I used to be optimistic about America’s future. Not anymore.

Unleashed by a right-wing Supreme Court, Republican legislatures around the country are repealing or restricting abortion rights. This is producing horror stories that I never thought I would see in the United States. A woman in Texas had to carry a dead fetus for two weeks because removing it would have required a procedure that is also used in abortions. A woman in Wisconsin bled for more than 10 days after an incomplete miscarriage because medical staff would not remove fetal tissue. A 10-year-old girl was raped in Ohio and had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion. These are the kinds of human rights violations we would be protesting if they occurred in other countries. That they are happening in the United States is an ominous sign of what lies ahead, because other countries in recent years that have taken away abortion rights — Poland and Nicaragua — have also taken away political rights. We already live in a “backsliding” democracy, where voting rights are being restricted and freedom is under siege. The most severe threat comes from an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party whose maximum leader is an unindicted and unrepentant coup plotter. Jonathan Swan of Axios has an alarming report on the preparations in Trump World for returning to power: “Sources close to the former president said that he will — as a matter of top priority – go after the national security apparatus, ‘clean house’ in the intelligence community and the State Department, target the ‘woke generals’ at the Defense Department, and remove the top layers of the Justice Department and FBI.” One of the instruments of Trumpian purges would be Schedule F, a new category of federal employment that Trump created in 2020 (and Biden rescinded), which would have removed tens of thousands of federal employees from civil service protections. By reviving Schedule F, Trump could fire career officials and replace them with ultra-MAGA loyalists. “F” might as well stand for “fascism,” because that is what we will get if Trump were to appoint his most fanatical acolytes to the most powerful positions in government. As political scientist Brian Klaas just wrote in the Atlantic, given that the GOP has become “authoritarian to its core,” there are two main ways to save America: Either reform the Republican Party or ensure that it never wields power again. But a MAGA-fied GOP is likely to gain control of at least one chamber of Congress in the fall and could win complete power in 2024. ~ Max Boot, Columnist and Longtime Conservative Stalwart https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/25/trump-second-term-threat-us-democracy/?utm_campaign=wp_follow_max_boot&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl-maxboot&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3778c7b%2F62dec15ecfe8a21601057d26%2F5976f806ade4e26514bcc8c9%2F6%2F16%2F62dec15ecfe8a21601057d26&wp_cu=798fbc1be6589a3768fb139e53083601%7C654c090c-4cc9-11e0-a478-1231380f446b

Doctors and patients deserve a ‘conscience’ exception to abortion bans

A lawsuit in Florida brought by the Jewish Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor challenges the state’s 15-week abortion ban by arguing that it is vague and violates equal protection and due process protections. But it also makes an interesting argument that raises some important legal and moral questions: that the law tramples First Amendment rights and the state constitution’s free-exercise clause. The complaint alleges, “The Act establishes as the law of the State of Florida, a particular religious view about abortion and when life begins, which is contrary to the views of Plaintiff, its members, congregants, and supporters as well as many other Floridians.” The suit explains: The Act reflects the views of Christian nationalists who seek to deny religious freedom to all others, under the arrogant, self-righteous notion that only they are capable of understanding God’s law and judgments and the religious views of all others are false, evil and not entitled to respect or constitutional protections. Proponents of this way of thinking used their political power to enshrine their narrow religious views as the law of the State of Florida, which not only results in irreparable harm to Plaintiff and all others who espouse a different view, including many of their co-religionists, but it also threatens and harms the very framework or our Democracy, and the cherished ideal of the separation of church and state which has been the cornerstone of American democracy since its inception and the reason it has been so successful and the envy of freedom-loving people throughout the world. Laws that ban abortion rest on the belief that “fetal life” is conterminous with “personhood.” The complaint explains why this assumption is so arrogant: “Jewish law does not consider life to begin at conception or at 15 weeks and most Jews such as Plaintiff, its members and congregants do not believe that all the rights of personhood are conferred upon a fetus.” The complaints adds, “In fact, under traditional Jewish law life begins at birth and if a fetus poses a threat to the health or emotional well-being of its mother, at any stage of gestation up until birth, Jewish law requires the mother to abort the pregnancy and protect herself.” Avraham Steinberg, an Israeli physician, explains in a paper for the Journal of Medical Ethics that Jewish medical ethicists prioritize not only human life but also the value of personal autonomy. “Autonomy is not only the privilege of the patient. It is widely agreed that the physician’s autonomy, too, must be respected,” he writes. A doctor’s professional and ethical obligations are generally to prevent risk of harm, favor less risky and invasive procedures over more risky and complicated ones. In a similar vein, medical ethicist Dr. Jay B. Lavine explains, “Everything possible must be done for every patient in terms of preserving life, treating illness, and relieving suffering. All therapeutic decisions must be in the patient’s best interests. The safest, gentlest treatment for a given condition must always be the preferred one.” Lavine adds, “Prevention is the highest form of healing. Drugs and surgery have their place in the holy art of healing, but the need to resort to invasive treatment must also be regarded as a failure in prevention.” Florida’s abortion ban would no doubt prevent the procedure in situations that Jewish ethics would either permit or require it. Whether this is sufficient to prove a violation of federal or state religious-freedom rights is an open question that will be litigated around the country. (Put it down on the list of legal conundrums that doctors and patients must now sift through thanks to the Supreme Court.) In any event, this is an issue the forced-birth crowd should care about. For years, right-wingers have strenuously insisted on religious carve-outs to allow employers to avoid government mandates for contraception coverage or health providers to deny certain services they disagreed with. While the federal ReligiousFreedom Restoration Act mandating conscience clauses was ruled unconstitutional as it applied to the states, 21 states have conscience clause laws in place as a matter of state law. Those just happen to include many of the states that have the most severe abortion bans in place. Failure to respect faith traditions with regard to abortion bans would prove that the right is looking out for Christians — and that it is willing to blithely infringe upon the rights of other religious groups. We will see whether state or federal constitutional claims invoking free-exercise clauses can prevail against state abortion bans. In the meantime, forced-birth advocates should be honest enough to acknowledge that protections for “fetal life” are nothing more than state enactment of a particular religious dogma. Moreover, they should ask themselves: If they value the right to opt out of state laws to protect their religious views, why do they find it acceptable to deny the same protections for those who don’t agree that personhood starts at conception? https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/24/abortion-bans-need-conscience-exceptions-jewish-religious-freedom/?utm_campaign=wp_follow_jennifer_rubin&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl-jenniferrubin&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3776c45%2F62dd52efcfe8a21601033d1e%2F5976f806ade4e26514bcc8c9%2F6%2F16%2F62dd52efcfe8a21601033d1e&wp_cu=798fbc1be6589a3768fb139e53083601%7C654c090c-4cc9-11e0-a478-1231380f446b

Republicans could be taking a victory lap. Here’s why they aren’t.

Republicans don’t want to talk about when women should retain the right to end a pregnancy, or what services politicians will provide to parents forced to have children they might not want or be able to afford. Democrats should force them to vote on these issues, one by one. An earlier Democratic procedural vote for a bill that would have enshrined the right to abortion into federal law failed in the Senate last month. But the bill was broad enough that even normally pro-choice Republican senators (such as Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) were willing to vote against it as “overly broad.” Democrats should break this issue into parts and force Republicans to answer all those sensitive questions they’ve been ducking. For instance: Do they support a federal right to abortion in, say, the first trimester? Yes or no? What about a right to abortion if the mother’s health is at risk? Or if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest? Should states be able to ban IUDs and any other contraceptives that prevent implantation of a fertilized egg? What about paid leave and other programs that provide resources to new moms and their babies? Should states that ban abortion be required to provide postpartum health care to women forced into unwanted (and sometimes dangerous) births? Republicans have been frustratingly opaque about their agenda (and not only as it relates to reproductive health). Democrats must get them on the record either committing to the protections and programs American women need — or fessing up to the unpopular positions they have been trying to hide. ~Catherine Rampell Columnist https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/28/republicans-could-be-taking-victory-lap-heres-why-they-arent/

As abortion rights disappear, Louisiana's poor climate for mothers and children comes into focus.

Post World Landscape By the numbers, Louisiana is among the most difficult places in the country to bear and raise a child. Pregnant Louisianans have long died during childbirth at higher rates than women in the rest of the country. Black women, who have been more likely to seek abortions, are four times more likely to experience pregnancy-related death than White women, according to one study. Louisiana has the third-highest teen birth rate in the nation, the third-highest share of preterm births and the second-highest share of low-birthweight births. It is not one of the 10 states with paid family leave requirements. Louisiana doesn’t require insurers to cover birth control or sterilization, and state law bans contraception from being distributed at schools, where sex education is optional and, when taught, must focus on “abstinence between unmarried persons.” The state ranks second in the nation for both poverty and child poverty. “If we’re going to be a pro-life state, let’s be pro-life, not just pro-birth,” said Marketa Walters, an Edwards appointee who serves as secretary of the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services. “And take care of the children that come into this state. Better mental health services, better behavioral health services. Let’s teach sex education in the schools.” Walters said the agency in recent months has already increased the amount of money people can get through welfare payments, as well as a program for family members to take care of kids. But she said she’s worried about an increase in domestic violence if pregnant women don’t have the financial stability to leave a relationship. “We desperately need more money for child welfare and staff,” she said. “You’ve heard me say that for six and a half years at the Legislature.” Some doctors are also raising alarms about the trigger law’s implications for prenatal care. One of the key reasons death of pregnant women is higher in Louisiana is because mothers are forced to travel long distances for care in many areas of the state, where health providers are sparse. New Orleans Health Director Dr. Jennifer Avegno said she’s concerned maternal mortality could get worse once the state’s strict anti-abortion laws go into effect, especially if patients in rural areas with few health providers have pregnancy complications that can only be fixed by removing a fetus. “We have to make very quick decisions with critical patients,” Avegno said. “Anything that creates confusion around that is detrimental not just to the physician but to the health and life of the patient.” “Any confusion, any limiting access...has a pretty clear effect that more women are likely to die,” she added. “As physicians, that’s incredibly hard to take.” Widespread poverty and other social ills also mean people typically have a harder time raising children in Louisiana than elsewhere. Jan Moller, head of the left-leaning Louisiana Budget Project, said the root causes of Louisiana’s grim climate for mothers and children can be traced back to poverty. “By almost any way you count it, Louisiana is one of the toughest places to have a kid and raise a kid,” Moller said. The state has already taken some key steps to expand health access to people who will be affected by the repeal of abortion rights. Since the late 1990s, lawmakers and governors have steadily expanded the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, to provide Medicaid coverage to children in poor families. More than half of Louisiana children are covered by the program or by Medicaid. And Medicaid, federal health insurance for people with low incomes, covers a wide swath of residents, driving down the state’s uninsured number and other metrics, like the number of women who don’t have a doctor. Gov. John Bel Edwards expanded Medicaid in line with the Affordable Care Act, the law known as Obamacare, in 2016. Even those changes haven’t been enough to turn the tide for women and kids, Moller said. The state has the highest gender pay gap in the country, no minimum wage, and residents have little access to paid leave. He also noted that the federal government sent a monthly check to families who qualified for the child tax credit as part of President Joe Biden’s covid relief package. But federal lawmakers let that program lapse. https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/article_86e68eae-f995-11ec-890d-8bbe50ae7bff.html

The right to choose abortion is vital, even when women don’t choose it

Women have been talking to me about their children. How much they love them. How important it is that they had chosen to have them. These women became pregnant in a time and place in which they could have chosen to end their pregnancies. But sometimes it’s the appearance of an exit ramp that makes you realize you want to stay on the highway after all. Sometimes a person needs to know they don’t have to in order to realize how much they want to. This is what was lost on the giddy steps of the Supreme Court on Friday morning. This is what is lost in the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It’s not the abortions we would have had. It’s the abortions we wouldn’t have had. We are losing the idea that we were the best stewards of our own bodies and our own futures — our right to self-determination. We are losing the reassuring voices of our pragmatic mothers saying, You don’t have to do this. And we are losing the freedom to decide to do it anyway, if that’s what we want. The abortions we didn’t have are as formative as the ones we did. They are the roads we took. They are the roads we took without ever dreaming that all other roads would be taken from us. ~Monica Hesse Columnist - The abortions we didn’t have. The right to choose abortion is vital, even when women don’t choose it https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/25/abortions-we-did-not-have/

A Dangerous New Era - The Washington Post Editorials

Moreover, as Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor noted in a dissent, the court’s ruling enables Congress to ban abortion across the country, even in cases of rape or incest. This will become a vicious internecine legislative war that, given the right political circumstances, could result in the wholesale abridgment of rights that should be considered basic. This prospect contradicts the majority’s insistence that it is merely returning the abortion question to the states. The court’s audacious attack on abortion rights raises questions about the future of other legal guarantees, including same-sex marriage, access to contraception and even interracial marriage. These guarantees are based on concepts of individual rights of the sort the court majority has now disregarded. Friday’s ruling was another reminder, for a country that needs no more, that Americans cannot take for granted the freedoms they enjoy. Their decisions, particularly how and whether they vote, can have direct, dramatic and negative consequences for their lives. A decades-long conservative crusade to nullify federal abortion rights has now succeeded, because Senate Republicans underhandedly stacked the court with justices who have proved to be disastrously intemperate. This tragic moment should wake Americans to reality: They must defend their rights, or they are liable to lose them. ~A Dangerous New Era - The Washington Post Editorials https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/overturning-roe-dangerous-era/