Roe v Wade

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      Don’t believe those who say ending Roe v Wade will leave society largely intact | Laurence H Tribe

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      Don’t believe those who say ending Roe v Wade will leave society largely intactLaurence H TribeIf the high court adopts Alito’s draft opinion, it will be a legal tidal wave that sweeps away a swath of rights unlike anything America has ever seen Now that the dust has begun to settle after the initial explosive news that the US supreme court is poised to overrule the right to abortion and that Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization represents what a majority of the court initially voted to do, among the most revealing ways to understand the devastation the court appears ready to wreak on America’s long march toward “liberty and justice for all” is to examine the kinds of arguments being made in the opinion’s defense.The argument that such a ruling would simply return a divisive issue to the people had long since been widely dismantled. It certainly wouldn’t be returned to the people most profoundly affected once women were told they may have to remain pregnant despite whatever urgent reasons they might have for seeking a safe and legal abortion. It couldn’t be described as returning the abortion issue to the states, now that the possibility of a nationwide ban that the supreme court might uphold is on the horizon. And to the extent the issue is returned to the states, it would be returned to state legislatures so gerrymandered that they often represent the views of a distinct minority of the people anyway.Ending Roe v Wade is just the beginning | Thomas ZimmerRead moreThe argument that “only” abortion is involved because Alito’s draft assures readers that the supreme court’s opinion won’t be treated as precedent for anything that doesn’t involve killing an unborn human is both profoundly insulting and manifestly misleading. It insults every sentient person by minimizing the significance of commandeering the bodies and lives of half the population – and re-inserting government power into every family. And it misleads every reader of Alito’s words by suggesting that a court has the power to shape how future lawmakers and judges will build on its decisions and the reasoning underlying them. Alito’s hollow promise brings to mind similar assurances in notorious cases like Bush v Gore, is inconsistent with how the judicial process works, and wouldn’t offer any solace to anyone who might become pregnant or whose miscarriage might be treated as a crime scene for police to investigate.The foolishness of the argument that there’s nothing to see here other than the future of abortion law is underscored by some of what is said in its support. We’re told not to worry about the future of decisions like Loving v Virginia, ensuring the right to marry someone of a different race than your own because, after all, Justice Clarence Thomas is in an interracial marriage. We’re told not to worry about the right to same-sex marriage because, after all, Justice Brett Kavanaugh would never vote to overturn Obergefell v Hodges, the most iconic opinion written by his proud mentor, Anthony Kennedy – the man who left the court only after he had hand-picked Kavanaugh as his successor. We’re told not to worry about contraception (despite the way quite a few people view Plan B or IUDs as forms of abortion) because even supreme court nominees like Amy Coney Barrett, who were cagey about just how “settled” a precedent they deemed Roe v Wade, said they couldn’t imagine anybody today challenging Griswold v Connecticut. All that prognostication is cold comfort to the millions of people whose lives are profoundly affected by these shaky predictions.The most substantial argument is one that is equally fallacious but more sophisticated and in some ways more devious and dangerous: it is the argument that supreme court reversals of precedent, like the reversal of Plessy v Ferguson by Brown v Board of Education, are often to be welcomed as needed course corrections, and that this “course correction” wouldn’t be the first time the supreme court has rolled back decades-old constitutional rights. The many commentators who persisted in describing Alito’s draft in those terms – as an unprecedented retreat in the arc of ever-expanding rights – have recently been denounced as either inexcusably ignorant or deliberately duplicitous by distinguished scholars like Yale’s Akhil Amar, who says that every first-year law student learns that the very same thing happened during FDR’s second term as president, when the supreme court in 1937 in West Coast Hotel v Parrish overturned a long line of decisions that had blocked minimum wage and maximum hours and other worker-protection laws in the name of employers’ rights of “private property” and the “liberty of contract”. To be sure, Amar’s argument echoes that of the Alito draft, which cites Parrish and says, in effect, “nothing to see here, we did the same thing before” when we rolled back the liberty of contract line of decisions in 1937.Justice Alito and Professor Amar are simply wrong: profoundly so. That so-called (and quite misleadingly labeled) “switch in time that saved the nine” was nothing like the switch that Dobbs would represent. The 1937 “switch” was no sudden politically driven turnabout but was in fact the culmination of long-simmering movements in legal and economic thought – movements that were reflected both in scholarship and in judicial opinions from the earliest days of the 20th century in places like Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ dissent in Lochner v New York insisting that “the 14th amendment does not enact Mr Herbert Spencer’s social statics,” movements that represented the growing conviction that the “freedom” to work at low wages and in miserable conditions was an illusion lacking both moral and legal foundations and one that simply helped perpetuate economic inequality and the exploitation of relatively powerless, not-yet-unionized workers by wealthy and powerful corporations.Indeed, it is noteworthy that West Coast Hotel v Parrish – the 29 March 1937 decision that is usually marked as the pivot point in the great constitutional upheaval – was handed down by precisely the same set of nine justices as the nine who had rendered a decision pointing in the opposite direction less than a year earlier, on 1 June 1936, in Morehead v New York ex rel Tipaldo. One justice of the nine, a moderate Republican named Owen J Roberts, who had been rethinking his position on the underlying legal theories, had foreshadowed his shifting views by writing a landmark opinion upholding milk price regulation, Nebbia v New York, by a 5-4 vote in 1934 – less than two months after the court had upheld a state mortgage moratorium law by a 5-4 vote in Home Building & Loan Ass’n v Blaisdell, a decision clearly foreshadowing the 1937 repudiation of Lochner’s legacy by reconceiving the meaning of the constitution’s clause forbidding all state impairments of the obligation of contracts.That history is important to keep in mind if one is to understand the depth of the error made by those who seek to compare the 2022 tsunami that Dobbs would represent with the gradual shift in current represented by the 1937 movement away from liberty of contract to protection of workers and consumers. The head-spinning and altogether untimely switch in the supreme court’s abortion jurisprudence that Dobbs would represent – if the decision the court announces late this June or early July is in substance what the leaked Alito draft indicated it would be – will reflect not the steady maturation of a long-developing jurisprudential movement but the crude payoff to a partisan political program to take over the federal judiciary, one beginning with Ronald Reagan’s presidency and the rise of the Federalist Society, and advancing with supreme court appointments made by Republican presidents all of whom lost the popular vote (George W Bush, appointing Justice Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts; Donald J Trump, appointing Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett), and made in circumstances of dubious legitimacy.Professor Amar treats as laughably naïve the observation by ACLU national legal director and Georgetown law professor David Cole that, although “Parrish took away some rights of business owners … its real effect was to expand rights protections for millions of Americans subject to exploitation by powerful corporations.” Amar’s rebuttal? He says, and I’m serious here, that it’d be equally legitimate to say that “Dobbs’ real effect would be to expand rights protection for millions of innocent, unborn Americans … unborn humans, subject to extermination by society.”It’s hard to know where to begin in unraveling that alleged parallel. Suffice it to note that the status as rights-bearing persons of embryos and fetuses remains a matter of profound sectarian controversy in America and throughout the world while no such controversy attends the status as rights-bearing persons of the array of workers whose rights, at least under laws designed to limit economic exploitation if not directly under the constitution itself, were indisputably expanded by virtue of the Parrish decision and the overturning of the Lochner line of cases.Perhaps no less important is the indisputable fact that, although there remain a few commentators who continue to think that Lochner was rightly decided and Parrish was wrong, there is a nearly universal consensus, certainly covering the ideological spectrum on the current supreme court, that the “rights” protected by Lochner and the other decisions that Parrish tossed into the dustbin of history were not constitutionally sacrosanct, and that inequalities of bargaining power prevented the common-law baseline that Lochner treated as immune to legislative modification from having any special constitutional status. At the same time, the notions of personal autonomy and bodily integrity that provide the constitutional foundation for the substantive “liberty” at stake in cases like Roe and Casey are almost universally accepted as real, although deep disagreements remain about whether, to what degree, and from what point in fetal development the protection of the unborn fetus can properly trump that liberty.The upshot is that the radical change in law and society that Dobbs would represent truly has no parallel in the history of the supreme court or in the history of the United States. As David Cole writes, the “proper analogy is not Brown overruling Plessy, but a decision reviving Plessy, reversing Brown, and relegating Black people to enforced segregation after nearly 70 years of equal protection.” For, as Jamelle Bouie rightly observed, “equal standing is undermined and eroded when the state can effectively seize your person for its own ends – that is, when it can force you to give birth.” Whether or not one compares that compulsion and forced labor to literal enslavement, as I did in my 1973 article on Roe v Wade, attempts to minimize the huge retrogression this would represent must be dismissed as little more than shameful efforts to camouflage the carnage the supreme court of the United States is about to unleash both on its own legitimacy and, even more important, on the people in whose name it wields the power of judicial review.
      Laurence H Tribe is the Carl M Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard University, the author of numerous books and articles, a distinguished supreme court advocate, and holder of 11 honorary degrees
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      Arkansas Republican admits abortion trigger law would cause ‘heartbreak’ if Roe is reversed

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      Arkansas Republican admits abortion trigger law would cause ‘heartbreak’ if Roe is reversedGovernor Asa Hutchinson signed near-total abortion ban bill, even though he disagreed with the lack of exceptions for incest and rape The Republican governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, has admitted that an anti-abortion trigger law that he signed on to the books would lead to “heartbreaking circumstances” if Roe v Wade is overturned, in which girls as young as 11 who became pregnant through rape or incest would be forced to give birth.Hutchinson’s remarks give a revealing insight into the twisted human and political quandaries that are certain to arise should the US supreme court, as expected, destroy the constitutional right to an abortion enshrined in Roe v Wade when it issues its ruling next month. The governor told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that in 2019 he had signed the Arkansas trigger law, Senate Bill 6, which would ban almost all abortions the instant Roe were reversed, even though he disagreed with its lack of exceptions for incest and rape.Asked why he had put his signature on the law, despite the fact that it would prohibit all abortions other than in cases where a pregnant woman’s life were in imminent danger, he said: “I support the exceptions of rape and incest … I believe that should have been added; it did not have the support of the assembly.”Under intense questioning from the CNN host Dana Bash, the governor was asked why an “11- or 12-year-old girl who is impregnated by her father, or uncle or another family member be forced to carry that child to term?”He replied: “I agree with you. I’ve had to deal with that particular circumstance even as governor. While it’s still life in the womb, life of the unborn, the conception was in criminal circumstances – either incest or rape – and so those are two exceptions I think are very appropriate.”He added that if the supreme court does throw out the constitutional right to an abortion, then “these are going to become very real circumstances. The debate and discussion will continue, and that could very well be revisited.”But Bash pressed Hutchinson on what would happen if the absence of rape and incest exceptions can’t be revisited in the law that he had personally approved, pointing out that his term as governor comes to an end in January. “If you can’t change [the trigger law], that means girls who are still children, 11- and 12-year-olds, might be in that situation in a very real way in just a couple of months,” Bash said.“Those are heartbreaking circumstances,” Hutchinson replied. “When we passed these trigger laws we were trying … to reduce abortions, but whenever you see that real-life circumstances like that the debate is going to continue and the will of the people may or may not change.”A report by the Guardian this month found that at least 11 US states have passed laws that ban abortions without any exceptions for rape or incest. Such trigger laws are legally written in such a way that they would come into effect the second that the constitutional right to an abortion embodied in Roe were overturned.Earlier this month, a draft majority opinion of the supreme court written by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked to Politico. With the apparent backing of five of the six conservative justices on the nine-member court, it would eradicate federal abortion rights in the most aggressive terms.The court has insisted that the draft is not final and that changes to its wording or outcome are still possible. But the country on both sides of the abortion divide are bracing now for Roe to be undone and power over women’s reproductive choices to be handed to individual states like Arkansas.TopicsArkansasRoe v WadeAbortionUS politicsHealthRepublicansUS supreme courtnewsReuse this content More

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      Ending Roe v Wade is just the beginning | Thomas Zimmer

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      Ending Roe v Wade is just the beginningThomas ZimmerConservatives are animated by a vision of 1950s-style white Christian patriarchal dominance – it is the only order they will accept for America The supreme court is set to overturn Roe v Wade, this much has been clear since a draft opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked earlier this month. An attempt to safeguard abortion rights via national legislation was blocked by a united front of Republicans plus Democrat Joe Manchin in the Senate last week. As a result, we must expect abortion to be banned in roughly half the country soon.It is very hard to overstate how significant this moment is. The US is about to join the very short list of countries that have restricted existing abortion rights since the 1990s – the overall trend internationally certainly has been towards a liberalization of abortion laws. And it’s also a basically unique development in US history: while the supreme court has often upheld and codified a discriminatory status quo, it has never actively and officially abolished what had previously been recognized as a constitutionally guaranteed right.The overturning of Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey constitutes the culmination of half a century of conservative legal activism, and rejecting Roe has been a key element of conservative political identity for decades. But the impending end of Roe will still not magically appease the right. Attempts to institute a national ban are likely to follow. The people behind this anti-abortion rights crusade consider abortion murder and the epitome of everything that’s wrong and perverted about liberalism – they will tolerate the right to bodily autonomy in “blue” America for only as long as they absolutely have to.And the conservative vision for the country goes well beyond outlawing abortion. In his opinion, Justice Samuel Alito rejects the legal underpinnings of many of the post-1960s civil rights extensions that were predicated on a specific interpretation of the 14th amendment. He targets the very idea of a right to privacy, employs an extremely narrow view of “substantive due process” and claims that the 14th amendment protects only those rights not explicitly listed in the constitution that are “deeply rooted in this nation’s history and tradition”. Alito applies an arbitrary standard – one that birth control, marriage equality and even desegregation clearly don’t meet. The fact that he adds a throwaway paragraph claiming that these rights, all based on the very understanding of the 14th amendment Alito so explicitly rejects, are not in danger, shouldn’t put anyone at ease.Alito’s opinion precisely captures the essence of the supreme court’s role through most of history, and certainly today: an institution siding with tradition over change, with existing power structures over attempts to level hierarchies, with the old over the new. That’s the spirit the “deeply rooted in history and tradition” standard seeks to enshrine as dogma: established hierarchies are to be revered and protected, anything that threatens them is illegitimate. It’s a dogma that is utterly incompatible with the idea of a fully functioning multiracial, pluralistic democracy in which the individual’s political, social and economic status is not significantly determined by race, gender, religion or sexual orientation. For conservatives, that’s exactly the point, and it is how Alito’s opinion fits into the broader assault on the post-1960s civil rights order: it’s all part of a multi-level reactionary counter-mobilization against multiracial pluralism.It is only in this context that the whole weight of what this supreme court is doing is revealed. The conservative majority on the court operates as an integral part of a reactionary political project. Alito’s opinion should be a stark reminder of what that project is all about – and why the end of Roe is very likely to be just the beginning of a large-scale reversal that seeks to turn the clock back significantly. Conservatives could not be clearer about what their goal is: their animating vision for America is 1950s-style white Christian patriarchal dominance.The evidence is in what Republicans have been pursuing on the state level. We are seeing a wave of red-state legislation rolling back basic rights and fundamental liberties, intended to eviscerate the civil rights regime that has been established since the 1960s – and banish, outlaw and censor anything that threatens white Christian male dominance. The reactionary counter-mobilization is happening on so many fronts simultaneously that it’s easy to lose sight of how things are connected. Ban abortion and contraception, criminalize LGBTQ+ people; install strict guidelines for education that are in line with a white nationalist understanding of the past and the present, censor dissent; restrict voting rights, purge election commissions. These are not disparate actions. The overriding concern behind all of them is to maintain traditional political, social, cultural and economic hierarchies. It’s a vision that serves, first and foremost, a wealthy white elite – and all those who cling to white Christian patriarchal dominance. It’s a political project that goes well beyond Congress and state legislatures: this is about restoring and entrenching traditional authority in the local community, in the public square, in the workplace, in the family.In all these areas, the assault on democracy and the civil rights order is escalating. Longstanding anti-democratic tendencies notwithstanding, the right has been radicalizing significantly in recent years. Why now? The more structural answer is that America has changed, and the conservative political project has come under enormous pressure as a result. The Republican hold on power has become tenuous, certainly on the federal level, and even in some states that had previously been solidly “red”. The right is reacting to something real: the political, cultural and most importantly demographic changes that have made the country less white, less conservative, less Christian are not just figments of the reactionary imagination.And recent political and societal events have dramatically heightened the sense of threat on the right. The first one was the election and re-election of the first Black president to the White House. Regardless of his moderately liberal politics, Obama’s “radicalism” consisted of being Black, a symbol of the imminent threat to the “natural” order of white dominance. The right’s radicalization must also be conceptualized as a white reactionary counter-mobilization specifically to the anti-racist mobilization of civil society after the murder of George Floyd. In the Black Lives Matter-led protests of 2020 that – at least temporarily – were supported by most white liberals, the right saw irrefutable proof that radically “un-American” forces of “woke”, leftist extremism were on the rise, hellbent on destroying “real” America.The American right is fully committed to this anti-democratic, anti-pluralistic vision – which they understand is a minoritarian project. Abortion bans, for instance, are not popular at all. About two-thirds of the population want to keep Roe and believe abortion should be legal at least in some cases; a clear majority supports a law legalizing abortion nationally. Meanwhile, a complete ban – a position many Republican-led states are taking – is favored by less than 10% of Americans.Conservatives are acutely aware that they don’t have numerical majorities for their project. But they don’t care about democratic legitimacy. And the Republican party has a comprehensive strategy to put this reactionary vision into practice anyway. In Washington, Republican lawmakers are mainly focused on obstructing efforts to safeguard democracy. It’s at the state level where the rightwing assault is accelerating the most.It all starts with not letting too many of the “wrong” people vote. That’s why Republican lawmakers are introducing hundreds of bills intended to make voting more difficult, and have enacted such laws almost everywhere they are in charge. All of these voter suppression laws are ostensibly race-neutral and non-partisan. But they are designed to have a disproportionate effect on voters of color, or on young people – on groups that tend to vote Democratic. If too many of the “wrong” people are still voting, Republicans want to make their electoral choices count less. Gerrymandering is one way they are trying to achieve that goal, and it has been radicalizing basically wherever the GOP is in charge.As that might still not be enough to keep the “wrong” people from winning, Republicans are trying to put themselves in a position to nullify their future wins: we are seeing election subversion efforts up and down the country – an all-out assault on state election systems. Republican-led state legislatures are re-writing the rules so that they will have more influence on future elections, election commissions are being purged, local officials are being harassed, people who are a threat to Republican rule are replaced by Trumpist loyalists. In many key states, Trumpists who aggressively subscribe to the big lie that the 2020 was stolen are currently running for high office.Republicans understand that such blatant undermining of democracy might lead to a mobilization of civil society. That’s why they are criminalizing protests, by defining them as “riots”, and by legally sanctioning physical attacks on “rioters”. The right also encourages white militants to use whatever force they please to suppress these “leftwing” protests by celebrating and glorifying those who have engaged in such violent fantasies – call it the Kyle Rittenhouse approach. Finally, Republicans are flanking all this by a broad-scale offensive against everything and everyone criticizing the legitimacy of white nationalist rule – past, present and future – by censoring and banning critical dissent inside and outside the education sector.Ideally, the supreme court would step in and put a stop to the escalating attempts to undermine democracy and roll back civil rights. But the conservative majority on the court is actually doing the opposite, providing robust cover for the reactionary counter-mobilization. This has established an enormously effective mechanism of how to turn the clock back to the pre-civil rights era: Republican-led states will abolish established protections and count on the supreme court to let them do as they please, even if it means overthrowing precedent. That puts the onus on Congress to enact nationwide legislation that would guarantee civil rights and protect democracy – legislation that has little chance to overcome Republican (plus Sinema/Manchin) obstruction. And so we keep spiraling further and further back, with the next round of state-level reactionary legislation always guaranteed to be right around the corner. The exact same dynamic has undermined voting rights across “red” states. This is how civil rights perish and democracy dies.Even now that the conservatives on the supreme court are about to end the right to abortion, I know such a statement strikes many people as extreme, or at the very least as alarmist. They won’t go that far, will they? But by portraying their opponent as a fundamentally illegitimate faction that seeks to destroy the country, conservatives have been giving themselves permission to embrace whatever radical measures they deem necessary to defeat this “un-American” enemy. We are in deeply dangerous territory precisely because so many on the right have convinced themselves they are fighting a noble war against unpatriotic, godless forces that are in league with pedophiles – and therefore see no lines they are not justified to cross. The white reactionary counter-mobilization against multiracial, pluralistic democracy won’t stop because the people behind it have some sort of epiphany that they shouldn’t go that far. It will either be stopped or succeed in entrenching white Christian patriarchal rule.
      Thomas Zimmer is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, focused on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States, and a Guardian US contributing opinion writer
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      ‘We need to stand up’: Democrats criticized for inaction on abortion

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      ‘We need to stand up’: Democrats criticized for inaction on abortionEven as Democrats have denounced the supreme court’s leaked abortion opinion, their efforts at the federal level have failed to live up to their rhetoric Shortly after the draft supreme court opinion overturning Roe v Wade was leaked to the public, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, condemned conservative attacks on abortion rights and pledged that his state would be a “sanctuary” for those seeking to end a pregnancy.But Newsom also directed some of his most pointed remarks toward fellow Democrats.Abortion rights: how a governor’s veto can protect women’s freedomsRead more“Where the hell is my party? Where’s the Democratic party?” Newsom said. “This is a concerted, coordinated effort, and yes, they’re winning. They are. They have been. Let’s acknowledge that. We need to stand up. Where’s the counter-offensive?”Even as Democrats have denounced the court’s provisional decision to overturn Roe and vowed to defend abortion rights, their efforts at the federal level have largely failed to live up to their rhetoric. A vote last Wednesday in the Senate to codify Roe and protect abortion rights nationwide was once again blocked, as Democrat Joe Manchin joined all 50 Republican senators in opposing the bill.The failure of Democrats in Washington to shore up abortion rights, even as they control the White House and both chambers of Congress, has complicated the party’s messaging to voters about the likely end of Roe. Some frustrated Democrats are instead turning their attention to state and local policies that could protect reproductive rights even if Roe falls.Abortion rights supporters’ frustration with Democratic inaction at the federal level has been on display since the draft opinion leaked earlier this month. At a protest outside the supreme court last week, abortion rights demonstrators chanted: “Do something, Democrats.”Progressive members of Congress have also argued for the urgent need to pass federal abortion rights legislation, calling on senators to amend the filibuster to get a bill approved.“People elected Democrats precisely so we could lead in perilous moments like these – to codify Roe, hold corruption accountable, [and] have a President who uses his legal authority to break through Congressional gridlock on items from student debt to climate,” progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitter. The stakes of Democratic inaction are high, as abortion is certain or likely to be outlawed in 26 states if the court follows through with overturning Roe. Last weekend, the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, warned that Republicans may go even further if they regain control of the White House and Congress, floating the idea of a national abortion ban.Republicans would probably face widespread public outcry if they advanced a nationwide ban. A poll %09https:/www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_US_051122/” >released by Monmouth University last week found that just 9% of Americans support the idea of a national ban, while 64% support keeping abortion legal. However, abortion rights advocates warn that the threat of a nationwide ban will be real if Republicans take back Congress and the White House.“Republicans are definitely passing a national abortion ban once they have the power to do it,” said Shaunna Thomas, co-founder and executive director of the reproductive rights group UltraViolet. “They’ve been signaling they were going to pack the supreme court in order to overturn Roe. I don’t think people took them seriously enough. And so people really need to learn the lesson here and take them very, very seriously on this point.”Progressive groups like UltraViolet have called on Democrats to amend the Senate filibuster, which would allow a bill codifying Roe to get through the upper chamber with a simple majority of support. But Manchin and fellow Democrat Kyrsten Sinema have made it clear they will not support a filibuster carve-out, and the vote last Wednesday failed to even attract the 50 votes that would be necessary if the Senate rules were changed.“Our constitutional right to abortion has to be more important than their loyalty to arcane Senate procedures that are not even laws,” Thomas said. “People watched them carve the filibuster out to raise the debt ceiling. If they can do it for that, they should be able to do it for this.”Democratic congressional leaders have encouraged members of their party to direct their criticism toward Republicans rather than each other. In a “Dear colleague” letter to House Democrats last week, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, warned of Republicans’ wish for a national abortion ban and said their policies could even “criminalize contraceptive care, in vitro fertilization and post-miscarriage care”.“Make no mistake: once Republicans have dispensed with precedent and privacy in overturning Roe, they will take aim at additional basic human rights,” Pelosi said. Christina Reynolds, vice-president of communications at Emily’s List, which promotes pro-choice female candidates for office, insisted that voters who support abortion rights will know to hold Republicans accountable in the midterm elections this November. “Republicans have gotten us here in a large number of ways,” Reynolds said. But Democratic candidates running for office this fall will have to paint a longer-term picture of how the party plans to protect abortion rights, even if they cannot prevent the court from overturning Roe.“The Democratic party has to move away from this message about how we can fix everything right away,” said Kelly Dietrich, CEO of the National Democratic Training Committee. “This is a lifetime struggle. Government is hard. We will need you to vote this November, next November and every November after that because the people who want to take away your rights aren’t going to stop.”In the meantime, Democrats have an opportunity to turn their attention to the state and local offices that may be able to help protect abortion rights if Roe falls, Dietrich argued.“The fight for the next 10-plus years is going to be at the state and local levels,” he said. “It’s going to be in the state legislatures. It’s going to be in the city councils and at all the different local government forums we have around the country that aren’t big and sexy.”Some of those efforts are already under way across the country.In Michigan, where a 1931 abortion ban is still on the books and could go back into effect if Roe is overturned, the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, has filed a lawsuit to block implementation of the law. Several county prosecutors also signed on to a statement saying they would not pursue criminal charges in connection to the 1931 law.One of those prosecutors was Democrat Karen McDonald in Oakland county, the second-largest county in Michigan. She said that, despite her despair over the likely end of Roe, she was committed to finding ways to ensure her neighbors’ rights and healthcare access.“It is a sad, tragic moment,” McDonald said. “But I am not going to spend one minute of my energy letting that tear me away from what I think is absolutely critical right now, which is we all need to pay attention and support and fund and help elect [those candidates] who want to protect our right to choose.”Oakland county was once a Republican stronghold, but it has become increasingly Democratic in recent years. McDonald said she has heard from members of her community who previously supported Republicans and are now rethinking their politics in light of the supreme court’s expected decision.“I know a lot of women who voted for Trump and are now saying I will never, ever ever, vote for a pro-life candidate. They just didn’t think it would happen,” McDonald said. “So I think this is really turning politics on its head.”Thomas agreed that many Americans who support abortion rights seem to have been taken aback by the provisional decision to overturn Roe, even after Republicans obtained a 6-3 majority on the court. Conservatives have also been calling for the end of Roe for decades, and Trump promised to nominate anti-abortion justices to the supreme court.“I don’t think it’s surprising that people had to see it to believe it, despite having heard this, particularly from Black and brown women who have been bearing the brunt of these attacks at the state level for a long time,” Thomas said. “As an organizer, I will tell you, it’s never too late to join the fight. And the time is really now.”TopicsDemocratsAbortionRoe v WadeUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Demonstrators across the US protest expected reversal of Roe v Wade

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      Demonstrators across the US protest expected reversal of Roe v WadeBans Off Our Bodies marches follow the Senate’s failure to pass legislation protecting the right to an abortion With the US supreme court apparently poised to overturn the 1973 landmark decision which made abortion legal, hundreds of thousands of people across America are planning to take to the streets to protest the looming decision.A coalition of groups such as Planned Parenthood, UltraViolet, MoveOn and the Women’s March are organizing Saturday’s demonstrations, whose rallying cry is “Bans Off Our Bodies”. More than 370 protests are planned, including in Washington DC, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.The demonstrations come after the leak on 2 May of a draft opinion showing five conservatives on the nine-justice supreme court had voted to reverse their predecessors’ ruling in Roe v Wade nearly 50 years ago.How soon could US states outlaw abortions if Roe v Wade is overturned?Read moreUnless the provisional ruling is changed substantially before becoming final, abortion would be outlawed essentially immediately in more than half of US states. People in those 26 states hostile to abortion would be forced to either travel hundreds of miles to a clinic in a state where terminating a pregnancy is legal or seek to self-administer an abortion through medication from grassroots or illicit groups.While conservatives have celebrated the leak ruling, liberals have objected vociferously, gathering outside the supreme court building in Washington DC as well as the homes of some of the conservative justices to signal their displeasure.The activists championing DIY abortions for a post-Roe v Wade worldRead moreThose rallies – generally peaceful – have been relatively small, while Saturday’s planned events will almost certainly be compared to the 2017 Women’s March the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, which drew an estimated 3 million to 4 million participants across the US.The “Bans Off Our Bodies” gatherings will take place three days after Democrats in the US Senate on Wednesday made a largely symbolic effort to advance legislation that would codify the right to an abortion into federal law. All 50 Republicans and one conservative-aligned Democrat – West Virginia’s Joe Manchin – voted against the measure, leaving it well short of the 60 votes necessary for it to advance.TopicsProtestRoe v WadeUS politicsAbortionnewsReuse this content More

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      Ariana Grande and other stars support Roe v Wade in New York Times ad

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      Ariana Grande and other stars support Roe v Wade in New York Times adBillie Eilish and Megan Thee Stallion denounce likely overturning of abortion rights: ‘We will not go back – and we will not back down’ Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Megan Thee Stallion, Olivia Rodrigo and Selena Gomez joined a slew of fellow music stars and other celebrities to take out a full-page advertisement in Friday’s New York Times decrying the looming fall of nationwide abortion rights.“The supreme court is planning to overturn Roe v Wade,” read the ad, referring to the landmark 1973 ruling that in effect legalized abortion across the US. “Our power to plan our own futures and control our own bodies depends on our ability to access sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion.”Ending Roe v Wade could badly backfire on Republicans during elections this year | Lloyd GreenRead moreIt continued: “We are artists. Creators. Storytellers. We are the new generation stepping into our power. Now we are being robbed of our power. We will not go back – and we will not back down.”More than 160 musicians, songwriters, actors, models and other celebrities signed the ad, which invited the public to take to the streets on Saturday and participate in planned demonstrations across the US protesting the supreme court’s expected reversal of Roe v Wade.Other notable names include Asa Butterfield, Camila Cabello, Camila Mendes, Demi Lovato, Dove Cameron, Lil Dicky, Dylan O’Brien, Finneas, Hailee Steinfeld, Hailey Bieber, Halsey, Ilana Glazer, Joey King, Kendall Jenner, Miley Cyrus, Paramore, Phoebe Bridgers, Quvenzhané Wallis, Shawn Mendes, Tate McRae and Thomas Doherty.02:17The protests follow the 2 May leak of a draft opinion showing five conservatives on the nine-justice supreme court had voted to reverse the Roe v Wade ruling, which was made nearly 50 years ago. If that provisional decision becomes final, abortion would be outlawed almost overnight in 26 states, or more than half the country.Conservatives have celebrated the leaked ruling and liberals have protested it, gathering outside the supreme court building in Washington as well as the homes of some of the conservative justices.The much larger protests being planned for Saturday across the country are being organized by a coalition of groups such as Planned Parenthood, UltraViolet, MoveOn and the Women’s March, under the slogan “Bans Off Our Bodies”. Friday’s ad invites readers to visit bansoff.org for more information on the demonstrations.TopicsUS newsRoe v WadeUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Democrats lose Senate vote to codify abortion rights

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      Democrats lose Senate vote to codify abortion rightsFinal tally was 49-51, with all Republicans and one conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin, voting against the measure The US Senate on Wednesday failed to advance legislation that would codify the right to an abortion into federal law, after it was blocked by Republicans.It was a largely symbolic vote by Democrats to mobilize Americans around the issue ahead of a likely supreme court decision striking down the protections enshrined by Roe v Wade. Pro-choice states rush to pledge legal shield for out-of-state abortionsRead moreThe Senate roll call was a stark reflection of the partisan divide over abortion rights, with all Republicans and one conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin of Virginia, voting against the measure. The final tally was 49-51, well short of the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.Kamala Harris, the first woman and woman of color to serve as vice-president, presided over the vote.“Sadly the Senate failed to stand in defense of a women’s right to make decisions about her own body,” Harris told reporters, after stepping off the dais. Pointing to the onslaught of laws restricting abortion access in Republican-led states, she said “the priority should be to elect pro-choice leaders at the local, the state and the federal level”.Democrats moved quickly to hold the doomed vote after a leak last week of a draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito in February and confirmed as authentic, indicated that the court’s conservative majority had privately voted to strike down Roe and subsequent rulings. The extraordinary disclosure ignited protests around the country, pushing reproductive rights to the center of the political debate six months before the congressional midterms. A final ruling from the court is expected this summer.Ahead of the vote, a group of House Democratic women marched across the Capitol to protest against the end of Roe, chanting: “My body, my decision.”Democrats, under intensifying pressure to act, saw a political opportunity in forcing Republicans to vote against a bill protecting abortion at a moment when the threat to access is urgent and polls show a majority of Americans want the procedure to remain legal in all or some cases.They hope to use the Republican blockade as a data point in their midterm message to voters: that the GOP has become a party of “ultra-Maga” extremists, on the cusp of fulfilling a decades-long goal to strip women of their reproductive rights.It is an issue Democrats hope will energize young voters disenchanted by the Biden administration and persuade Republican-leaning suburban women to back them again this cycle.“If we do not take a stand now to protect a woman’s right to choose, then mark my words, it will be open season, open season on our God-given freedoms,” the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said in a floor speech ahead of the vote. He called “one of the most consequential we will take in decades”.If passed, the bill would have codified Roe v Wade into federal law, ensuring the right of healthcare providers to perform abortions and the right of patients to receive them. But it would also go further, in some cases invalidating state-level restrictions on abortion access enacted after the Roe decision in 1973.As such, Republicans cast the bill as a “radical” attempt to expand reproductive rights that goes far beyond Roe and would legalize “abortion on demand”.“We will stand with the American people, stand with innocent life, and block the Democrats’ extreme bill,” the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Wednesday.Republicans are betting the economy will take precedence over abortion this November. Polling shows Republicans are well positioned to make significant gains in the midterm elections, buoyed by historical headwinds, discontent with the party in power and widespread concern over the rising cost of gas, food and rent.But there are signs that Republicans do worry about a potential political backlash if Roe is overturned and states move swiftly to outlaw abortion, as many are preparing to do.A day ahead of the vote, McConnell sought to tamp down conservative calls for a nationwide ban on abortion if they take control of the chamber in November, telling reporters: “Historically, there have been abortion votes on the floor of the Senate. None of them have achieved 60 votes.”The two Senate Republicans who support abortion rights, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, opposed the bill, instead urging support for an alternative measure that they say is tailored to reflect the landscape of abortion rights. But many Democrats see their proposal, which is not expected to receive a vote, as too weak.“Unlike some far-left activists, Senator Murkowski and I want the law today to be the law tomorrow,” Collins said on Wednesday, objecting to the lack of protections for religious exemptions in the Democrats’ bill.0In a dramatic shift, one of the only other Democrats in Congress with conservative views on abortion rights, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, said he would support the measure and voted in favor of advancing it. In a statement citing the leaked supreme court ruling, Casey said the “circumstances around the entire debate on abortion” had changed since the last time the Senate voted on the measure.Without a clear legislative path forward, Democrats are turning to the fall elections, urging Americans to elect them as the “last lines of defense” against the end of Roe.Abortion is also likely to be a major issue in races for governor and state offices, as the battle lines shift to the states.The show vote on Wednesday only intensified calls from progressives and abortion rights groups for Democrats to eliminate the filibuster. The long-simmering debate has divided the party, which does not have enough votes to end the rule. It has also energized efforts to reform the supreme court, including controversial proposals such as expanding the number of justices on the bench or imposing term limits.TopicsUS SenateAbortionRoe v WadeUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Supreme court overturning Roe allows 'open season' on American freedoms, warns Schumer – video

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      The supreme court overturning the landmark Roe v Wade decision that protects women’s rights to abortion in the US would create an open season on Americans’ freedoms, majority leader Chuck Schumer has said.
      Schumer was speaking before a vote in which the US Senate rejected legislation enshrining abortion rights into federal law 51-49.
      On 2 May, a draft decision by the United States supreme court to overturn Roe was published by Politico, which has been verified as genuine by the justices but it ‘does not represent a decision by the court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.’

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