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Roe v Wade is on deck

Public Opinion on Abortion | Pew Research Center has lots of other results.

Who thinks that abortion should be legal in all or most cases:

  • By religion: unaffiliated 84%, Black Protestant: 66%, White non-evangelical Protestant: 60%, Catholic: 56%, White evangelical Protestant: 24%
  • By party: Dem: 80%, Rep: 38%
  • By ideology: lib Dem: 90%, mod/con Dem: 72%, mod/lib Rep: 60%, con Rep: 27%
  • By gender: women: 63%, men: 58%
  • By race/ethnicity: Asian: 74%, Black: 68%, Hispanic: 60%, White: 59%
  • By age: 18-29: 74%, 30-49: 62%, 50-64: 55%, 65+: 54%
  • By education: high school or less: 54%, some college: 63%, college grad or more: 66%
 
Public Opinion on Abortion | Pew Research Center has lots of other results.

Who thinks that abortion should be legal in all or most cases:

  • By religion: unaffiliated 84%, Black Protestant: 66%, White non-evangelical Protestant: 60%, Catholic: 56%, White evangelical Protestant: 24%
  • By party: Dem: 80%, Rep: 38%
  • By ideology: lib Dem: 90%, mod/con Dem: 72%, mod/lib Rep: 60%, con Rep: 27%
  • By gender: women: 63%, men: 58%
  • By race/ethnicity: Asian: 74%, Black: 68%, Hispanic: 60%, White: 59%
  • By age: 18-29: 74%, 30-49: 62%, 50-64: 55%, 65+: 54%
  • By education: high school or less: 54%, some college: 63%, college grad or more: 66%
We'll find out next Tuesday how many Americans care about abortion rights.
 
Public Opinion on Abortion | Pew Research Center has lots of other results.

Who thinks that abortion should be legal in all or most cases:

  • By religion: unaffiliated 84%, Black Protestant: 66%, White non-evangelical Protestant: 60%, Catholic: 56%, White evangelical Protestant: 24%
  • By party: Dem: 80%, Rep: 38%
  • By ideology: lib Dem: 90%, mod/con Dem: 72%, mod/lib Rep: 60%, con Rep: 27%
  • By gender: women: 63%, men: 58%
  • By race/ethnicity: Asian: 74%, Black: 68%, Hispanic: 60%, White: 59%
  • By age: 18-29: 74%, 30-49: 62%, 50-64: 55%, 65+: 54%
  • By education: high school or less: 54%, some college: 63%, college grad or more: 66%
Seems to me the ninth amendment should come into play here.
 
Public Opinion on Abortion | Pew Research Center has lots of other results.

Who thinks that abortion should be legal in all or most cases:

  • By religion: unaffiliated 84%, Black Protestant: 66%, White non-evangelical Protestant: 60%, Catholic: 56%, White evangelical Protestant: 24%
  • By party: Dem: 80%, Rep: 38%
  • By ideology: lib Dem: 90%, mod/con Dem: 72%, mod/lib Rep: 60%, con Rep: 27%
  • By gender: women: 63%, men: 58%
  • By race/ethnicity: Asian: 74%, Black: 68%, Hispanic: 60%, White: 59%
  • By age: 18-29: 74%, 30-49: 62%, 50-64: 55%, 65+: 54%
  • By education: high school or less: 54%, some college: 63%, college grad or more: 66%
Seems to me the ninth amendment should come into play here.
Seeing the current SCOTUS lineup views Constitutional cases more as a legal Madlib, it really doesn't matter what the Constitution or laws say.
 
Public Opinion on Abortion | Pew Research Center has lots of other results.

Who thinks that abortion should be legal in all or most cases:

  • By religion: unaffiliated 84%, Black Protestant: 66%, White non-evangelical Protestant: 60%, Catholic: 56%, White evangelical Protestant: 24%
  • By party: Dem: 80%, Rep: 38%
  • By ideology: lib Dem: 90%, mod/con Dem: 72%, mod/lib Rep: 60%, con Rep: 27%
  • By gender: women: 63%, men: 58%
  • By race/ethnicity: Asian: 74%, Black: 68%, Hispanic: 60%, White: 59%
  • By age: 18-29: 74%, 30-49: 62%, 50-64: 55%, 65+: 54%
  • By education: high school or less: 54%, some college: 63%, college grad or more: 66%
Seems to me the ninth amendment should come into play here.

I thought the ninth amendment was just saying that the government can't use the enumerated rights within the bill of rights as a "you (the government) have power over all but these things" list.
 
Opinion | I Write About Post-Roe America Every Day. It’s Worse Than You Think. - The New York Times - Nov 5 - by Jessica Valenti
This isn’t hyperbole. Laws that privilege fetuses over those who carry them haven’t just relegated women to second-class citizenship; they have also led to the denial of lifesaving care in case after case. In‌ affidavits, Ohio health care providers reported having to comfort a sobbing cancer patient who was refused an abortion, and seeing at least three patients who threatened to commit suicide after being denied abortions.

In August, a woman in Texas who was denied an abortion for an unviable pregnancy ended up in the intensive care unit with sepsis. Another Texas woman, pregnant and in failing health, was recently told she shouldn’t come back unless she had a condition as severe as liver failure or stroke. A woman in Wisconsin was left bleeding for more than 10 days after an incomplete miscarriage just days after the Supreme Court’s decision; a doctor ‌in Texas was told not to treat an ectopic pregnancy until it ruptured.

And then there are the stories of women forced to endure doomed pregnancies. Nancy Davis, a mother of three in Louisiana, ‌was denied an abortion even though her fetus was missing part of its head. Chelsea Stovall in Arkansas, who was 19 weeks pregnant when she found out that her daughter wouldn’t survive, was also refused treatment. After traveling 400 miles to get an abortion, she told a local reporter, “I should be able to say goodbye to her where I want to.”

Those are just the adults. ‌This summer, Republicans insisted the story of a raped and pregnant 10-year-old in Ohio‌ was a hoax, and later tried to paint the girl’s experience as a tragic anomaly. In fact dozens of girls in Ohio 14 years old and under had abortions in 2021. In neighboring Kentucky, more than a dozen children aged 14 or younger had abortions last year; two 9-year-olds needed abortions in the past few years. These are victimized children who will now be forced to carry pregnancies, perilous for their small bodies, or leave their home state for care.
Anti-abortionists' response? "In response to the onslaught of post-Roe horror stories, Republican legislators and abortion opponents have claimed that physicians are misreading the laws and failing their patients as a result."
 
These anti-abortion laws are having a wide impact.
At an annual meeting of pulmonologists, a special session was held on how to avoid breaking the law while caring for lung disease patients they may have to advise on ending dangerous pregnancies.

...
I spoke to a young woman struggling with infertility in Tennessee, for example, whose state representative told her that I.V.F. doctors could be prosecuted under the abortion ban there for discarding unused embryos (a common part of the I.V.F. process). “We just want to be parents,” she told me.
Then about how some forms of birth control are being attacked as forms of abortion.

These abortion bans have caused clinics in nearby abortion-friendly states to be overloaded, with several weeks of wait time.

"Doctors who might otherwise speak up are also being silenced, warned by their employers’ PR and legal teams not to share stories of how abortion bans have affected their work and are hurting women."

Conservatives have claimed that they are not interested in targeting individual women. But in the past year, a teenager in Nebraska who authorities say had an illegal abortion is awaiting trial for concealing a death, and an Alabama county jail reportedly kept pregnant women in detention in an effort to “protect” their unborn fetuses from possible drug exposure.
 
Abortion Vans Are Now Meeting Patients Near Ban States - Cosmopolitan - Oct 26 - "Very soon, your nearest abortion clinic might not have a real address or a phone number or a front door. But it could have an engine and wheels. Cosmo takes the first in-depth look at the undercover mobile clinics steering the future of abortion care."

How it would work.
You’re having an abortion today—that much you know. The pregnancy is about 7 weeks along, and you’ve booked an appointment for a vacuum aspiration procedure. It’ll be quick, simple, and safe. Five minutes, tops. You’re just not exactly sure where the appointment will be, because the clinic is motoring down a highway somewhere, just like you are.

Abortion is now almost entirely banned in your home state of Louisiana, so you and your best friend had to hit the road yesterday, taking turns driving through miles of swampy Southern wetlands before stopping overnight in the Texas Panhandle. You’re about to cross into eastern Colorado, the Rocky Mountains rising into view, and soon, your phone will buzz with a call directing you to your confidential destination: a seemingly random parking lot just over the state line. That’s where you’ll find an unmarked van waiting for you—a fully operational abortion clinic, hiding in plain sight.
Just The Pill offers abortion delivered in Colorado, Minnesota, Montana & Wyoming.

Then describing turning commercial vans into mobile abortion clinics.
Security was always a top priority, but now it really is. Organizers aren’t publicly revealing what the mobile clinics look like, for one. (Let’s just say you won’t see “Abortion Delivered” painted on the side.) They’re even secretive about the days and hours they’ll be seeing patients.

Basically, unless you’re rolling up for an appointment, you won’t even know if Abortion Delivered is parked in your neighborhood. “Those of us who have been through arsons, who have been through blockades, who have been through Nazis protesting us, we understand,” Amanda says. “We are the experts in our security in a way that even law enforcement is not.” Each single room van will have a staff of at least four: a clinician, a medical assistant, a driver, and a security guard. “It’s a small group of people who have a lot of trust in one another,” Amanda explains. The vans are outfitted with ballistics protection—bullet-proofing, just in case.
Will they blindfold their patients? That's what Jane's Collective did.

Code Name Jane: The Women Behind a Covert Abortion Network - The New York Times
The Janes’ tactics were worthy of a spy novel. A woman seeking to end her pregnancy left a message on an answering machine. A “Callback Jane” phoned her, collected information and passed it to a “Big Jane.” Patients would be taken first to one address, “the front,” for counseling. They were then led, sometimes blindfolded, to another spot, “the place,” where a doctor did the abortion.
 
Here’s how it’ll likely play out: Let’s say you call a clinic seeking an appointment and learn that all the upcoming spots are booked. The clinic worker might say something like, “Well, there could be another option in the next few days with a mobile provider….” From there, you’ll be connected with Just the Pill directly to complete any safety checks and make arrangements one-on-one with the van’s team. (The clinic that connected you won’t be involved.) You’ll learn the van’s exact location shortly before your appointment.
Then describing what it's like in an Abortion Delivered van - it's set up for suction abortions. This kind of abortion has an advantage over the abortion pill - the pill induces several hours of cramping and bleeding.
Digital security is, of course, its own major concern. Personal internet data, including search history and private Facebook messages, have already been used in criminal cases brought against people who have undergone abortion or experienced pregnancy loss. Meanwhile, data brokers have drawn criticism for selling bundles of location data—mined from people’s phone apps—with information on visits to abortion clinics. Just the Pill works with an organization called Digital Defense Fund to develop strong internet safety measures, for itself and for patients.
Abortion Delivered plans to play it safe and avoid going into "ban states", staying on the legal-abortion sides of state lines.
Colorado makes sense as a starting point and a proving ground, Dr. Amaon says. The state is already a safe zone for patients traveling from nearby restricted-access regions like Texas and Oklahoma. And Colorado lacks the medically unnecessary clinic regulations that some other states have enacted—burdensome rules, known as TRAP laws, insisting on trivialities like a certain size for janitors’ closets.

Colorado is among 18 states that permit a range of advanced-practice clinicians—not just doctors but also nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, and/or physician assistants—to perform in-clinic abortions, a reflection of the scientific evidence on safety.
Just the Pill is still working on accepting medical insurance.
Each single-room van will provide up to 16 procedural abortions per day. Eventually, the group hopes to have an entire fleet of mobile clinics on the road full-time in Colorado, and it’s eyeing New Mexico, Illinois, and its home state of Minnesota next. Also in the works is a larger abortion bus, with two procedure rooms and a dedicated recovery space. This will allow the group to perform second-trimester abortions as well. It’s some big “can’t stop, won’t stop” energy. Says Amanda, “This is not the time for fear.”
Several other abortion providers are looking to Abortion Delivered for assistance in starting similar mobile operations.
 
Just The Pill (@JustThePill) / Twitter - "Abortion Delivered is our project to bring mobile clinics to the Texas border! All donations are tax-deductible. Making abortion more accessible and affordable."

Abortion clinics go mobile, seeking flexibility amid patchwork state restrictions | Healthcare Dive - Aug 1
The group currently operates two mobile clinics in Colorado and plans to build out its network of vans and deploy them in states where abortion is legal but surrounding states have banned the procedure, such as New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Illinois.
They currently plan to have 30 abortion vans.
One van, which is currently being retrofitted to serve Illinois is Just the Pill’s biggest yet, with two exam rooms plus a recovery room. It cost more than $500,000.

The mobile clinics, which provide contraception in addition to abortion care, are also bulletproof.
There are plenty of more general sorts of clinics in vehicles. "Currently, there are an estimated 2,000 mobile clinics in America, providing almost 7 million visits each year."
 
Just the Pill Makes Abortion Care Accessible and Compassionate - [Dating News]
The team provides telehealth-based medical abortions to pregnant women in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, and Minnesota. Additionally, Just The Pill also operates a mobile clinic in Colorado where it serves patients who come from across the state and neighboring states for medication abortion care. The dedicated team’s work makes abortions far more accessible for their patients in these states and their border states. In the near future, Just the Pill plans to open the first mobile surgical abortion clinic in Colorado.
They are fundraising for an Illinois fleet and they hope to expand into Pennsylvania and New Mexico.
As it currently stands, states with strict abortion bans cannot prosecute their residents for traveling to a state that permits abortion for the procedure. But with the constitutional right to interstate travel up for debate, this may not always stand true. Anyone concerned about their ability to legally travel out of state for an abortion should pay attention to their state laws and the related cases the Supreme Court chooses to hear.
The Right to Travel Out of State for an Abortion Isn’t as Secure as You May Think | WIRED - Jul 25 - "Despite the DOJ vowing to protect people's ability to travel out of state for abortion care, legal experts warn not to take that freedom for granted."
In terms of what the Justice Department can do if a state were to ban traveling to obtain an abortion, the most likely response would be a lawsuit against that state. Mary Ziegler, a law professor at UC Davis, says the agency would argue that such a ban is unconstitutional. (The DOJ itself did not respond to a request for comment.)
In his concurring opinion in the Dobbs case, Justice Brett Kavanaugh claimed that states may not outlaw traveling to other states to get abortions.
The right to travel is generally seen as protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and this has been upheld by the Supreme Court in the past. However, the right to an abortion was also seen as something that was protected by the Fourteenth Amendment until Roe was overturned.

...
In order to avoid an anti-travel law being struck down by the courts, a state could craft legislation that effectively but not explicitly bans interstate travel.
Like Texas's SB8, which authorizes vigilante lawsuits against abortion.

"Without Congress passing a law to protect the right to travel, it will likely be difficult for the Department of Justice to defend that right."
 
How one unmarked van is quietly delivering abortion pills on Colorado’s border | KUER - Oct 31
As abortion becomes more restricted across the country, a non-descript mobile clinic is operating on Colorado’s border, where women from out-of-state can go to pick up medications themselves.

“It doesn't have any signage on it,” Dr. Julie Amaon, the medical director of Just The Pill, said. “We're not trying to tell people what we're doing to keep patients safe because we know that even in more protected states like Colorado, there are still lots of people that don't agree with what we're doing.”
DrJulieA (@AmaonJulie) / Twitter - "Family Medicine Doc, Medical Director at Just The Pill, ReproJustice superfan, former Texas Rollergirl"

Religious backers of abortion rights say God's on their side | AP News
It was lunch hour at the abortion clinic, so the nurse in the recovery room got her Bible out of her bag in the closet and began to read.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding,” her favorite proverb says, and she returns to it again and again. “He will make your paths straight.”

She believes God led her here, to a job at the West Alabama Women’s Center, tending to patients who’ve just had abortions. “I trust in God,” said Ramona, who asked that her last name not be used because of the volatility America’s abortion debate.
There isn't much of a Religious Left, but if there was, then it would be fun to watch them face off with the Religious right, with both sides yelling at each other that they are just following God's orders.
 
Midterms Handed Democrats in Congress a Mandate to Codify Abortion Rights - "With 48 senators supporting a filibuster carveout for abortion rights, Democrats should act before the new Congress."
The Democratic mantra headed into Election Day was that two things were on the ballot: democracy and abortion rights. In a stunning rebuke to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, voters turned out en masse to stun pundits, delivering a mandate to Democrats to codify abortion rights into law.

Republicans had hoped that inflation would produce a red-wave rejection of Democrats, and the media talked of little else in the run-up to the election. But the economy has continued adding jobs, with real wages at the bottom rising for the first time in generations, even as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell tightens monetary policy. Paying more for groceries and at the pump is a painful squeeze, but being unable to find a job can destroy your life. It may be that voters’ recent memory of the Great Recession undercut the potency of the former as a weapon for Democrats.

For Democrats, according to exit polls, abortion was the top concern. Of the 27 percent of all voters who prioritized the issue, Democrats carried them 3-1.
Then about abortion-related victories in Kansas earlier this year, and California, Vermont, Michigan, and Kentucky in this election.

The two exceptions are Kyrsten Sinema, who gets all misty-eyed about the filibuster, and Joe Manchin.
 
Republican Anti-Abortion Agenda Relies on Minority Rule - "But that doesn’t mean we can rest easy in the fight for reproductive justice."
Insofar as abortion was on the ballot in yesterday’s midterm elections, abortion won. In all five states where ballot measures asked voters to decide the fate of abortion access, voters chose to protect or enshrine abortion rights. In North Carolina, Republicans failed to win a veto-proof legislative supermajority, ensuring that Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper maintains the ability to block abortion bans. And without the feared “red wave” sweeping Congress, GOP plans for a nationwide abortion ban are thwarted — for now, at least.

"We got here because of the far right’s proven record of entrenching minority rule."

"The midterm abortion rights victories should likewise galvanize Democratic leaders to fight hard for abortion access, confident in the knowledge of its popularity."

The Democrats blew opportunities to codify RvW in the Clinton and Obama Presidencies, because not enough Democrats considered it an important issue, and some were anti-abortion.
These midterms also further clarified the ways establishment punditry conjures the myth of the “average American” and their concerns to the disadvantage of real, living people in this country.

Pollsters and political analysts were clear that, despite widespread anger over the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, midterms voters were not prioritizing reproductive rights. Economic concerns would rule the day, we were told. The professional predictors and commentators failed to appreciate that reproductive rights are also an economic issue, and that the fight for bodily autonomy is not a distraction.

Voters en masse reject outright abortion bans. Republicans may, however, keep doing what they’ve done for years — chipping away at abortion access until the restrictions become de facto bans. The strong electoral successes of Christo-fascists like Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida and J.D. Vance in his Ohio Senate race give us every grounds for continued concern. The Christian far right will continue to wield disproportionate power; Republicans embrace minority rule.
 
What if the democrats wanted to cynically keep abortion as a red meat issue for their base?
 
Former Anti-Abortion Leader Alleges Another Supreme Court Breach - The New York Times - "Years before the leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a landmark contraception ruling was disclosed, according to a minister who led a secretive effort to influence justices."
In a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and in interviews with The New York Times, the Rev. Rob Schenck said he was told the outcome of the 2014 case weeks before it was announced. He used that information to prepare a public relations push, records show, and he said that at the last minute he tipped off the president of Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain owned by Christian evangelicals that was the winning party in the case.
The letter itself
The evidence for Mr. Schenck’s account of the breach has gaps. But in months of examining Mr. Schenck’s claims, The Times found a trail of contemporaneous emails and conversations that strongly suggested he knew the outcome and the author of the Hobby Lobby decision before it was made public.
 
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