Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade

[bnew]

Republican senator blocks bill to protect IVF

Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., blocked the bill brought by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who used IVF to have her daughters.

www.nbcnews.com

Republican senator blocks bill to protect IVF​

Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., blocked the bill brought by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who used IVF to have her daughters.

Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., in Washington in 2022.Michael Brochstein / Sipa USA via AP file


Feb. 29, 2024, 12:29 AM EST

By Amanda Terkel and Brennan Leach

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi blocked passage of legislation Wednesday that would protect access to in vitro fertilization.

The measure, sponsored by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and brought to the floor for consideration under unanimous consent — meaning one senator could block it from passage — would provide federal protections for IVF.

GOP senator blocks federal bill to protect IVF
FEB. 29, 2024 05:57

The Alabama state Supreme Court recent ly rul ed that embryos created through IVF are considered children.

Many doctors and families worry that IVF will become less available, because people theoretically could be sued for destroying embryos. During the IVF process, embryos are often discarded if they have genetic abnormalities or after patients decide they will not need to use them.

Since the court's decision, politicians in both parties have expressed support for protecting IVF.

Duckworth, who used IVF to have her two daughters, said the Alabama ruling “paints women like me and our doctors as criminals” and “throws IVF access into chaos as countless women and doctors try to figure out whether they might be criminalized for simply trying to create a family.”

She further called it a "nightmarish blend of hypocrisy and misogyny."

“The very people who claim to be defending family values are the ones trying to enact dystopian policies that would prevent Americans from starting their own families," she added.

In her objection, Hyde-Smith said the Alabama decision "did not ban IVF, nor has any state banned IVF."

"The bill before us today is a vast overreach that is full of poison pills that go way too far, far beyond ensuring legal access to IVF," she said.

Alabama families face uncertainty after Supreme Court IVF ruling
FEB. 28, 2024 03:35

A number of Republican politicians who say they believe life begins at conception or believe that an embryo or fetus deserves the full rights of a person have had to come out and explain their views on IVF — a type of fertility treatment that has not been a partisan issue.

In Alabama, legislators have been scramblingto come up with a fix to protect IVF practices in light of the high court's ruling there.

Democrats have leaned in on the issue politically; they've used it to hammer Republicans on abortion — an issue that has hurt the GOP in previous elections since conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

"This has always been about conservative politicians controlling women's bodies," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said Wednesday. "This has been Donald Trump and the Republicans’ plan all along, and the opposition to Sen. Duckworth’s proposal today shows that Republicans are doubling down against reproductive freedom. They are coming for medication abortion, they are coming for birth control, and they are even coming for prenatal care. Make no mistake."


Amanda Terkel

 

[bnew]

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/12/anti-abortion-advocates-gop-ivf-00146369

HEALTH CARE

‘License to kill’: Anti-abortion groups rage against the GOP​

Some groups are running ads against longstanding GOP allies that use the same graphic imagery — blood, babies and scalpels — they have long deployed to oppose Democrats and the abortion-rights movement.

As many politicians raced in recent weeks to get to the right side of public opinion on IVF, some of the country’s biggest and most influential anti-abortion groups are pushing back. | Butch Dill/AP

By MEGAN MESSERLY and ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN

03/12/2024 05:02 AM EDT

The anti-abortion movement is turning on Republican lawmakers who support bills to protect in vitro fertilization, accusing them of sanctioning murder.

As many politicians raced in recent weeks to get to the right side of public opinion on IVF, some of the country’s biggest and most influential anti-abortion groups are pushing back.

Several have attacked state and federal lawmakers — who introduced legislation to protect IVF after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last month that frozen embryos are children — for giving doctors a “license to kill” and said legislators’ efforts would result in “thousands of dead human beings.”

Other groups are going further, running ads against longstanding GOP allies that use the same graphic imagery — blood, babies and scalpels — they have long deployed to oppose Democrats and the abortion-rights movement.

The tension over IVF underscores a deepening divide as Republicans grapple with new political and policy consequences of passing laws declaring that life begins at conception. After marching in lockstep for decades against Roe v. Wade, conservatives are clashing in the post-Roe era over what it means to be “pro-life.”

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The split mirrors debates between Republicans and the anti-abortion movement over other popular policies, including exceptions from state abortion bans for rape and incest, and protections for contraception. That — and the unwillingness of many GOP candidates to talk about abortion on the campaign trail — has some in the anti-abortion movement accusing Republicans of caving to political pressure.

“For a lot of conservative Republican lawmakers, being against abortion has served as a kind of lazy way to say that you’re a conservative,” said Jameson Taylor, director of policy and legislative affairs for the Mississippi-based American Family Association Action. “Frankly, a lot of Republican lawmakers are not in touch with conservative principles because they have not taken sufficient time to think through what those principles are.”

In Alabama, the anti-abortion movement resoundingly condemned a bill shielding IVF providers from criminal and civil charges, and pressured GOP Gov. Kay Ivey to veto it. When she signed it anyway, one anti-abortion organization said the new law “disrespects human life and strips human beings of their dignity,” and another ran digital ads against Ivey and Republican lawmakers using graphic imagery and accusing them of “[betraying] life.”

“Politicians cannot call themselves pro-life, affirm the truth that human life begins at the moment of fertilization and then enact laws that allow the callous killing of these preborn children simply because they were created through IVF,” Live Action president Lila Rose said after Alabama Republicans approved the legislation.

A spokesperson for Ivey did not directly respond when asked about the group’s comments that the governor had given doctors a “license to kill.” Instead, the spokesperson pointed back to a statement the governor issued after signing the legislation, in which Ivey reiterated her support for IVF, lauded legislators for “quickly tackling” the issue and touted Alabama as a “pro-life, pro-family state.”

In Mississippi, the anti-abortion movement and its GOP allies have called a Republican-backed proposal to protect IVF the “greatest assault on the cause of life that we’ve seen in Mississippi in a long time” and warned that the “bad Democrat-based bill” would lead to “backdoor abortion and possible cloning and selling of ‘genetic materials of humans.’”

Lawmakers in Kentucky and Missouri who have introduced similar bills are also getting pushback from local conservative groups who see the legislation as an end-run around the state’s abortion restrictions.

Republican governors defend IVF after Alabama ruling
Play Video

Some Republicans dismiss the criticism, arguing that protecting IVF is a “pro-life” position.

“I’ve had some negative comments from extreme pro-life type folks,” said Missouri state Rep. Bill Allen, a Republican who has introduced pro-IVF legislation. “But I’m pro-life. This is bringing life into the world. I think there’s something to be said for that.”

In Congress, anti-abortion groups are vowing to penalize GOP members if they support pro-IVF bills they believe go too far, including a nonbinding resolution introduced by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) earlier this month. And speakers, including the head of the influential Heritage Foundation, told activists at a recent anti-abortion summit in Washington, D.C., that Republicans have proved themselves “a fickle ally in the fight for the unborn” since the Dobbs decision, and can’t be relied upon to advance their agenda.

“Republicans — those who claim to be pro-life — have to be consistent in that viewpoint, and not run from that conversation,” Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, told POLITICO.

Yet the divide over IVF does not mean anti-abortion groups are breaking with the GOP entirely. This week, leaders of two of the country’s biggest groups — Susan B. Anthony List and March for Life — will attend House Republicans’ annual policy retreat. And even the groups most upset over the wave of pro-IVF legislation won’t commit to primarying the bills’ supporters, telling POLITICO they’d rather “educate” them on the issue.

Still, many anti-abortion advocates are stressing to lawmakers that blanket support for IVF, which recent polling shows is supported by 86 percent of voters, is not a nuanced “pro-life” position, arguing that the state and federal bills introduced to protect fertility care amount to “a get-out-of-regulation-free card.”

Instead, they want lawmakers to seize the moment created by the Alabama decision to impose restrictions on the way IVF is commonly practiced in the U.S. — in which excess fertilized embryos are created to ensure the best chance of a successful pregnancy after which unused embryos are often destroyed.

“Saying that you support IVF doesn’t mean anything unless we talk about what IVF is,” said Kristi Hamrick, chief policy strategist for Students for Life of America. “Do you support allowing a clinic that allows another patient to wander back and destroy embryos to go without any sanctions? Do you support allowing a disreputable doctor who uses his own sperm to fertilize most of the women’s eggs in the facility — that person shouldn’t experience any repercussions? What exactly are you saying you support?”

Most GOP lawmakers are ducking those questions as they instead push legislation to broadly protect access to the procedure in states like Kentucky, Mississippi and Missouri. Legislators in those states said they are open to a longer-term conversation about changes to the IVF process, but that their short-term concern is ensuring that access is unimpeded.

“I personally have concerns about discarding embryos. I believe that is the destruction of life,” said Kentucky state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, a Republican, who has introduced legislation to protect IVF access. His son and the triplets his wife is pregnant with are the product of adopted embryos another family did not use. “But I don’t want to create a weird incentive structure to reduce the use of IVF or to limit the opportunity for kids like mine to be born.”

Still, some Republicans lawmakers are heeding the anti-abortion movement’s concerns. In Iowa, House GOP lawmakers voted last week to advance legislation that would give embryos and fetuses personhood rights, despite concerns from Democrats and others that the legislation would hamper IVF access. And GOP lawmakers in Tennessee recently rejected legislation proposed by their Democratic colleagues to protect IVF access, saying that such legislation was unnecessary.

Even the Alabama Legislature watered down its original proposal, which would have carved out embryos created during the IVF process but not implanted into the uterus from the definition of “human life.”

“They’re not unafraid of the anti-abortion movement,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who specializes in abortion rights. “If they were, this bill would have looked different.”

As the debate rages at the state and national levels, Perkins and other anti-abortion leaders say they’re hopeful, despite recent setbacks, that the conversation ignited by the Alabama ruling will eventually lead to more restrictions on IVF.

“The silver lining here is that it’s drawing attention to something that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention,” he said. “More policymakers will begin to look at this and say, ‘Hey, you know? That this is something that really does need some oversight.’ I think they’ll wind up in a place different than the Alabama Legislature.”

• FILED UNDER:
• ABORTION,
• KAY IVEY,
• ALABAMA,
• ABORTION RIGHTS,
• ANTI-ABORTION GROUPS
  

 

[bnew]

How 'fetal personhood' in Alabama's IVF ruling evolved from fringe to mainstream​

MARCH 14, 20245:01 AM ET

Odette Yousef


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Alabama's state capitol in Montgomery, Ala. earlier this year

Andi Rice/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Alabama Supreme Court's decision that frozen embryos have the same rights as children came as a surprise even to many who oppose abortion rights. But for researchers and activists who have long tracked narratives at the most extreme end of the anti-abortion movement, this legal determination was inevitable.

They say it shows how, even as the pro-abortion rights movement focuses on preserving legal access to abortion and contraception, other laws that codify the once-fringe notion of "legal personhood" may more immediately underpin decisions that could drastically curtail reproductive rights.

"The movement that's referred to as 'personhood,' to indicate that life begins at conception, was always going here," said Alex DiBranco, executive director and co-founder of the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism.

DiBranco said that while IVF may be popular among Americans on both sides of the political spectrum, hardline conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation and Live Action have long villainized the IVF industry. Often referring to it as the "big fertility" industrial complex, they characterize the sector as predatory and profit-driven.

"They talk a lot about the idea that it's eugenics, that it's really more about designer babies than actually supporting women or other people who have fertility needs," DiBranco said.

At its most extreme, reproductive rights researchers and advocates warn that states where fetal personhood is established could even see courts citing those laws in criminal cases where pregnant people are concerned. They say the door to this application was opened decades ago when the American public succumbed to widespread hysteria over so-called "crack babies."

A moral panic normalizes a fringe idea​

In 1973, when the Supreme Court issued its decision on Roe v. Wade, the notion that fetuses or embryos were full rights-bearing humans under the law was not widely popular.

"Immediately in the days after that decision, there were proposals to codify some form of fetal personhood," said Dana Sussman, deputy executive director at Pregnancy Justice, an organization that provides legal defense services to pregnant people in civil and criminal cases. "It did not gain traction until ... the late 80s and early 90s. And that was when the war on drugs was on a collision course with the war on abortion."

Sussman and others say that it was the moral panic over so-called "crack babies" that took the idea of fetal personhood from fringe to mainstream. At the time, there were widespread fears that prenatal use of crack cocaine could lead to children who might grow to have a number of problems. The narrative contained classic moral panic tropes: children in utero as helpless victim; and a scapegoat that garnered little sympathy within the American public at the time, namely poor, African-American women who used drugs.

Several states passed laws that allowed women to be charged with criminal child abuse for exposing their fetuses to illicit substances during pregnancy. These resulted in hundreds of women being jailed in connection with their pregnancies. Just as significantly, the laws also entrenched the concept of fetal personhood into state criminal codes.

"It was a political opportunity for the anti-abortion movement, through the fears of and the hysteria surrounding the 'crack baby' epidemic," said Sussman.

In the years since then, studies show that children born to mothers who used crack cocaine while pregnant carry no significant difference in their life outcomes when compared with other children. Nonetheless, the exploitation of the fear at the time was potent. It opened the door to charging women with crimes against their own pregnancies. It also shifted popular opinion on the concept of fetal personhood. A 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 56% of Americans believe that "human life begins at conception, so a fetus is a person with rights."

A wave of fetal personhood bills​

In Alabama, Sussman said the path toward the IVF decision had been cleared at least a decade earlier. In 2013, the state's Supreme Court ruled that fetuses are considered children in criminal cases concerning prenatal exposure to controlled substances.

"So this has been the creep, and it started primarily in criminal law," said Sussman. "And it has extended to the law that was at issue in the Alabama Supreme Court [on frozen embryos] ... which is a civil law that now impacts IVF and fetal personhood."

Those who have followed these developments closely say this cascade of small shifts has been tragic to watch.

"I wish we cared when it was impoverished women who were being locked up," said Grace Howard, associate professor of Justice Studies at San Jose State University.

"I'm glad that people are outraged about [the IVF ruling]. They should be outraged about this," she said. "But damn, if they had been this pissed off a decade ago, I don't think that we would be where we are right now because it would have stopped this creep from happening."

According to Pregnancy Justice, at least 11 states currently have laws broadly defining fetal personhood. In those states, these definitions could interplay broadly with civil and criminal codes. But it notes that all states have case law or statutes that, in some area, designate fetuses as a "person," "minor" or "child."

"There are personhood laws that exist in multiple states around the country that are not being effectuated to their full extent," said Sussman. "The concern that we have here is that, whether it's prosecutors [or] whether it's litigants, will start to use those laws to criminalize self managing abortion, criminalize pregnancy loss, criminalize behavior during pregnancy, go after IVF in the way that we saw in this civil case or criminally, too. ... And so that is sort of the sleeping threat that lingers in a lot of these states."

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, 13 states currently have personhood bills under consideration, from Alaska to Illinois to Massachusetts. While much of the concern currently centers on how these may be used in relation to IVF services, Howard warns that the ramifications could extend far beyond, to the people who are, themselves, pregnant.

"The way I see it, once any element of this is criminalized or once the fetus is defined as a person in any area of law, criminalization is the next step and it is not hard to do," she said.

 

[bnew]

13-year-old rape victim has baby amid confusion over state's abortion ban

A 13-year-old rape victim in Mississippi carried her baby to term amid her family's confusion over whether she could get an abortion in the state.

abcnews.go.com

13-year-old rape victim has baby amid confusion over state's abortion ban​

Law enforcement used DNA from the baby to apprehend the suspect.

By Rachel Scott, Nadine El-Bawab, Karin Weinberg, Knez Walker, Stephanie Fasano, and Rachel Rosenbaum

March 22, 2024, 8:12 AM

10:57

Mississippi 7th grader caught in the middle over blocked abortion access

The 13 year-old-girl and her mother speak publicly after the teenager was raped and became pregnant...Show More

Regina, a mother of three daughters, live in one of the poorest counties in one of the country's poorest states -- Mississippi. She holds down a job during the day and is attending nursing school. Life for her is hard, but she manages as best she can.

In late 2022, that changed. Regina noticed that Ashley, her middle daughter, began withdrawing -- she quit her cheer team and stopped going outside. Then Ashley started to get really sick, vomiting a lot.

"We took her to the hospital and rushed her in and they took her to the back …The nurse [was] like 'You pregnant.' And that's when I just broke down and started crying," Regina said.

Ashley, who was 11 weeks pregnant at the time, said she was raped by a stranger in the yard of the family's home.

"She's just 12. She don't know nothing about having no babies. Nothing," Regina said.

MORE: Fighting for their lives: Women and the impact of abortion restrictions in post-Roe America​

At just 13-years-old Ashley became a mother to a little baby boy nicknamed "Peanut."

ABC News

But amid confusion over what abortion care is allowed in Mississippi, Regina says she was unaware Ashley qualified for an abortion in Mississippi under the law's exception for cases of rape. Yet, even if she was aware, it's unlikely Ashley would have been able to get an abortion in Mississippi; with heavy restrictions in effect and the high penalties on physicians who violate the abortion ban, it is unlikely she would have found a doctor willing to perform a procedure.

Ashley, now 13 years old, is the mother of an 8-month-old baby boy nicknamed Peanut.

In addition to her homework, the seventh-grader now prepares bottles and changes diapers when she gets home.

To protect their privacy, ABC News is using the same pseudonyms as TIME Magazine, which first reported this story.

The OB-GYN on call the night Ashley went to the hospital, Dr. Erica Balthrop, says the conversation they had still weighs on her.

"You see this timid little girl -- she's literally a little girl -- and she was like a deer in the headlights. She had no idea what was going on," Balthrop said.

"That was probably one of those days that will just stick in my head. Forever," she said. "It's sad … I think about a woman -- a girl with no rights of her own, basically. She can't make a decision about her own body."

A 13-year-old rape victim had a baby amid confusion over Mississippi’s abortion ban.

ABC News

Regina and Ashley reported the rape to law enforcement -- which should have allowed her to get abortion care in the state.

Mississippi's strict abortion ban has narrow exceptions for cases of rape and to save the life of the mother, but -- caught in the confusion caused by a web of conflicting laws -- Regina says she was unaware her daughter could have qualified for an abortion in Mississippi under the exception. Mississippi has several conflicting laws and even experts, doctors and patients are having a hard time navigating them

Regina said when she asked about their options, Dr. Balthrop told her the closest abortion clinic was in Chicago -- with Mississippi boxed in by states with bans in place.

"That's like $800; $1,500 to have an abortion up there. And I'm like, I have to drive, I leave work. I can't afford that," Regina said.

So the family was out of options. Regina decided to keep her daughter's pregnancy private, homeschooling Ashley.

Police arrested the accused rapist last year. Regina says they used DNA from the baby to prove the link. He remains behind bars, charged with felony rape.

"He took my child's innocence," Regina said.

"She didn't have to go through this. It's not her time to go through this," she said.

Ashley speaks to ABC News’ Rachel Scott about being caught in the middle over blocked abortion access.

ABC News

Only four abortions in the state in 2023​

One expert says the family was failed by the system.

"It could be fair to say that there is a lot of confusion and misinformation about abortion across the country … People hear that it's banned and they think that they don't have options in the state," Alina Salganicoff, senior vice president and director of Women's Health Policy at Kaiser Family Foundation, told ABC News.

Had Regina known about the exception, Salganicoff says finding a physician to perform the procedure could also have been a challenge.

"Physicians have so much at stake in terms of losing their medical license, financial penalties, and, in some cases, criminalization leading to jail time. So it is very concerning for them to take the risk of performing an abortion unless they are absolutely certain that they won't be penalized for this," she said.

MORE: 'Traumatized': One woman's pregnancy journey becomes a nightmare in post-Roe America​

Dr. Balthrop acknowledged many providers in the state would not be willing to take the risk.

"Most people wouldn't do it here in the state. They would refer you out," Balthrop said.

Dr. Erica Balthrop was the OB-GYN on call the night Ashley went to the hospital and discovered she was pregnant.

ABC News

Mississippi is just one of at least 14 states that have ceased nearly all abortion services in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade being overturned. The impact of bans has been drastic on women and girls seeking abortions in those states.

In 2023, the state only recorded four abortions performed under the exceptions, according to documents ABC News obtained from the Mississippi Department of Health. The department said the state does not track whether any of the abortions were in cases of rape.

That is compared to about 3,800 abortions provided in Mississippi in 2021.

MORE: Texas abortion law means woman has to continue pregnancy despite fatal anomaly​

One study estimates that across the 14 states that have ceased nearly all abortions, there may have been nearly 65,000 pregnancies caused by rape, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"The reality is that rapes are underreported… and so when you have a situation where you have an abortion ban that requires a report, women are much less likely to use that pathway to get an abortion when they feel they need one," Salganicoff said.

ABC News reached out to Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves' office, several state lawmakers and the state's senators and congressional representatives in Washington regarding this story, but none responded.

 

[BigMoneyGrip]

Of course

 

[bnew]

The Anti-Abortion Endgame That Erin Hawley Admitted to the Supreme Court

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson zeroed in on this admission.

slate.com

JURISPRUDENCE

The Anti-Abortion Endgame That Erin Hawley Admitted to the Supreme Court​

BY DAHLIA LITHWICK AND MARK JOSEPH STERN

MARCH 27, 20244:48 PM

Erin Hawley speaks to the media after oral arguments in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine on Tuesday in Washington. Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images

Somewhat lost in the debate around abortion pills and oral arguments that took place at the Supreme Court in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine on Tuesday was one deeply uncomfortable truth: The very notion of what it means to practice emergency medicine is in dispute, with anti-abortion doctors insisting upon a right to refuse treatment for any patient who doesn’t meet their test of moral purity. Indeed, the right asserted is that in the absence of certainty about which patients are morally pure, the doctors want to deny medication to all patients, nationwide.

In public, the plaintiffs in this case—a group of doctors and dentists seeking to ban medication abortion—have long claimed they object to ending “unborn life” by finishing an “incomplete or failed” abortion at the hospital. But in court, they went much further. Their lawyer, Erin Hawley, admitted at oral argument that her clients don’t merely oppose terminating a pregnancy—they are pursuing the right to turn away a patient whose pregnancy has already been terminated. Indeed, they appear to want to deny even emergency care to patients whose fetus is no longer “alive,” on the grounds that the patient used an abortion drug earlier in the process. And they aim to deploy this broad fear of “complicity” against the FDA, to demand a nationwide prohibition on the abortion pill to ensure that they need never again see (and be forced to turn away) patients who’ve previously taken it. This is not a theory of being “complicit” in ending life. It is a theory that doctors can pick and choose their patients based on the “moral distress” they might feel in helping them.

It should come as no surprise that the same judge who tried to ban mifepristone in this case, Matthew Kacsmaryk, has also attempted to legalize anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination in health care nationwide. This is the ballgame: weaponize subjective religious beliefs against secular society to degrade the quality of care for everyone. If you can’t persuade Americans to adopt hardcore evangelical views, exploit the legal system to coerce them into it anyway.

Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine is at once embarrassingly frivolous and existentially important. Don’t let the jokes about how silly the Comstock Act seems, or how speculative the theory of standing is, get in the way of taking a serious look at the claims on offer. The plaintiffs say they are terrified that one day, a patient may walk into their emergency room suffering complications from a medication abortion prescribed by some other doctor. This patient may need their assistance completing the abortion or simply recovering from the complete abortion, which these plaintiffs deem “complicity” in sin. And they say the solution is either a total, nationwide ban on mifepristone, the first drug in the medication abortion sequence, or a draconian (and medically unnecessary) set of restrictions that would place mifepristone out of reach for many patients. (The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled to reinstate those restrictions at their behest.)

It is a twisted line of logic, one that should never have reached the Supreme Court in the first place. But it is also a product of the court’s past indulgence of outlandish claims about moral “complicity.” As was made plain in the oral arguments and briefing, activist doctors are no longer satisfied with personal conscience exemptions already granted under state and federal law; they now insist that nobody, anywhere, should have access to the abortion pill, in order to ensure that they themselves won’t have to treat patients who took one. At a minimum, they say, they should be able to radically roll back access to the pill in all 50 states to reduce the odds that one of these handful of objectors might someday encounter a patient who took it. This extremist argument lays bare the transformation of the idea of “complicity” from a shield for religious dissenters to a sword for ideologues desperate to seize control over other people’s lives and bodies.

At oral arguments, several justices pressed Hawley, who argued on behalf of Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, with an obvious retort: Why can’t her clients simply refuse to treat these hypothetical someday patients on the grounds that they cannot help end the “life” of a fetus or embryo? After all, federal law guarantees doctors the right not to have to provide an abortion if doing so is “contrary to his religious beliefs or moral convictions.” Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh secured assurances from Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, early in the arguments, that under no circumstances could the government force any health care provider to ever participate in an abortion in violation of their conscience. Justice Elena Kagan asked Prelogar: “Suppose somebody has bled significantly, needs a transfusion, or, you know, any of a number of other things that might happen.” Would the plaintiffs object to treating them? Prelogar said the record was unclear.

Hawley, who is married to far-right Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, then approached the lectern and cleared up any confusion: Yes, she insisted, treating a patient who has undergone a medication abortion violates the conscience of the plaintiff physicians even if there is no “live” fetus or embryo to terminate anymore. “Completing an elective abortion means removing an embryo fetus, whether or not they’re alive, as well as placental tissue,” Hawley told Kagan. So the plaintiffs don’t object just to taking a “life.” They also object to the mere act of removing leftover tissue, even from the placenta.

Of course, these doctors must remove “dead” fetal tissue and placentas all the time—from patients who experienced a spontaneous miscarriage. By their own admission, the plaintiffs regularly help women complete miscarriages through surgery or medication. Those women they will gladly treat. Other women, though—the ones who induced their own miscarriage via medication—are too sinful to touch. Before the plaintiffs can administer even lifesaving emergency treatment, they need to know the circumstances of this pregnancy loss: Spontaneous miscarriages are OK; medication abortions are not.

 

[bnew]

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, too, zeroed in on this admission. She told Hawley that she had thought the objection was to “participating in a procedure that is ending the life [of the fetus].” Hawley told her no: Any participation in an abortion, even through the indirect treatment of a patient without a “live” fetus, violated the doctors’ conscience. So, wait. What about “handing them a water bottle?” Jackson asked. Hawley dodged the question, declining to say whether helping a patient hydrate would constitute impermissible complicity in sin.

All this is reminiscent of Little Sisters of the Poor, a case about a Catholic charitable group that was afforded an exemption from the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate. The Little Sisters were asked to check a box signaling to the government that they could not comply with the mandate, at which point the government would step in to cover their employees. But the Little Sisters refused, viewing this action—the checking of a box to opt out of coverage—as “complicity” in abortion because it would in turn trigger government payment for contraception (which they viewed as abortifacients). The Supreme Court and the Trump administration ultimately indulged the Little Sisters’ claim.

Here, we have emergency room physicians asserting that they will not participate in lifesaving medical intervention unless they approve of the reason for the pregnancy loss. Presumably, if the pregnant patient is an unwed mother, or a gay or transgender person, the doctor would be similarly complicit in sin and decline service. Seen through this lens, since one can never know which sins one is enabling in the ER, each and every day, a narrow conscience exemption becomes a sweeping guarantee that absolutely nobody in the country can ever have access to basic health care, let alone miscarriage management. (Of course, these plaintiffs might focus only on one set of “sins” they see as relevant.) In a country effectively governed by Kacsmaryk and his plaintiff friends, a gay person suffering a stroke could be turned away from any hospital because of his sexual orientation, all to spare a doctor from a glancing encounter with prior sin. As Tobias Barrington Wolff, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, put it to us in an email, this unbounded view of complicity “is part of enacting the social death of people and practices you abhor, which in turn can contribute to the material death of people and practices you abhor.”

One of the most exhausting lessons of post-Roe America is that being “pro-life” definitively means privileging the life of the presumptively sin-free unborn—or even their “dead” remains—over the life of the sin-racked adults who carry them. This is why women are left to go septic or to hemorrhage in hospital parking lots; it is why C-sections are performed in nonviable pregnancies, at high risk to mothers; it’s why the women who sued in Texas to secure exceptions to that state’s abortion ban are condemned by the state as sinners and whores. And it’s why—in the eyes of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine—it is a greater hardship for a physician to “waste precious moments scrubbing in, scrubbing out” of emergency surgery, as Hawley put it, so long as they don’t believe that the emergency warrants their professional services, than it is for a pregnant person, anywhere in the country, including in states that permit abortion, to be forced to give birth.

At oral argument, Hawley explained that her clients have “structured [their] medical practice to bring life into the world. When they are called from their labor and delivery floor down to the operating room to treat a woman suffering from abortion drug harm, that is diametrically opposed to why they entered the medical profession. It comes along with emotional harm.” The emotional harm alleged here is that unless these doctors approve of the specific circumstances of the ER visit, they violate not only their own medical preference but also their religious convictions. But they will never truly know enough about the sins of their patients to be able to shield themselves against being a link in a chain of subjective lifelong sin. And to be a doctor, especially an emergency physician, should be to understand that your patients’ private choices and spiritual life are not really open to your pervasive and vigilant medical veto. This deep-rooted suspicion of patients deemed insufficiently pure for lifesaving treatment didn’t begin with the availability of medication abortion. It will assuredly not end there.

 

[Json]

This is so damn stupid.

So if these doctor prescribed a weight loss or non-pregnancy drug that caused a miscarriage then wouldn’t they have caused the medicated abortion? Violating their own objection?

 

[Dameon Farrow]

This is a heavy issue going into November. Like heavy heavy. We are already seeing its effects, actually.

 

[BigMoneyGrip]

This is a heavy issue going into November. Like heavy heavy. We are already seeing its effects, actually.

Nah the coli contrarians saying bu bu Palestine lol

 

[Dameon Farrow]

Nah the coli contrarians saying bu bu Palestine lol

It's all about complaining. They don't care about any Palestine....

 

[88m3]

absolutely heartbreaking

but both sides in hl

 

[bnew]

Idaho doctor who worked at closed maternity ward says abortion ban harmed recruiting • Colorado Newsline

A hospital in a rural area outside of Idaho’s capital city of Boise closed its labor and delivery and neonatal intensive care units April 1, citing declining birth rates and staffing issues. West Valley Medical Center is the third facility to close its maternity services in Idaho since the state...

coloradonewsline.com

• ABORTION POLICY
• HEALTH

Idaho doctor who worked at closed maternity ward says abortion ban harmed recruiting​

BY: KELCIE MOSELEY-MORRIS - APRIL 21, 2024 4:00 AM


West Valley Medical Center in Caldwell, Idaho, closed its labor and delivery unit on April 1 for financial and staffing reasons. A former OBGYN who worked at West Valley for decades said the state’s abortion laws made it difficult to fill vacant OB positions. (Kelcie Moseley-Morris/States Newsroom)

A hospital in a rural area outside of Idaho’s capital city of Boise closed its labor and delivery and neonatal intensive care units April 1, citing declining birth rates and staffing issues.

West Valley Medical Center is the third facility to close its maternity services in Idaho since the state enacted a near-total abortion ban in August 2022. The county where the medical center is located had more than 3,300 births in 2022, and West Valley sees about 45,000 outpatient visitors in a year. The entire medical center has 112 beds.

The law subjects physicians to two to five years in prison, fines and the loss of their medical license for providing an abortion, even in emergency situations, at least until the U.S. Supreme Court makes a definitive ruling on the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act’s application in Idaho. Oral arguments in that case will take place April 24.

A February report by a coalition of Idaho physicians found the state lost 22% of practicing OB-GYNs since the ban took effect, and 55% of maternal-fetal medicine specialists. The first closure happened in Sandpoint, at Bonner General Hospital in March 2023. The hospital cited the political climate along with staffing issues in its announcement as the reason for closure.

West Valley did not specifically call out the abortion ban or other politics as a reason for closure, but Dr. Ted Colwell, who worked there full time for many years and as a retiree until the April 1 closure, told States Newsroom he thinks it was a factor. Colwell describes himself as “pro-life,” but he is concerned about the state of medical care in Idaho.

His responses to questions have been edited for clarity and conciseness.

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States Newsroom: What’s your experience with West Valley Medical Center in Caldwell?

Dr. Ted Colwell: I moved here from a residency training and started practicing in 1982 at what was then called the Caldwell Women’s Clinic, which started in 1969. I was the fourth physician in the group, and I’ve been basically in that practice for 36 years, though it has gone through different names and changes of staff. West Valley was always owned by HCA Healthcare, and we had a general OB practice. Someone asked me how many deliveries I’ve done over the years, and it’s around 7,000.

Dr. Ted Colwell (Courtesy of Ted Colwell)

SN: When did you retire?

Colwell: I retired in 2016. Because our group is accredited by the American Institute of Ultrasound Medicine, they needed someone to take on the role of reading ultrasounds for the clinic, so I’ve been doing that since I retired but that’s mostly from home.

SN: What was it like when you were told about the closure?

Colwell: I knew we were struggling, but when the announcement came, I was shocked. Caldwell is kind of a funny hospital in a sense that it’s kind of rural, but we had excellent maternity services and neonatal intensive care there. The hospital serves not only Caldwell, but a lot of the surrounding areas, so it’s not a small rural hospital, it’s a small regional hospital. St. Lukes and Saint Alphonsus (the two major hospital systems in the state) have spread their hospitals west at the same time, so in a way West Valley became surrounded, but that being said, we still have a very loyal patient population. I’m just sorry that something couldn’t be done to keep the services going at West Valley. I think they tried everything they could.

SN: What do you know about the staffing issues that led in part to the closure?

Colwell: I’ve been sort of involved with some of the recruitment efforts and interviewing of some of the potential candidates. Last year, we had five potential candidates, and due to various situations, all five decided to go elsewhere. Idaho used to be a state that attracted OBs for the outdoors, for the family values, the recreation — it’s a good place to live. But I think the overturn of Roe v. Wade had an impact, even though Idaho wasn’t known for large numbers of abortions. I know abortions happened here, and some physicians provided them, but the vast majority of the physicians I knew over the years did not do elective terminations. It didn’t really become an issue for me until this whole issue with the hospital came to a head.

People are going to suffer under this law, and it makes me mad that politicians get in the way of evidence-based medicine. I think they should not make it a criminal offense to take good care of women who need medical care and treatment.

– Dr. Ted Colwell

What I heard from others was that those who were interviewed in the last year expressed concerns regarding the legal climate and concerns of prosecution, which led them to not take our offer of employment. These concerns were from those that were relatively fresh out of training. I, on the other hand, wouldn’t care about that, and would do the right thing for the patient regardless. I guess that comes with 40-plus years of experience.

SN: Why do you think closing the labor and delivery unit is cause for concern?

Colwell: I feel that women and mothers bring families to the hospital, children and husbands, and when you lose that, there’s a risk of losing a lot of services at the hospital. People will be starting to drift off to other facilities further away to get their care. And when you come to the emergency room, if you’ve got a condition where it’s gynecological and there’s no one in the hospital who can take care of it, to me it puts the hospital in a bad situation. If a patient halfway through their pregnancy is told, “You’re going to have to find somebody else,” first of all, can they find somebody else? And two, can the other clinics who are still active absorb these patients? It’s going to put stress on the whole system.

SN: You described yourself as “pro-life.” Tell me what the difference is for you when it comes to this kind of medical care.

Colwell: There comes a time when you have to make a medical decision for the life of the mother. It’s taking care of patients. People are going to suffer under this law, and it makes me mad that politicians get in the way of evidence-based medicine. I think they should not make it a criminal offense to take good care of women who need medical care and treatment.

SN: What else do you want to add about the current landscape of maternity care in Idaho?

Colwell: I wish the legislators that push these laws through would think about the consequences of their actions. I think they kind of shoot from the hip, is my feeling, and they’re trying to make a statement, and I have not seen a real push (from organizations) to educate the legislators as to what the heck they’re doing. Why don’t you consult with the people that are involved? I mean, my gosh.

I hope West Valley can survive this. And it probably will. But it’s going to affect a lot of people in the meantime.

 

[bnew]

Spoiler: full text

1/1
The Dobbs decision led to a sharp rise in women deciding that if they’re not allowed to control their fertility, they'll eliminate it. After Dobbs, Americans are turning to permanent contraception


To post tweets in this format, more info here: https://www.thecoli.com/threads/tips-and-tricks-for-posting-the-coli-megathread.984734/post-52211196

Spoiler: larger images

 

[bnew]

Sam Alito Thinks We’re All Stupid

The justice snapped that “nobody’s suggesting” pregnant women don’t deserve medical care in E.R.s. Actually, lots of people would put the fetus before her.

newrepublic.com

Susan Rinkunas/

April 26, 2024

SNEAKY SAM

Sam Alito Thinks We’re All Stupid​

The justice snapped that “nobody’s suggesting” pregnant women don’t deserve medical care in E.R.s. Actually, lots of people would put the fetus before her.​

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito

During Wednesday’s Supreme Court arguments over life-saving abortions in emergency rooms, a few things became clear: The male justices are unconcerned by women’s suffering, and Justice Samuel Alito thinks there aren’t enough abortion restrictions across the U.S.—but if you press him on that point, you’re the ridiculous one.

The case, United States v. Idaho, is about whether emergency rooms in Idaho—a state that bans all abortions except those done to prevent death, not to preserve health—are in violation of a federal law that requires E.R. patients to be stabilized. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, says hospitals that accept Medicare funding have to stabilize patients facing threats to their health, and for pregnant patients facing complications, the treatment is sometimes abortion.

But this is not a normal case: Idaho is represented in part by Alliance Defending Freedom, or ADF, a far-right legal activist group that is pushing for nationwide restrictions, including a national abortion ban. Idaho and ADF argued in case briefs and before the court that a fetus is a separate patient under EMTALA and deserves equal treatment in E.R.s. This is a fetal personhood argument, and if it’s taken to its logical endpoint, it would lead to a ban on all abortions nationwide, the end of IVF as we know it (see: Alabama), and restrictions on certain forms of birth control. In practice, women whose water breaks too early could be forced on bed rest to try to save the fetus, or given C-sections against their will. The latter is already happening, and in fact, happened even before Dobbs.

During arguments, some of the male justices seemed content to talk about whether EMTALA’s funding conditions are an appropriate use of the Constitution’s spending clause, while the women were focusing on the medical harm Idaho’s law has caused to living, breathing women. Late in the argument, Alito—who wrote the majority opinion in Dobbs that allows laws like Idaho’s to be enforced—was upset that not enough time had been devoted to the existence of the words “unborn child” in the law about emergency room care.

Alito expressed concern that “one potentially very important phrase” may not have been mentioned: “EMTALA’s reference to the woman’s ‘unborn child.’” (Actually, Justice Neil Gorsuch asked about it 45 minutes earlier in the session.) Alito asked of the Biden administration’s lawyer, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, “Isn’t that an odd phrase to put in a statute that imposes a mandate to perform abortions?” He then inquired, “Doesn’t that tell us something?”

He was not-so-subtly hinting that he thinks there’s a legislative basis for fetal personhood hidden in the law, and said that EMTALA “indisputably protects the interests of the unborn child” if the pregnant woman wants to continue the pregnancy. Prelogar countered that “the duty runs to the individual with the emergency medical condition” and it was wrong to imply that “Congress suggested that the woman herself isn’t an individual, that she doesn’t deserve stabilization.” Sensing that Prelogar was onto him, Alito got testy. “Nobody’s suggesting that the woman is not an individual, and she doesn’t … she doesn’t deserve stabilization. Nobody’s suggesting that,” he snapped. Prelogar calmly responded that Idaho is currently treating women in this fashion.

Since the court let Idaho enforce its law in early January, six pregnant women have been airlifted out of state—that’s compared to just one patient in all of 2023. Emergency rooms in other states are also turning away pregnant patients—stories we’ve heard directly from some women who’ve sued, and in devastating news reports like one from the Associated Press published days before arguments. Women have, as one amicus brief noted, been “demot[ed]” to “second-class status under EMTALA.”

Not only did Alito ignore evidence from multiple states showing that bans are limiting women’s access to health care, he also disregarded the stated goal of one of the law firms involved in the case. As ADF CEO Kristen Waggoner recently told Politico, “We do believe at ADF that the Constitution protects the life of an unborn child and that that is in the 14th Amendment.” That would be game over for abortion—along with a lot of other reproductive healthcare.

ADF is not hiding its strategy. Alito, on the other hand, keeps to the stealthy shadows, attempting to advance arguments that promote fetal personhood while simultaneously insisting that this unprecedented expansion of personhood rights won’t come at the expense of women’s lives and autonomy. It’s a deception of the highest order and onlookers might be left to conclude that he either thinks we’re all too dumb to notice—or that he knows nothing can stop the 6-3 court from doing what it wants. (The latter attitude was quite evident in Thursday’s arguments over whether former President Donald Trump can claim immunity for allegedly orchestrating the January 6 insurrection.)

Alito seems to have a habit of trying to slip one over the American public. In the other abortion case this term, concerning the fate of the abortion drug mifepristone, he referred to the Comstock Act not by name, but by statute number, 18 U.S.C. 1461. Comstock is a dormant, Victoria-era law that the power-hungry folks behind Project 2025, the proposed agenda for a second Trump term, expect the former president to revive and enforce in order to ban the mailing of abortion pills—if not all clinic supplies—should he win a second term. Prelogar argued that case as well, and she made sure everyone knew what Alito was trying to pull. She responded, “I think that the Comstock provisions don’t fall within FDA’s lane.”

That interaction in March may help explain why Alito sounded so contemptuous Wednesday after the government’s lawyer called out his ulterior motives. Alito doesn’t like having his power challenged, and if you do it, he’ll suggest you’re simply being hysterical. But make no mistake, anti-abortion activists like ADF, the architects of Project 2025, and, yes, Alito, are plotting to erase the personhood of women and pregnant people. They’re telling us loud and clear.