DL Open Thread: Thursday, May 5, 2022

Abortion Pills The Next Battleground:

Medication abortion — a two-drug combination that can be taken at home or in any location and is authorized for use in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy — has become more and more prevalent and now accounts for more than half of recent abortions in the United States. If the federal guarantee of abortion rights disappears, medication abortion would likely become an even more sought-after method for terminating a pregnancy — and the focus of battles between states that ban abortion and those that continue to allow it.

“Given that most abortions are early and medication abortion is harder to trace and already kind of becoming the majority or preferred method, it’s going to be a big deal,” Mary Ziegler, a visiting law professor at Harvard, said. “It’s going to generate a lot of forthcoming legal conflicts because it’s just going to be a way that state borders are going to become less relevant.”

Delaware just expanded parameters as to who can prescribe these medications.  In case you’re wondering, Hensley, Ramone and Michael Smith all voted against this bill, which passed in both chambers on straight party line votes.  They all must be challenged.  I’m hoping that Planned Parenthood of Delaware is scouring its membership rolls as we speak.

Roe v Wade: What Happens When The Dog Catches The Car?:

The Supreme Court is apparently poised to unleash Pandora’s box upon the 2022 midterm elections, delivering Republicans the overturning of Roe v. Wade they have long sought — but which perhaps serves the party better as a political aspiration than a realized goal.

As The Washington Post’s Amber Phillips wrote recently, most of the recent GOP bills preemptively banning abortion or severely curtailing it include no exemptions for rape and incest. That includes bills signed recently in Florida, Kentucky and Oklahoma. Red states have passed about a dozen such laws this year, and only three include such exceptions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks such legislation and supports abortion rights. Arizona’s ban after 15 weeks makes no exceptions for rape and incest.

As the Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey wrote Wednesday, this is a significant departure from how the highest-profile Republicans have spoken about this issue for decades. Even Donald Trump, who ran in 2016 in part on nominating justices to overturn Roe (and has now apparently succeeded), emphasized his exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother as recently as 2019. He noted at the time that this was the position of Ronald Reagan.

Remember, for the Rethugs, it’s all about inflicting maximum pain on their enemies.  Who now clearly include victims of rape and incest.  Has the alarm gone off at Centrist Party HQ yet?

Enter George Carlin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTyeBQXk8V4&list=PLvza7yeuJ9P4-sM_0y5mZVaBYYA5V8SNZ

Hope he wasn’t too subtle for anybody.

I think the pollsters and pundits are wrong when it comes to the impact of overturning Roe v Wade.  I think it will be huge, and will really help Democrats who stand up for choice. And for groups of people whose rights could be threatened from an extreme right-wing Supreme Court.  Polls that show the prospective overturning of the decision having a low priority amongst voters addressed the prospective overturning of the decision.  A lot of people didn’t think it would really happen. Or, weren’t paying attention.  So, abortion was not considered among voters’ top priorities.  But, now, I think the ground will shift. And it won’t be ‘just’ because of abortion.  If the Court can do this, they can take rights away from any group the conservative majority doesn’t like.  Finally, something to galvanize voters despite the somnambulance of the Centrist Party.

Yes, The Pro-Choice Movement Helped Lose The Battle For Roe v Wade.  Not maliciously, of course.  But by figuring that it was ‘settled law’ and would stand as such.  In other words, naivete.  If only they’d listened to Bella Abzug:

So this was not a surprise. If you step back further, when Roe was ruled upon in 1973, it galvanized those opposed to it. And it gave (the pro-life movement) a very simple, clear target, a new raison d’etre: We want to overturn Roe. This is the culmination of 49 1/2 years of efforts and different approaches, novel approaches. And unfortunately, again, if you are a person who believes in reproductive choice, the pro-choice did not take a lot of that seriously for many years, and they are as much to, sort of, blame for this day as the pro-life will (take) credit for.

(The pro-choice movement) did not foresee a war here. NARAL’s executive director in 1973, when Roe was ruled upon, told her board after the ruling, “The court has spoken and the case is closed.” They saw this as, basically: It’s over. We’ve won.

The very, very opposite is true of the pro-life, who said: OK, now we have to think about this strategically, how will we go about overturning Roe? As a result of that imbalance, the pro-choice were playing catch up really for 49 1/2 years, as the pro-life (movement has) over and over again come up with many different ways to chip away at Roe and has been remarkably successful.

Roe was 1 day old in 1973 when Bella Abzug, who was a House representative from New York, urged Congress to codify Roe. She basically foresaw exactly where we are today, that there was the potential legislation to erode Roe. She introduced an act: The Abortion Rights Act, H.R. 254, to bar states from creating new (laws) on abortion. Congress ignored her bill, and anyway, it was doomed to failure because Roe allowed for future legislation. It gave states the right to oppose regulations from the second trimester onward, but here we are now and people want to go back and do exactly what Bella Abzug was saying that we ought to do.

What do you want to talk about?