Tag Archives: legalized abortion

UK minister failed to ‘expeditiously’ provide N. Irish abortion services

By Amanda Ferguson

BELFAST (Reuters) -The United Kingdom’s Northern Ireland Secretary failed to comply with his duties to “expeditiously” provide women in the region with access to high quality abortion and post-abortion services, a judge in the British-run province ruled on Thursday.

Mr. Justice Colton declined, however, to issue an order compelling Secretary of State Brandon Lewis to set out a timetable for the provision of the services, and dismissed a claim for a judicial review against the jurisdiction’s minister of health and the Executive Committee.

The High Court ruling came after the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission launched a judicial review challenge to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Executive and its Department of Health over the failure to commission and fund abortion services.

Responding to the ruling on Twitter, Lewis said he believed “women from Northern Ireland should be entitled to the same reproductive rights as women across the rest of the UK” and he was “profoundly disappointed by the court’s verdict.”

He said in July he directed the Department of Health in Northern Ireland, the Health and Social Care Board, and the Minister of Health for Northern Ireland to commission and make abortion services available by March next year.

“I am hugely disappointed that the Executive and Department of Health are continuing to seem to willfully neglect the welfare and rights of women and girls in NI.”

Chief Commissioner Alyson Kilpatrick said the commission brought the case because of the unacceptable delay in the provision of adequate services and she welcomed the High Court judgment.

“This was an important case for the Commission to take to uphold the human rights of women and girls in Northern Ireland,” she said.

“Abortion was legalized in Northern Ireland in 2019. Yet in 2021 women and girls continue to have to travel to England to access abortion services, are forced to continue a pregnancy against their wishes or take unregulated abortion pills.”

A new legal framework for abortion services took effect in March 2020, but devolved government services have not yet been properly introduced and funded because of disagreements between anti-abortion and pro-choice politicians.

The High Court found that between April 2020 and March 2021, Lewis failed to comply with the 2019 Act in that he failed to ensure expeditiously that the state provide women in Northern Ireland with access to high quality abortion and post-abortion care in all public health facilities.

The court noted that the situation is a fluid one with ongoing developments.

(Reporting by Graham Fahy; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Giles Elgood)

Back in black: U.S. Supreme Court opens its momentous new term

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Supreme Court justices took a step back toward normalcy on Monday on the first day of their new nine-month term as they conducted oral arguments in person for the first time in 19 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, holding a muted and polite session in a socially distanced courtroom.

The court’s term includes major cases in the coming months on abortion and gun rights.

Eight justices appeared in person, wearing their traditional black robes as they entered the ornate and sparsely populated courtroom and sat behind the mahogany bench. One justice, Brett Kavanaugh, participated remotely after testing positive for the coronavirus last week, with his questions audible via speakers in the courtroom. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wore a black face mask, while the court’s other members present went maskless.

Monday also marked the first time that the court’s junior-most member, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, participated in an in-person argument. As is customary for a new justice, Barrett, appointed by former President Donald Trump last year to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, sat on the far right of the bench and was last to ask questions.

The justices were joined by lawyers, court staff and journalists – all masked, except for the lawyers arguing the cases, and spread out among the rows of seats – in their spacious column-lined courtroom. No members of the public were present.

In the first of two arguments heard on Monday, the justices expressed skepticism about Mississippi’s claim that Tennessee is effectively stealing its water from an underground aquifer that runs beneath both states.

The justices appeared to have learned some lessons from their pandemic-prompted experiment of holding oral arguments via teleconference. They seemed to use some elements of that more structured approach, with justices careful to wait their turn before speaking, in contrast with the previous rough-and-tumble format in which justices competed with each other to get a word in.

At times, Chief Justice John Roberts, seated in the center of the bench, asked each justice in turn if they wanted to pose a question. Roberts also conferred with the justices sitting on either side of him: Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer.

Thomas, who famously almost never spoke during in-person oral arguments in the past, had regularly participated during teleconference arguments – and quickly asked the first question of the new term, indicating he will continue to be a vocal presence.

Monday’s second argument was a Georgia criminal case involving a man convicted of being a felon possessing a firearm.

The court building has been closed to the public since March 2020 due to the pandemic.

Another change embraced by the tradition-bound court is live audio of oral arguments, a practice it had rejected until the pandemic spurred its use in May 2020. That practice continued on Monday.

Before hearing arguments, the court acted on some appeals.

It cleared the way for New York to collect a $200 million surcharge imposed on opioid manufacturers and distributors, ended Oracle Corp’s challenge to how the Pentagon awarded cloud computing contract and declined to hear a New Jersey case involving a legal defense that often protects police officers from accusations of excessive force.

ABORTION AND GUN CASES

The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has come under close scrutiny after on Sept. 1 allowing a Texas law that bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy to go into effect.

Among the cases the justices are due to hear during their new term is a challenge set to be argued in December to abortion rights involving Mississippi’s bid to revive a Republican-backed state law banning the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Mississippi has asked the justices to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

A few dozen people attended an anti-abortion rally outside the court. Father Frank Pavone, national director of a group called Priests for Life, led a prayer calling for the end of abortion He mentioned Trump’s three conservative Supreme Court appointees.

“All three, we are confident, will rule the right way,” Pavone said.

The justices are scheduled in November to hear a challenge backed by the National Rifle Association to New York state’s restrictions on people carrying concealed handguns in public in a case that could further undermine firearms control efforts nationally.

All nine justices, three of whom are over age 70, have been vaccinated against COVID-19, which has proven to be particularly dangerous among the elderly.

They are being tested regularly, as well as others who attend the oral arguments. Although Kavanaugh tested positive for the coronavirus last week, the court said he had no COVID-19 symptoms. Written guidance for lawyers requires them to be tested for the coronavirus but there is no vaccine requirement.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)

U.S. Supreme Court takes up major challenge to abortion rights

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider gutting the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, taking up Mississippi’s bid to revive a Republican-backed state law that bans the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

By hearing the case in their next term, which starts in October and ends in June 2022, the justices will look at whether to overturn a central part of the landmark ruling, a longstanding goal of religious conservatives.

The ruling by the conservative-majority court, expected next year, could allow states to ban abortions before a fetus is viable outside the womb, upending decades of legal precedent. Lower courts ruled against Mississippi’s law.

In the Roe v. Wade decision, subsequently reaffirmed in 1992, the court said that states could not ban abortion before the viability of the fetus outside the womb, which is generally viewed by doctors as between 24 and 28 weeks. The Mississippi law would ban abortion much earlier than that. Other states have backed laws that would ban the procedure even earlier.

“Alarm bells are ringing loudly about the threat to reproductive rights. The Supreme Court just agreed to review an abortion ban that unquestionably violates nearly 50 years of Supreme Court precedent and is a test case to overturn Roe v. Wade,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is among those challenging the law.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, a Republican, said she is committed to defending the law’s constitutionality.

“The Mississippi legislature enacted this law consistent with the will of its constituents to promote women’s health and preserve the dignity and sanctity of life. I remain committed to advocating for women and defending Mississippi’s legal right to protect the unborn,” Fitch said.

The Roe v. Wade ruling recognized that a constitutional right to personal privacy protects a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion. The court in its 1992 decision, coming in the case Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, reaffirmed the ruling and prohibited laws that place an “undue burden” on a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion.

Abortion opponents are hopeful the Supreme Court will narrow or overturn the Roe v. Wade decision. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority following the addition last year of former President Donald Trump’s third appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

LOUISIANA RULING

The Supreme Court in a 5-4 June 2020 ruling struck down a Louisiana law that imposed restrictions on doctors who perform abortions. The late liberal Justice Ruth Bader was still on the court at the time, and conservative Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the court’s liberal wing in the ruling. Roberts, however, made it clear that he voted that way because he felt bound by the court’s 2016 ruling striking down a similar Texas law.

The 2018 Mississippi law, like others resembling it passed by Republican-led states, was enacted with full knowledge that was a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.

After the only abortion clinic in Mississippi, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, sued to block the measure, a federal judge in 2018 ruled against the state. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2019 reached the same conclusion.

“States may regulate abortion procedures prior to viability so long as they do not impose an undue burden on the woman’s right, but they may not ban abortions. The law at issue is a ban,” 5th Circuit Judge Patrick Higginbotham wrote.

Abortion remains a divisive issue in the United States, as in many countries. Christian conservatives are among those most opposed to it. U.S. abortion rates have steadily declined since the early 1980s, reaching the lowest levels on record in recent years, according to the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute.

Jeanne Mancini, president of the anti-abortion group March for Life, said a ruling limiting abortion to early pregnancy would be in line with many other countries.

“States should be allowed to craft laws that are in line with both public opinion on this issue as well as basic human compassion, instead of the extreme policy that Roe imposed,” Mancini said.

The Louisiana case ruling marked the court’s first major abortion decision since Trump appointed Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and Neil Gorsuch in 2017 as justices. Both voted in favor of Louisiana’s restrictions. If Barrett were to vote on similar lines, conservatives could have a majority to curb abortion rights regardless of how Roberts votes. Trump promised during the 2016 presidential race to appoint justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

The Mississippi appeal had been pending at the court since June 2020. During that time, Ginsburg died and was replaced by Barrett and Trump lost his re-election bid, to be replaced by Democratic President Joe Biden, who supports abortion rights.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)