate new restrictions, or provide guidance on previously unenforceable abortion restrictions. Abortion deserts: America’s new geography of access to care – mappedRead moreIn a letter to Democratic colleagues, House speaker Nancy Pelosi acknowledged that Thomas’ concurring opinion was “of special concern”. She also said that when it comes to gun control and abortion access, “It is clear that the path forward will depend on the outcome of the upcoming midterm elections.”“The contrast between our parties could not be clearer: while Democrats are the party of freedom and safety, Republicans are the party of punishment and control,” she said. “We must ‘Remember in November’ that the rights of women, and indeed all Americans, are on the ballot.”The repercussions from the supreme court’s ruling overturning the constitutional right to abortion continue to be felt across the country. Here is what has happened today so far:
      President Joe Biden condemned the ruling, calling it “a sad day for the court and for the country”.
      Donald Trump, who as president installed three of the justices that voted to strike down Roe v Wade, reportedly doesn’t think the ruling is a good idea.
      States nationwide are scrambling to react to the decision, with many Republican-led governments moving to ban abortion immediately.
      West coast governors pledged their states would be havens for abortion access.
      A Republican senator said she was duped by two of the supreme court justices who she supported while insisting they would respect Roe v Wade.
      Protesters are gathering at the supreme court building in Washington DC.
      Among the conservative justices, there was a slight difference of opinion in how far the abortion ruling should go.
      Congress approved the bipartisan gun control compromise, sending the bill to Biden for his signature.
      The US politics blog is now in the hands of Maanvi Singh on the west coast, who will take you through the final hours of a day with massive consequences for the country.Dubbing it the “West Coast Offense”, the Democratic governors of California, Oregon and Washington have announced a push to preserve abortion access for their residents and people who come from neighboring states to seek the procedure.The Supreme Court has stripped women of their liberty and let red states replace it with mandated birth.This is an attack on American freedom.CA, OR and WA are creating the West Coast offensive. A road map for other states to stand up for women.Time to fight like hell. pic.twitter.com/jBrJcTQVa8— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) June 24, 2022
      The three governors have been vocal about the issue ever since the leak of the supreme court’s draft opinion overturning Roe v Wade. In 2021, California governor Gavin Newsom signed new laws protecting abortion providers and patients in the country’s most-populous state:Governor vows to make California a ‘reproductive freedom state’Read moreIn the end, there weren’t enough of them to stop the court’s conservative majority from overturning Roe v Wade, but the dissenting opinion from the court’s three liberal justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan acts as a requiem of sorts for the 49-year-old constitutional right to abortion, now overturned:Earlier this Term, this court signaled that Mississippi’s stratagem would succeed. Texas was one of the fistful of states to have recently banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. It added to that “flagrantly unconstitutional” restriction an unprecedented scheme to “evade judicial scrutiny.” And five justices acceded to that cynical maneuver. They let Texas defy this court’s constitutional rulings, nullifying Roe and Casey ahead of schedule in the Nation’s second largest state.And now the other shoe drops, courtesy of that same five-person majority. (We believe that the chief justice’s opinion is wrong too, but no one should think that there is not a large difference between upholding a 15-week ban on the grounds he does and allowing states to prohibit abortion from the time of conception.) Now a new and bare majority of this court – acting at practically the first moment possible – overrules Roe and Casey. It converts a series of dissenting opinions expressing antipathy toward Roe and Casey into a decision greenlighting even total abortion bans. It eliminates a 50-year-old constitutional right that safeguards women’s freedom and equal station. It breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote constancy in the law. In doing all of that, it places in jeopardy other rights, from contraception to same-sex intimacy and marriage. And finally, it undermines the court’s legitimacy.‘Fewer rights than their grandmothers’: read three justices’ searing abortion dissent | Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena KaganRead moreKevin McCarthy, leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, has cheered the supreme court’s ruling, calling it “the most important pro-life ruling in American history”..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The people have won a victory. The right to life has been vindicated. The voiceless will finally have a voice. This great nation can now live up to its core principle that all are created equal. Not born equal. Created equal.Republicans are viewed as favorites to take control of the House following this year’s midterm elections, and McCarthy would be a top contender for the job of speaker. In his speech, he alluded to what his priorities might be, should the GOP ascend to the majority. .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As encouraging as today’s decision is, our work is far from done. America remains one of only seven countries on earth that allows elective abortions in the third trimester, including China and North Korea. This is radical – but House Democrats continue to support it against the wishes of the American people. This Congress, every House Democrat has voted for extreme policies like taxpayer-funded abortion, on demand, until the point of birth. But Democrats’ radical agenda does not have Americans’ support.The largest association of African American physicians in the United States has warned that the supreme court’s decision to overturn abortion rights will harm racial minorities, particularly Black women. In a statement, president of the National Medical Association Rachel Villanueva said:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This decision is unconstitutional, dangerous and discriminatory. It will not stop abortions from being performed, it will unfortunately only make the procedure more dangerous. Women of color, poor women and other disadvantaged individuals who don’t have the resources to travel to obtain the medical care they need will be disproportionately impacted. At a time when maternal mortality rates are worsening, particularly for Black women, it is deeply disappointing that our institutions are actively harming — not helping — women’s health. Abortion is part of total health care for a woman. Doctors should be able to provide medical care based on scientific fact and evidence-based medicine, and free from any political interference. The entire medical community should be gravely concerned about the precedent this decision sets.According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from 2019, the most recent year available, Black women have the highest rates of abortion with 23.8 per 1,000 people. Hispanic women had 11.7 abortions per 1,000 people, while for white women, the ratio was 6.6.Will the supreme court’s conservative justices stop with Roe v Wade? As Joan E Greve reports, today’s decision in the Dobbs case contains signs that the Republican-appointed majority would like to go after other rights the court has established, such as same-sex marriage and access to contraception:Many Americans reacted to the supreme court’s decision to reverse Roe v Wade and remove federal abortion rights in the US with shock, but many also asked a terrified question: what might be next?The conservative justice Clarence Thomas appeared to offer a preview of the court’s potential future rulings, suggesting the rightwing-controlled court may return to the issues of contraception access and marriage equality, threatening LGBTQ rights.“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion to the ruling on Roe.Contraception, gay marriage: Clarence Thomas signals new targets for supreme courtRead moreThe House of Representatives has passed the bipartisan gun control measure that the Senate approved yesterday. It now awaits action from President Joe Biden, who said he will sign it.234-193, House sends guns package to Biden’s desk. 14 Rs broke with their leadership: Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Tom Rice, John Katko, Maria Salazar, Chris Jacobs, Brian Fitzpatrick, Peter Meijer and Fred Upton; and Steve Chabot, Mike Turner, David Joyce and Anthony Gonzalez— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 24, 2022
      While the bill tightens gun access for some Americans and funds mental health services, it is being passed just a day after a supreme court ruling that expanded the right to carry a concealed weapon nationwide.US supreme court overturns New York handgun law in bitter blow to gun-control pushRead moreMedical experts have also decried the Dobbs opinion as threatening the health and autonomy of patients nationwide.The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released a statement condemning the supreme court opinion from its president, Iffath A Hoskins, MD, FACOG, reading in part: .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Today’s decision is a direct blow to bodily autonomy, reproductive health, patient safety and health equity in the United States.
      Reversing the constitutional protection for safe, legal abortion established by the Supreme Court nearly fifty years ago exposes pregnant people to arbitrary, state-based restrictions, regulations, and bans that will leave many people unable to access needed medical care.
      The restrictions put forth are not based on science nor medicine; they allow unrelated third parties to make decisions that rightfully and ethically should be made only by individuals and their physicians.
      ACOG condemns this devastating decision, which will allow state governments to prevent women from living with autonomy over their bodies and their decisions. The American Medical Association also released a statement denouncing the Dobbs opinion, with its president Jack Resneck Jr MD, writing: .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} The American Medical Association is deeply disturbed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn nearly a half century of precedent protecting patients’ right to critical reproductive health care—representing an egregious allowance of government intrusion into the medical examination room, a direct attack on the practice of medicine and the patient-physician relationship, and a brazen violation of patients’ rights to evidence-based reproductive health services.
      States that end legal abortion will not end abortion —they will end safe abortion, risking [devastating] consequences, including patients’ lives. More

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      Protests break out outside US supreme court after ruling overturns abortion rights – video

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      The US supreme court has struck down the nationwide right to abortion that was established by the Roe v Wade decision. The result is expected to send hundreds of thousands of people in 26 states hostile to abortion elsewhere to terminate a pregnancy. More than half of US states will outlaw abortion as soon as is feasible.
      A draft opinion leaked last month showed the court was prepared to overturn the 1973 landmark decision 

      US supreme court overturns abortion rights, upending Roe v Wade More

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      How Americans lost their right to abortions: a victory for conservatives, 50 years in the making

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      How Americans lost their right to abortions: a victory for conservatives, 50 years in the making Why, and how, a decision opposed by a majority of Americans came about has everything to do with political power, experts sayThe short version of how Americans lost their right to terminate a pregnancy might be summed up in one name: Trump.The real estate tycoon and reality-TV star first shocked the world by winning the US presidency, then rewarded his base by confirming three supreme court justices to a nine-member bench, thus rebalancing the court to lean conservative for a generation to come.That short road led to Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an opinion released this week in which supreme court justices voted to overturn the landmark case Roe v Wade, which in 1973 granted a constitutional right to abortion.The end of federal protection for abortion is expected to lead to 26 states banning the procedure immediately or as soon as practicable, affecting tens of millions of US women and people who can become pregnant.The decision comes even though about 85% of Americans favor legal abortion in at least some circumstances. Why, and how, a decision opposed by a majority of Americans came about has everything to do with political power, experts said.The anti-abortion movement is “the best organized faction in American politics”, said Frederick Clarkson, an expert on the Christian right and a senior research analyst at Political Research Associate, a progressive thinktank in Massachusetts.“They understand they’re a minority of the population, of the electorate, and certainly a minority set of views on reproductive rights issues,” he said. “But because they know that, they’ve found effective ways of maximizing their political clout by being better organized than numerically greater factions who are less well organized.”Put another way, he said, the anti-abortion movement “mastered the tools of democracy to achieve undemocratic outcomes”.The currents that led to the Dobbs decision are among the most powerful in American politics today. Over decades, a religious movement prevailed by harnessing the forces of polarization, the erosion of constitutional norms and the manipulation of US democracy, scholars said.“It’s not like we’ve had this slow erosion of abortion rights,” said Neil Siegel, an expert in constitutional law and professor at Duke University who clerked for former liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Instead, justices issued an opinion that “is utterly dismissive of what has been constitutional law for literally five decades”, and was “repeatedly affirmed by justices appointed by both parties”.The conservative-leaning court will shatter one more constitutional norm, issuing a once-in-a-lifetime reversal, after another event without modern precedent: the leak of a supreme court draft opinion. Even before Dobbs was released, the leak spelled out the doom of Roe v Wade.“The court is not the institution I served,” said Siegel.Today, abortion is among the most partisan issues in the US, with Republicans and the anti-abortion movement so closely aligned there is little daylight between them. In the 1970s, however, abortion was seen as a “Catholic issue”, with both pro-choice Republicans and anti-abortion Democrats in Congress. The supreme court voted in favor of Roe v Wade by a 7-2 margin.Some of this transformation reflects “deliberate changes by the anti-abortion movement, some of it is structural changes to US democracy, and some of it is just luck,” said Mary Ziegler, visiting professor at Harvard and a professor of constitutional law at the University of California Davis.Contrary to popular belief, there was no immediate political backlash to Roe v Wade. In the years that followed, important bills banned the federal government from paying for abortions, but a constitutional amendment to outright ban the procedure failed.It wasn’t until the late 1970s that Republican strategists, such as Paul Weyrich, saw abortion as an issue that might unlock the votes of millions of white evangelical Christians, alongside opposition to women’s rights and to desegregation court rulings. The plan worked: Catholics and white evangelical Protestants were brought into uneasy alliance with Republicans.“Back in the 70s and 80s, when the anti-abortion movement was maturing, I remember events where you would see one Catholic bishop sitting on stage uncomfortably with evangelicals,” said Clarkson.It would be decades before evangelical Christians and Catholics entirely fused their modern agenda, with abortion, gay marriage and religious freedom as top issues. Nevertheless, the new alliance soon produced a “moral majority” that buoyed Ronald Reagan’s campaign. Like Trump, Reagan initially supported “liberalized” abortion law, before he later promised to oppose abortion as president.This political realignment was helped along by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which constitutional scholars argued forced segregationist southern Democrats into real competition with Republicans for the first time.“You don’t understand reproductive politics in this country if you don’t understand racial politics in this country,” said Loretta Ross, founder of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, a reproductive rights organizer in Georgia.“I believe the current restrictions on abortion, birth control and sex education are all designed to compel white women to have more babies,” said Ross. “I’m not convinced they want more brown or Black babies,” even though brown and Black women would be disproportionately affected by abortion bans, she said.This political realignment also brought Republicans distinct structural advantages based on the architecture of the US constitution – a force Siegel describes as “rural favoritism”.The two-chamber Congress is made up of the House of Representatives, whose seats are based on population, and the Senate, which grants each state two votes no matter the population. “The constitution has always disproportionately favored rural voters, but it didn’t always favor one party,” said Siegel.As Republican senators began to represent more white, Christian and rural voters, however, they also gained advantage of a feature baked into the US constitution. Today, Republicans collectively represent 41.5 million fewer Americans than Democrats, even though the Senate is evenly split. As a result, the new conservative-leaning court was confirmed by a body which represents a minority of voters.“That is reflective of minority rule,” said Siegel.Republican strategists’ appeal to socially conservative voters also began to substantially redefine what it meant to be Republican.“The party professionals and establishment Republicans thought they could control them,” said Clarkson. “They were wrong: they became the party.”The new anti-abortion arrivals pushed for more power, working “to exercise more influence over the composition of the GOP to ensure the nominees would be ideologically pure enough”, Clarkson said.Demography added urgency to the anti-abortion cause, Siegel said. The Republican party is overwhelmingly white and Christian, but the size of its base is threatened by rapidly changing US demographics as America grows more racially diverse and less religious. White Americans are predicted to be a minority by 2045.That has pushed Republicans to practice “existential politics”, made each election cycle feel more critical than the last and forced the parties further apart, said Siegel. At the same time, partisan redistricting, known as gerrymandering, has allowed more extreme candidates to win uncompetitive districts, exacerbating polarization.In the case of Dobbs, power and luck collided when the base elected Trump, a man who once professed to be pro-choice, won the election even as he lost the popular vote and was then offered the rare opportunity to confirm three new justices to the court.The forces behind Dobbs also show how especially American values – autonomy, liberty and self-determination – will be redefined in a new supreme court era.“There’s mutual animosity between members of the two parties, but there is more of an asymmetry in terms of how far to the right the Republican party has moved, and willingness to break norms for short-term partisan advantage,” said Siegel. “Or, in the case of the supreme court, for long-term partisan advantage.”
      This article was amended on 24 June 2022 to clarify Frederick Clarkson’s biography.
      TopicsRoe v WadeAbortionUS supreme courtLaw (US)US politicsRepublicansanalysisReuse this content More

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      The supreme court just overturned Roe v Wade – what happens next?

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      The supreme court just overturned Roe v Wade – what happens next?Court’s move will allow more than half of states to ban abortion, with an immediate impact on tens of millions of Americans01:39The supreme court just overturned the landmark Roe v Wade case, which granted women in the US the right to terminate a pregnancy. A reversal of this magnitude is almost unprecedented, particularly on a case decided nearly 50 years ago.The extraordinarily rare move will allow more than half of states to ban abortion, with an immediate and enduring impact on tens of millions of Americans.Roe v Wade overturned as supreme court strikes down federal right to abortion – liveRead moreWhat happened?The court decided there is no constitutional right to abortion in a case called Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In reaching that decision, the conservative-majority court overturned Roe v Wade, from 1973.Historically, the court has overturned cases to grant more rights. The court has done the opposite here, and its decision will restrict a constitutional right generations of Americans have grown up taking for granted.As a result of the reversal, states will again be permitted to ban or severely restrict abortion, changes that will indelibly alter the national understanding of liberty, self-determination and personal autonomy.Where will this happen?Twenty-six states are expected to do so immediately, or as soon as practicable. This will make abortion illegal across most of the south and midwest.In these states, women and other people who can become pregnant will need to either travel hundreds of miles to reach an abortion provider or self-manage abortions at home through medication or other means.However, anti-abortion laws are not national. The US will have a patchwork of laws, including restrictions and protections, because some Democratic-led states such as California and New York expanded reproductive rights in the run-up to the decision.Even so, new abortion bans will make the US one of just four nations to roll back abortion rights since 1994, and by far the wealthiest and most influential nation to do so. The other three nations to curtail abortion rights are Poland, El Salvador and Nicaragua, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. More than half (58%) of all US women of reproductive age – or 40 million people – live in states hostile to abortion.When will this happen?Across most states, this will happen quickly. Thirteen states have abortion bans “triggered” by a reversal of Roe v Wade, though the laws vary in their enforcement dates. Louisiana, for example, has a trigger law that is supposed to take effect immediately. Idaho has a trigger ban that goes into effect in 30 days.Other states have abortion bans that pre-date the Roe decision, but have been unenforceable in the last five decades. Michigan has a pre-Roe ban that is currently the subject of a court challenge.A final group of states intends to ban abortion very early in pregnancy, often before women know they are pregnant. One such state is Georgia, where abortion will be banned at six weeks. Several states, such as Texas, have multiple bans in place.In many cases, court challenges under state constitutions are likely, and experts believe there will be chaos for days or weeks as states implement bans.Can the federal government stop this?The most effective protection against state abortion bans is a federal law, which would precede the states. Public opinion favors such statute – 85% of Americans believe abortion should be legal in most or all circumstances.Such a law would need the majority support of the House of Representatives, a 60-vote majority in the Senate, and a signature from Joe Biden to pass. A majority of members of the House of Representatives support an abortion rights statute, as does the White House.However, Republicans are almost certain to block abortion rights laws in the Senate, which is evenly split with Democrats. One Democratic senator, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has repeatedly crossed party lines to vote against abortion rights. That leaves just 49 Democrats, far short of the support needed to pass such a measure.To overcome the evenly split Senate, Democrats would need to win landslide victories in the upcoming midterm elections. However, despite the fact that popular opinion favors abortion rights, it is unclear how the midterms could be swayed by the issue.And, regardless of the outcome of the next election, Dobbs will forever change life in the US. The lives of individuals will be irrevocably altered as people are denied reproductive healthcare, face long journeys or are forced to give birth.TopicsRoe v WadeUS supreme courtAbortionWomenUS politicsLaw (US)HealthexplainersReuse this content More

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      Republicans keep passing extreme anti-abortion bans without popular support. Here’s why

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      Republicans keep passing extreme anti-abortion bans without popular support. Here’s whyMost Americans don’t want abortion bans but gerrymandering allows politicians to face little accountability Hello, and happy Thursday,As states have passed a wave of increasingly extreme abortion restrictions in recent years, a sort of puzzling contradiction has emerged. The American public broadly supports the right to an abortion, public polling has shown, yet politicians who pass these controversial restrictions are consistently re-elected. Why is that?US braces for House committee’s primetime January 6 hearings – liveRead moreYesterday, we published a story that seeks to answer that question. A big part of why politicians face little accountability is gerrymandering. State lawmakers, who have the power to draw the boundaries of their own districts in most places, can pick which voters they represent and virtually guarantee their re-election.It’s more important than ever to understand this dynamic. In his draft opinion overturning Roe v Wade, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that abortion is an issue that should be resolved by the political process, not the courts. By insulating politicians from accountability, extreme gerrymandering prevents the political process from doing that. In 2019, Alito joined four of the court’s conservative justices in saying there was nothing federal courts could do to police even the most extreme gerrymandering.Few places better capture the link between partisan gerrymandering and extreme anti-abortion measures than Ohio.In 2010, Republicans won control of the Ohio legislature and drew new maps that allowed them to hold a veto-proof majority for the next decade. In 2011, the legislature began to pass a series of restrictions on abortion. Republicans enacted a new law that banned abortion after a fetus was viable and required viability testing after 20 weeks. They passed another measure that prohibited taxpayer-funded hospitals from entering into patient transfer agreements with clinics, making it harder for the clinics to operate. In 2019, the state had banned abortion after six weeks, one of the most restrictive laws in the country. (The Ohio Policy Evaluation Network, which tracks abortion access in Ohio has a good timeline of these bills).When Ohio lawmakers were passing these measures, there wasn’t overwhelming public support for them. Ohio voters are closely divided on abortion and a majority did not support the six week ban (one poll after it passed in 2019 showed that a majority of people opposed it). Even so, Ohio Republicans have maintained their majorities in the state legislature.“That mismatch between what we see in public opinion and what we see at the statehouse, really suggests that what citizens are thinking about abortion access really is not reflected in their statehouse,” Danielle Bessett, a sociology professor at the University of Cincinnati, who closely studies abortion care in Ohio, told me. “That suggests that there isn’t a concern about this being sort of something that they’re going to get held accountable for at the polls.”It’s an imbalance that exists across the country. Nationally, 61% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, but states are enacting a blitz of increasingly extreme restrictions, including several that are considering outright bans. Republicans continue to control more state legislative chambers than Democrats do, and very few are expected to flip partisan control (fewer than 1 in 5 state legislative districts are estimated to be competitive this year).In Ohio, Republicans have once again engineered maps that preserve their advantage. After the state supreme court struck down five proposals for a new legislative map because they were too gerrymandered, lawmakers ran out the clock. They convinced a federal court to impose a map for the 2022 elections that will allow them to maintain, at minimum, 54% of the seats in the state legislature.“It’s frustrating. In some ways it’s hopeful that people do think that abortion should be a right and should exist for people in Ohio,” Sri Thakkilapati, the interim executive director of PreTerm, an abortion clinic in Cleveland told me. “It’s helpful to know that there are more of us. But in some ways it’s very disheartening…It feels like it’s not gonna make a difference.”Also worth watching…
      Jim Marchant, a QAnon linked candidate running to be Nevada’s chief election official, is seeking his party’s nomination in the GOP primary on Tuesday.
      Voters with disabilities are suing Alabama for offering inadequate access to absentee ballots for people who are blind
      TopicsUS newsFight to voteUS politicsAbortionOhioRoe v WadefeaturesReuse this content More

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      How Republicans pass abortion bans most Americans don’t want

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      How Republicans pass abortion bans most Americans don’t wantLegalized abortion in some form is widely supported, but gerrymandered districts allow politicians to push extreme measures through On 10 April 2019, the Ohio legislature easily passed SB 23, a bill that banned abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.It was a move that should have carried considerable political risk in Ohio, a state closely divided between Democrats and Republicans. There wasn’t widespread support for the bill – polling showed public opinion was nearly evenly split over the bill (a poll after the bill was passed showed a majority opposed it), John Kasich, a previous Republican governor, had twice vetoed the bill, saying it was unconstitutional, and it had stalled in the legislature for years.But Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, a Republican, nonetheless signed the bill into law the next day. And the following fall, when the politicians who passed the measure came up for re-election, Republicans didn’t lose any seats in the state legislature. In fact, they expanded their majority.Pro-choice forces are working to keep abortion legal in Michigan with a ballot initiativeRead moreOhio offers a case study of how US politicians enact extreme abortion measures that don’t align with voters’ views but face little accountability at the polls – an issue even more at stake this month as the supreme court is on the verge of issuing a decision that will probably overturn Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to an abortion. In Ohio and elsewhere, politicians are protected by their ability to draw their own political districts every 10 years, distorting them in such a way as to virtually guarantee their re-election. Republicans drew the lines in Ohio in 2011 and have held a supermajority in the state legislature ever since. “We can kind of do what we want,” Matt Huffman, the top Republican in the Ohio senate, told the Columbus Dispatch recently.In a leaked draft opinion overturning Roe, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that disputes over abortion should be resolved through the political process. “The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations, upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting,” Alito wrote, quoting the late Justice Antonin Scalia.But as it urges returning abortion to the political sphere, the supreme court has sanctioned a manipulation of the political process that makes it nearly impossible for Ohioans and voters in other states to make their voices heard on abortion. In 2019, Alito and four of the court’s conservative justices said federal courts could not do anything to police partisan gerrymandering, giving lawmakers in Ohio and elsewhere more freedom to gerrymander their districts.That kind of gerrymandering will probably serve as an invisible, virtually impenetrable fortress that will allow lawmakers across the US to continue to push extreme abortion measures that are unsupported by the public. Although public attitudes about abortion can be complex, the vast majority do not support overturning Roe v Wade and a majority supports legalized abortion in some form. State lawmakers who have pushed measures criminalizing abortion and outlawing it entirely have ignored those attitudes.“They are different strands of the same braid. We don’t have those restrictions without the gerrymandering,” said Kellie Copeland, the executive director of Pro-Choice Ohio, a group that works to protect abortion access in the state.When Ohio was considering the six-week abortion ban, Copeland said, her organization facilitated a “parade of witnesses” – medical professionals, women who had abortions, religious leaders – to give emotional testimony to the legislature. Many lawmakers didn’t stick around to listen. “They don’t care. And they don’t care because they know they’re untouchable because of gerrymandering,” she said.It’s a problem that exists beyond Ohio. The vast majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances, but state lawmakers continue to offer a blitz of increasingly extreme restrictions on abortion. Republicans control far more state legislative chambers than Democrats do and only about 17.5% of state legislative districts are expected to be competitive over the next decade. Very few chambers are expected to flip partisan control. In Ohio, Republicans have once again come up with a state legislative map distorted to their advantage and have openly defied the state supreme court’s orders to come up with a fairer map.Extreme restrictions with extreme consequencesIn 2010, Kasich had ousted an incumbent Democrat and Republicans flipped control of the Ohio house as part of a nationwide Republican effort aimed at winning state legislative chambers to control the redistricting process. Armed with complete redistricting power, Ohio Republicans drew new districts that allowed them to win a supermajority in the state legislature throughout the last decade, even as Barack Obama carried the state in 2008 and 2012.A wave of new restrictions on abortion restrictions began to flow. In 2012, the state enacted a new law banning abortions after a fetus was viable, except in cases of medical emergency, and requiring viability testing at 20 weeks (three to four weeks before the accepted medical definition of viability). The next year, Ohio lawmakers tucked a number of restrictions into a budget bill, including a hugely consequential measure that prevented abortion clinics from entering into required patient-transfer agreements with taxpayer-funded hospitals. The state went on to prohibit certain government money from going to Planned Parenthood, ban abortion at 20 weeks post-fertilization outright and, in 2019, passed the six-week abortion ban.“Throughout the ’80s, ’90s, early 2000s, there were occasional laws that would tinker with the informed consent requirement for an abortion or tinker around the edges with minors access to abortion and things like that,” said Jessie Hill, a law professor at Case Western Univerity. “We really started to see an uptick in abortion restrictions after 2010, or 2011, the last time the redistricting took effect in Ohio. It’s been since then, just sort of increasingly extreme restrictions.”Those restrictions produced extreme consequences. Between 2011 and 2015, seven of the state’s 16 abortion clinics either closed or curtailed their operations (six full-service clinics remain open today with three additional clinics providing medication abortion services). A complete ban on abortion in the state could increase the average distance a woman has to travel in Ohio to an abortion clinic from an average of 26 miles to as much as 269 miles in a worst-case scenario, according to one recent study.It’s a burden that significantly harms those in rural areas, who have seen clinics in their counties close and who will have to take more time off work to travel.“It’s kind of death by a thousand cuts,” said Sri Thakkilapati, the interim executive director of PreTerm, an abortion clinic in Cleveland. “Maybe any one or two of these things you could overcome, but all together it becomes a really burdensome process,” As the supreme court weighs overturning Roe v Wade, Ohio is now considering a virtually complete ban on abortion. Such a ban would mean that those seeking an abortion will have to pay “exorbitant amounts of income” to travel to obtain an abortion out of state, said Danielle Bessett, a professor at the University of Cincinnati who studies abortion access. “People who are not gonna be able to afford that travel … are then going to try and self-source abortion care at home. And we’ll probably see lots of inequality in how people are prosecuted and arrested for that,” she said.And lastly, she said, there will be those who don’t try either of those and are forced to carry their pregnancy to term. “There are equity issues there, too, with Black women having the highest rate of maternal mortality,” she said.As lawmakers have pushed these severe restrictions, they have consistently remained out of line with what most Ohioans believe. Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Ohio voters support some form of legalized abortion, while a minority believes it should be illegal.“Those who are anti-abortion and claim a faith tradition, they don’t speak for me. They don’t represent the countless folks who are faithfully pro-choice. Same thing with our elected leaders. They don’t represent who we are and what we believe in our communities,” said Elaina Ramsey, the executive director of Faith Choice Ohio, which works to protect abortion access.Thakkilapati agrees. “It’s frustrating. In some ways it’s hopeful that people do think that abortion should be a right and should exist for people in Ohio. It’s helpful to know that there are more of us. But in some ways it’s very disheartening,” she said. “It feels like it’s not gonna make a difference.”TopicsAbortionThe fight to voteOhioRoe v WadeUS supreme courtUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Will anti-abortionists use ‘uterus surveillance’ against women in the US? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Will anti-abortionists use ‘uterus surveillance’ against women in the US?Arwa MahdawiIf, as is expected, Roe v Wade is overturned by the US supreme court, 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion – and data tracking could mean there’s nowhere for women to hide If you are looking for a cheerful column that will make you giggle and distract you from everything that is wrong with the world, click away now. This week I have nothing but doom, gloom and data trackers for you. If you are hoping to sink into a well of existential despair, maybe let out a few screams into the void, then you’ve come to the right place.Here goes: the US supreme court, as you are no doubt aware, is expected to overturn Roe v Wade and the federal right to an abortion very soon. At least 13 Republican-led states have “trigger laws” in place, which means that the moment Roe is overruled, abortion will be fully or partly banned. Other states will follow suit. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice research organisation, 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion when Roe falls.Perhaps you are the glass half-full sort. Perhaps you are thinking: “Well, at least people can travel to a state where abortion is legal.” Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. There are the obvious logistical and financial constraints, for one thing. Then there’s the fact that we live in a world of mass surveillance: pretty much everything we do these days leaves a digital footprint – one that anti-abortion extremists will not hesitate to weaponise. One Democratic senator has described the potential of new technology to track down and punish anyone who might even be thinking of having an abortion as “uterus surveillance”. Expect to see a big rise in this, not least because some anti-abortion states are providing financial incentives to snitch on your fellow citizens. Texas, for example, has passed “bounty hunter” laws promising at least $10,000 to individuals who help enforce the abortion ban by successfully suing an abortion provider.To be fair, there’s nothing new about uterus surveillance. Anti-abortion activists may be stuck in the past when it comes to reproductive rights, but they have always been adept at using modern technology to further their goals. One tactic they’ve used for decades is standing outside clinics and recording the licence plates of anyone who enters. As far back as 1993, extremists were tracing the people connected to those licence plates, obtaining their phone numbers, then calling up to harass them. Years ago tracing someone took a bit of time and effort. Nowadays, you can look up someone’s personal information with the click of a button and a small fee.The wonders of the modern world mean there are a mind-boggling number of ways in which you can now identify anyone who might be thinking about an abortion. To begin with, there’s location data. Vice media recently reported that a data location company is selling information related to Planned Parenthood facilities (many of which provide abortions). The data shows where groups of people visiting the locations came from, how long they stayed and where they went afterwards. That data is aggregated so it doesn’t provide the names of individuals; however, de-anonymising this sort of information is not very difficult. There is plenty of evidence that location data is almost never anonymous.Period-tracking apps, which are used by millions of people, are also a worrying source of potentially incriminating information in a post-Roe world. Experts have warned that rightwing organisations could buy data from these apps and use it to prove that someone was pregnant then had an abortion. Your text messages could also be used against you, as could your browser history. Indeed, authorities in Mississippi have already used a woman’s online search for abortion pills to indict her for second-degree murder after she miscarried. That happened in 2018; imagine what is going to happen in a post-Roe world. Speaking of which, I’ve just realised I Googled the word “abortion” 100 times while researching this. I’m off to scrub my search history.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsRoe v WadeOpinionAbortionUS politicsWomenHealthUS supreme courtLaw (US)commentReuse this content More