Abortion

by Jeremy Leaming

Federal and state judges are not immune to falling for dubious studies passed off as science when ruling against gay couples in marriage or adoption cases. Wobbly science backing up outlandish state restrictions on abortions is just as troubling, if not as common.

Salon’s Irin Carmon highlights a recent ruling by U.S. District Judge James Teilborg, appointed to the bench by President Clinton, to uphold an Arizona law that outlaws abortions before viability. It’s one of the few state laws to ban pre-viability abortions and Teilborg’s opinion runs counter to the U.S. Supreme Court precedent that forbids states from banning abortions before viability.

But beyond Teilborg’s failure to grasp precedent, Carmon notes his reliance on the “suspect science of ‘fetal pain,’ a first in the federal courts ….”

The ACLU and the Center for Reproductive Rights challenged the constitutionality of the Arizona law, but as Carmon notes did not delve into the suspect science because of the clear precedent on laws banning pre-viability abortions.

The judge, however, claimed that there is “substantial and well-documented evidence that an unborn child has capacity to feel pain during an abortion at least 20 weeks gestational age.”

Carmon notes that leading medical organizations, such as the Journal of American Medical Association and the Royal College of Obstetricians have found otherwise.

That ruling, which can be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, follows a recent one from a federal appeals court upholding a South Dakota law that orders physicians to tell women seeking an abortion that abortions cause an increased risk of suicide and suicidal thoughts. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit claimed there is “extensive evidence” of such risks.

by Jeremy Leaming

Lawmakers bent on undermining the rights of women are not of course confined to the nation’s capital. They just happen to draw plenty of attention, especially when they attempt to scuttle health care policy intended to protect the health of women or decide to slow expansion of the Violence Against Women Act, a law that has been reauthorized, with bipartisan support, twice since its passage in 1994.

But over the past two years numerous state lawmakers have garnered increasing notice for their strident efforts to make it nearly impossible for women to obtain abortions. Louise Melling, director of the ACLU’s Center for Liberty, noted last year that the states were on a disconcerting roll of attacking reproductive rights. In the process, Melling said the states were stigmatizing women, by essentially saying they are incapable of making decisions on abortions. These state efforts say “women can’t make these decisions, we’re not … trusted decision-makers, and we need assistance as we make this decision,” Melling told ACSblog.

Reporting for The Huffington Post, Laura Bassett notes that Idaho’s attempt to force women to undergo an ultrasound and hear anti-abortion propaganda from the state before choosing to have an abortion included a ridiculously offensive comment from state Sen. Chuck Winder.

Before the Senate passed the bill, some opponents noted it failed to provide an “exception for rape victims, incest victims or women in medical emergencies,” Bassett wrote.

Winder responded to the concern by suggesting that women may not know when they’ve been raped.

“Rape and incest was used as a reason to oppose this,” he said. “I would hope that when a woman goes in to a physician with a rape issue, that physician will indeed ask her about perhaps her marriage, was the pregnancy caused by normal relations in a marriage or was it truly caused by rape. I assume that’s part of the counseling that goes on.”

Bassett notes that if Idaho’s bill becomes law, victims of rape or incest seeking an abortion will be steered to centers that aim “to dissuade women from having an abortion.”

Idaho is among the slew of states that have joined with national lawmakers in an increasingly aggressive attack on women’s rights. Blog for choice provides more information on the “serious nationwide outbreak of politicians who are practicing medicine without a license.”

What is likely not surprising is that many of the right-wing politicians peddling destructive health care policy for women, are also in the camp of decrying the landmark health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as a heavy-handed attempt by the federal government to regulate the health care industry.

Former U.S. Solicitor General Walter Dellinger (pictured), at last year’s ACS National Convention, lambasted the argument that the ACA was a grave threat to liberty.