Important Takeaways:
- On Tuesday, voters in Missouri narrowly passed an amendment writing abortion into the Missouri Constitution. On Wednesday, Planned Parenthood filed a sweeping lawsuit challenging virtually all of Missouri’s good, pro-life laws.
- Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider, and the organization consistently opposes policies that protect women and unborn children from abortion.
- Wednesday’s lawsuit challenges Missouri’s many pro-life measures, including the state’s good laws that:
- Prohibit abortion except to save the life of the mother
- Require abortionists to give women information about abortion’s risks, consequences, and alternatives
- Require abortionists to give women 72 hours to consider all options before an abortion
- Protect unborn children from being aborted due to their race or sex or due to being at risk for Down Syndrome
- Require abortion facilities to be licensed and inspected by the state
- Require abortionists to have hospital admitting privileges in case the woman experiences complications from abortion
- Outline how abortion data is recorded and reported to the state for statistical purposes
- Prohibit telemed abortions in Missouri
- Prevent healthcare professionals other than doctors from performing abortions
- Require abortionists to maintain various plans and agreements for handling abortion complications
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Important Takeaways:
- Tens of millions of voters in Montana, Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, New York and South Dakota will be asked how their state should regulate abortion.
- Most of the initiatives in those 10 states would allow abortion until fetal viability, which is generally considered about 24 weeks, or later only in instances when the health of the pregnant woman is at risk.
- Pro-choice advocates hope that by having voters directly decide to enshrine abortion in states’ laws, they can bypass the ups and downs of state courts.
- But there’s another reason why some want abortion on the ballot – voter turnout.
- Democrats hope that more people who support abortion rights, who overwhelmingly vote for the party, will show up on election day because the issue is on the ballot.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Supreme Court on Monday turned away a clash between a federal emergency care law and Texas’ near-total ban on abortion, declining to provide clarity over whether physicians in states with the most restrictive laws must provide abortion care in certain emergency circumstances.
- The court’s rejection of the Biden administration’s appeal leaves in place a lower court decision that blocked the federal government from enforcing guidance it issued to hospitals notifying them that they must provide emergency abortions if the health of the mother is at risk.
- The Department of Health and Human Services told health care providers in a July 2022 letter that when a state abortion law does not include an exception for the life and health of the mother, that measure is preempted by the federal emergency care law.
- The case began after Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told hospitals more than two years ago that federal law requires them to provide pregnant patients experiencing emergency medical conditions with stabilizing treatment, including abortions, regardless of state restrictions.
- In Texas, abortion is banned except when the life of the mother is at risk.
- Texas sued the Biden administration to block its mandate requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortions, alleging that the secretary exceeded his authority when issuing the guidance.
- A federal district court sided with Texas and blocked the guidance, finding that hospitals cannot be forced to provide abortions in certain medical emergencies when it would violate the state’s ban.
- They urged the Supreme Court to leave the lower court’s decision in place, writing in a filing that in Texas, a health care provider can comply with both EMTALA and state law by offering stabilizing treatment without violating its ban. In limited circumstances, they said, that can include providing an abortion when it is necessary to prevent the “substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”
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Important Takeaways:
- In a ruling issued on Monday, Judge Robert McBurney said Georgia’s Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act, or LIFE Act, infringes on a woman’s state constitutional rights.
- When originally signed into law, the LIFE Act criminalized most abortions after an embryo generates detectable cardiac activity, typically around six weeks into a pregnancy.
- Fourteen states now bar abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions. Georgia was one of four where the bans kick in after about six weeks of pregnancy
- The new Georgia ruling, if it stands, could open up new avenues to access abortion not only for residents of the state, but for people in nearby states who currently face long trips to places like North Carolina or Illinois.
- Georgia could still appeal McBurney’s ruling. Kara Murray, communications director for Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, said in a statement Monday, “We believe Georgia’s LIFE Act is fully constitutional, and we will immediately appeal the lower court’s decision.”
- “Once again, the will of Georgians and their representatives has been overruled by the personal beliefs of one judge,” Republican Gov. Brian Kemp said in a statement. “Protecting the lives of the most vulnerable among us is one of our most sacred responsibilities, and Georgia will continue to be a place where we fight for the lives of the unborn.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Thurman obtained chemical-abortion pills in North Carolina. After returning home to Georgia, she experienced a rare complication. She had not yet expelled all of the fetal tissue. She checked into Piedmont Henry Hospital to receive a dilation-and-curettage (D and C) procedure to remove the fetal remains. There were delays in her treatment, her condition deteriorated, and she tragically died.
- This week ProPublica reported on the tragic death of Amber Nicole Thurman.
- ProPublica reports that a state committee deemed Thurman’s death “preventable” and argues that delays in Thurman’s care were caused by Georgia’s pro-life laws.
- Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media opportunistically pounced on this tragic story.
- Countless politicians and elected officials got in on the act.
- ProPublica, which broke the story, indicates that an official state committee tasked with examining pregnancy-related deaths deemed Thurman’s death “preventable.”
- However, the full review of her patient case is not public. Furthermore, the ProPublica article contains no information from medical professionals directly involved with Thurman’s care. Communications staff from this hospital and the Georgia Department of Public Health also did not provide comments on Thurman’s case.
- Christina Francis points out in her recent Atlanta Journal Constitution opinion piece, Georgia’s pro-life heartbeat act was not responsible for Thurman’s death.
- That is because the law allows physicians to intervene in cases of medical emergencies or if the preborn child has no detectable heartbeat. Both of these clearly applied in Thurman’s case. Furthermore, a D&C to remove the remains of an unborn child that has died is not an abortion and is not criminalized in Georgia.
- In this case, Thurman’s death was caused by chemical-abortion pills.
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Important Takeaways:
- The moral logic at work here is inexorable. What you see now at the DNC you will eventually see at the RNC.
- Did you hear about the free abortions and sterilizations on offer at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week? Incredibly, the news is real. Abortion-inducing drugs (mifepristone and Plan B) will be doled out from the back of a Planned Parenthood RV, along with vasectomies, just a few blocks from a convention that will embrace a radical abortion-until-birth policy that would have been unthinkable, even for Democrats, just a decade ago.
- Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance was savaged by the corporate press for repeatedly describing Democrats as “anti-family” in media appearances last week. Now, as if to prove Vance’s point, here they are with an abortion van at their convention and supporters marching through the streets dressed as abortion pills.
- What’s more difficult to understand and accept is how all of this is the inevitable consequence of a liberal worldview that the GOP has already accepted, which means what we’re seeing this week at the DNC we will eventually see at the RNC.
- I don’t just mean that the Trump campaign and the Republican Party have softened their opposition to abortion in the post-Dobbs era. It’s not merely that abortion was all but removed from the GOP platform and the party’s previous position in favor of federal abortion limits was abandoned. It’s that Trump and his Republican Party would like very much to stop talking about abortion altogether now, as if the matter is settled and we can move on to more important matters, like the border and inflation.
- The choice to take these issues off the table, or try to, is usually framed as pragmatic. We want a big tent, Democrats are radical, Republicans can present their side as reasonable.
- But it doesn’t work like that. There’s a reason the Democrats went from talking about how abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” in the 1990s to celebrating it with free abortions from the back of an RV in 2024. Once you cede the principle of the thing, once you accept the premise that it’s justifiable to kill the unborn under certain circumstances, the list of allowable circumstances will continuously expand.
- The point here is not to sow discord on the right or decry a big tent strategy for the GOP, but merely to point out that when you violate the moral principles on which a social order is based, you don’t get to say when enough is enough. The slippery slope does not cease to be slippery when you think you’ve had enough. You will go all the way down it.
- Put another way, the time to say “no” was before the moral principle was violated, not after.
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Important Takeaways:
- The informational pamphlet that will be sent to Arizona voters this fall will call fetuses “unborn human beings” in the description of a citizen initiative that would restore Roe-era abortion protections.
- Abortion rights advocates say the language is biased and meant to confuse and scare voters.
- The GOP-controlled legislative council wrote the description, which uses the term “unborn human being” in the first sentence.
- Arizona for Abortion Access, the campaign backing the initiative, sued to change the language to “fetus,” arguing it was a more impartial term.
- The Maricopa County Superior Court sided with the campaign, but the state Supreme Court — the same court that allowed Arizona’s 1864 near-total abortion ban to take effect earlier this year — said the language met impartiality standards and reversed the lower court’s ruling Wednesday.
- The Arizona Abortion Access Act would allow abortion access up to fetal viability, about 24 weeks of pregnancy.
- “This decision is beyond disgraceful … But no matter what type of dirty tricks they try to pull to slow down our momentum, we know Arizonans will show up and vote for their freedoms this November,” Reproductive Freedom for All Arizona director Athena Salman said in a statement.
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Important Takeaways:
- As Iowa prepares to enact one of the nation’s strictest abortion laws, elected officials in Minnesota are ensuring out of state abortion seekers they are welcome to visit and access services.
- On Thursday, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Bloomington Mayor Tim Busse toured abortion provider Whole Women’s Health Alliance in Bloomington.
- “I’m really honored to be here,” Flanagan said after she and others toured the facility. “Sometimes the stigma that is attached to abortion care is just because people don’t know what happens.”
- The Bloomington clinic provides abortions up to 20 weeks, but Founder and CEO Amy Hagstrom Miller says the hope is to expand to 24 weeks.
- “One of the cool things about abortion is we get to sit with someone as they choose the course for their lives,” Hagstrom Miller said. “Abortion is a solution to an unplanned pregnancy, and unplanned pregnancy really shines a bright light on people’s lives. It has them examine their hopes and their dreams for their future.”
- “Let me just be clear. For our friends in Iowa, you are welcome here,” Flanagan said. “There are people who will provide care for you, and we are good neighbors here in Minnesota. So, if you’re afraid, come to Minnesota, we’ve got you.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Organizers didn’t submit all the required paperwork for the measure to appear on the November ballot, Secretary of State John Thurston said.
- “By contrast, other sponsors of initiative petitions complied with this requirement. Therefore, I must reject your submission,” wrote Thurston, a Republican.
- Rebecca Bobrow, a spokesperson for Arkansans for Limited Government, said that the group “will fight this ridiculous disqualification attempt with everything we have.”
- Arkansas is one of 11 states where organizers formally launched efforts to place pro-abortion-rights amendments on their fall ballots.
- The measures are officially on the ballots in six states: Colorado, Maryland, Florida, South Dakota, Nevada and New York. Organizers in four more — Arizona, Missouri, Montana and Nebraska — have submitted signatures, but further steps remain before those initiatives are certified to appear on the ballots.
- Arkansans for Limited Government — unlike the coalitions fighting for similar measures in other states — does not have any support or backing from major national abortion-rights groups, such as Planned Parenthood, which has said the measure does not go far enough in its goals of expanding abortion access.
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Important Takeaways:
- In two 5-1 opinions, the court built on a 2019 decision in which it said the state’s Constitution protects abortion rights and that lawmakers seeking to restrict abortion must meet a high “strict scrutiny” test.
- The decisions cement Kansas’ role as a key abortion access point for patients across the broader region.
- The Kansas Supreme Court struck down two laws restricting abortion on Friday, affirming its prior interpretation that ending a pregnancy remains a constitutionally protected right in Kansas.
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