1). “Right-Wing Courts Are Coming for the Abortion Pill Next”, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto on the Texas court case that could block access to a drug the FDA says is safe and effective. Mar 9, 2023, Catherine Cortez Masto, Elle Magazine, Catherine Cortez Masto is the senior US Senator from Nevada and the former Attorney General of Nevada, at <https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a43250677/abortion-pill-texas-ruling-mifepristone/>
2). “Federal judge hears challenge to FDA approval of abortion drug”, March 15, 2023 (Updated 17 hours ago), Eleanor Klibanoff, Texas Tribune, at < https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/15/fda-abortion-drug-federal-court/ >
3). “Federal judge at center of FDA abortion drug case has history with conservative causes”, March 15, 2023, Eleanor Klibanoff, Texas Tribune, at < https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/15/federal-judge-amarillo-abortion-fda/ >
4). “21 South Carolina GOP Lawmakers Propose Death Penalty for Women Who Have Abortions: It’s not just a lone extremist: The bill has 21 co-sponsors in the state’s House of Representatives”, March 13, 2023, Tessa Stuart, Rolling Stone, at https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/south-carolina-death-penalty-abortion-1234695566/>
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: Just in case any readers or posters here at The Ongoing Class Struggle thought the overturning of Roe was the final word on the struggle for Reproductive Rights in the U.S., it is in fact just the beginning of the reactionary / fascist offensive against the majority of the U.S. Population. Tens of millions of people who merely want to plan their families and guard their health at a standard made possible by 21st Century healthcare.
That is not realistic unfortunately. The Left and the advocates for Reproductive Health Care access need to realize this. The time for slavishly obeying the insane rulings of antediluvian judicial tools of the U.S. ruling class is over. There is absolutely no reason why the so-called “Blue States” need to obey any more of these reactionary mandates from political hacks appointed by the Trump / McConnel / Leonard Leo / Federalist Society cabal. Craven operatives, like U.S. District Matthew Kacsmaryk, should be ignored while similar cases are heard in front of reliable pro-choice jurists; who can be depended upon to rule that Mifepristone cannot be prohibited in their jurisdictions. Mifepristone has, in fact, been proven over millions of uses to be as safe as drugs get.
I was torn between posting articles about the French Mobilization, or the banking crisis, rather than on this topic. The French have shown us how a working class can be sure their voices are heard. There are now, and in the recent past there have been, millions of French working men and women in the streets. They already have and will continue to shut down the country over the issue of pensions and the national retirement age. Already the well-off, in their tony neighborhoods in Paris and other French cities, have to walk past smelly piles of garbage. If the French Legislature passes Macron’s attempt to make working people work an extra two years we can be sure the struggle will intensify beyond what we see now. If we really want to affect the judicial rulings of the Partisan Hack U.S. Supreme Court; a crowd of a million or so, or at least a couple of hundred thousand, demonstrators surrounding the Supreme Court building for a few days would no doubt influence their thinking. Their limousines could even be pelted with sandwich bags of human and animal waste as they try to leave, and large hostile crowds could await the Fascist Six at their luxurious homes in the D.C. suburbs. The U.S. Left is entirely too polite and too dependent on the machinations of ruling class institutions.
During the mobilizations for union rights in the 1930s, and the Vietnam War protests in the 1960s and 1970s, large crowds of working and middle class people made their political positions clear. One night at the White House, during a large demonstration, Richard Nixon reportedly remarked to Henry Kissinger that “They have us surrounded Henry”. That is the way we want the ruling class to feel, surrounded by working people who are the great majority of the population. The Civil Rights Movement was just as persistent though they had to thread a more constrained situation in terms of the danger of ruling class ordered and orchestrated attacks. But the struggle continued and evolved; and in the end won some important, if incomplete, gains. The Capitalists are, in fact, weak, divided and without any sort of coherent plan to actually solve the many issues we, as a species, face. We must not be complacent.
1). “Right-Wing Courts Are Coming for the Abortion Pill Next”, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto on the Texas court case that could block access to a drug the FDA says is safe and effective. Mar 9, 2023, Catherine Cortez Masto, Elle Magazine, Catherine Cortez Masto is the senior US Senator from Nevada and the former Attorney General of Nevada, at <https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a43250677/abortion-pill-texas-ruling-mifepristone/>
Right-Wing Courts Are Coming for the Abortion Pill Next
5–6 minutes Catherine Cortez Masto, Elle Magazine March 9, 2023
Last year, I stood side by side with thousands of women protesting the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating 50 years of precedent protecting women’s reproductive freedoms. I was surrounded by mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers who were outraged that their daughters would now have fewer rights than they did. These women hadn’t only come together to speak out against the Dobbs decision—they were out in force because they knew extreme far-right elected officials within the Republican Party wouldn’t stop attempting to restrict abortion.
They were right.
Less than a year after the Supreme Court gutted reproductive rights, right-wing extremists are back to finish the job and limit women’s freedoms even in pro-choice states where abortion is legal. A new lawsuit in Texas, backed by the same anti-choice groups that campaigned to overturn Roe, aims to institute a nationwide ban on a pill, mifepristone, the first pill in a two-step medication abortion—the most common abortion method for American women. Mifepristone has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for more than two decades. Despite scientific evidence to support medication abortion as safe and effective, nationwide access to the pill may ultimately be decided by the right-wing Supreme Court, with a ruling in the Texas case expected any day now.
(Caption: Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto speaks at a pro-abortion rights rally in Reno in May 2022, ahead of the Dobbs decision. SOPA Images)
This is a deeply cynical move by far-right extremists who have spent the last 50 years working to turn back the clock on women’s rights. In the Dobbs case, right-wing Republicans lobbied the Supreme Court to revoke women’s freedom to make their own health care decisions under the guise of “states’ rights.” Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion insisted the decision to overturn Roe would “return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
This latest effort to effectively ban the abortion pill mifepristone nationwide shows anti-choice extremists are once again seeking the help of anti-abortion judges to use the court to erode women’s reproductive rights.
Let’s be clear: Far-right extremists claimed abortion was a states’ rights issue when it was convenient, and now they’re going after the freedoms of every woman seeking reproductive health care, even those living in pro-choice states.
Take my home state of Nevada, for example. In 1990—well before women’s rights were endangered by a conservative Supreme Court—Nevadans overwhelmingly voted to codify reproductive freedoms. More than 30 years later, 69 percent of state residents (including a majority of Republicans, Independents, and Democrats) consider themselves pro-choice. Nevada is among other pro-choice states across the country that have become safe havens for women seeking to make their own decisions about their bodies, and in the post-Roe era, health care centers in these states have taken in more and more women traveling across state lines to get the care they need. In bringing these attacks on the abortion pill to the courts, right-wing extremists are infringing on the rights of the states that still protect women.
If they succeed, don’t expect Americans to dismiss the decision’s devastating impact. Last fall, I was in the most competitive election in the country, with most national pundits predicting I would lose and cost Democrats our majority in the Senate. But they underestimated how strongly Americans feel about women’s rights. Everywhere I went on the campaign trail, I heard from men and women, from Republicans and Democrats, and in both rural and urban areas. They all agreed politicians shouldn’t be making women’s health care decisions. Those Nevadans rose up and re-elected me, joining tens of millions of Americans in battleground states across the country who defied history and elected pro-choice leaders during one of the most challenging midterm elections in recent memory.
Thanks to pro-choice voters across America, far-right extremists failed to get their Senate majority and won’t have an opportunity to pass their federal abortion ban. But that hasn’t stopped them; instead, they’re attempting to take away women’s rights through the same means they used to take down Roe: our courts. Americans are paying attention. When the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and placed women’s rights in politicians’ hands, countless Americans lost faith in the Court. Now, extreme politicians are reversing their position on states’ rights to get the abortion pill banned in pro-choice states like mine, sending a clear message that their main objective is to take away women’s freedoms, no matter the cost. But women will keep fighting back, and we aren’t going to let them continue to drag us backwards.
2). “Federal judge hears challenge to FDA approval of abortion drug”, March 15, 2023 (Updated 17 hours ago), Eleanor Klibanoff, Texas Tribune at < https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/15/fda-abortion-drug-federal-court/ >
Federal judge hears challenge to FDA approval of abortion drug
Eleanor Klibanoff 8–10 minutes Texas Tribune, March 15, 2023
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk said he would rule “as soon as possible” on the request for a preliminary injunction that would move mifepristone, a common abortion-inducing drug, off the market.
( Caption: Kathy Thomas, far left, holds a sign that reads “abortion is healthcare” during the Women's March protest outside of the Federal Courthouse in Amarillo on Wednesday, Reuters / Annie Rice)
AMARILLO – The future of medication abortion in the United States remains up in the air after a federal judge heard arguments Wednesday in a suit challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s long-standing approval of mifepristone.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk said he would rule “as soon as possible” on the challenge brought by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative, anti-abortion law firm.
ADF is asking Kacsmaryk to suspend — and ultimately withdraw — the FDA’s approval of the medication, which would have nationwide implications, especially in states where abortion remains legal. In the hearing, a lawyer for ADF conceded that this would be unprecedented, but argued that the court had the authority to intervene to prevent harm.
Lawyers for the Department of Justice and Danco Laboratories, the pharmaceutical company that produces generic mifepristone, argued that the lawsuit is meritless.
Granting a preliminary injunction would be “depriving patients and doctors of a safe and effective drug,” argued Julie Straus Harris, with the DOJ.
Since it was initially approved in 2000, mifepristone has been found to be overwhelmingly safe and effective for terminating pregnancies. Citing that body of evidence, the FDA has recently relaxed restrictions on the medication, which is used in the majority of the abortions in the United States.
In the suit, ADF is representing anti-abortion medical organizations and doctors who argue they have been harmed by having to treat patients who have experienced adverse effects from the medications — and that they anticipate increased harm as a result of these loosened restrictions.
They also argue the drug was initially approved improperly under an FDA regulation that fast-tracks drugs that treat serious illnesses.
“Pregnancy is not an illness,” said Erik Baptist, a lawyer for ADF, in Wednesday’s hearing. “Mifepristone doesn’t treat anything.”
Kacsmaryk, appearing to give weight to that argument, listed off all the drugs that were approved under this regulation before mifepristone, most of which treat HIV and cancer. Separately, he summarized Baptist’s argument as asking the court to “deem one of these not like the others.”
The hearing, which ran more than four hours in Kacsmaryk’s Amarillo courtroom, covered a wide range of arguments. But the central question before Kacsmaryk is not as much about abortion as it is about administrative procedure — and whether the plaintiffs have any right to bring this lawsuit at all.
The DOJ claims that the statute of limitations on the plaintiffs’ complaints has expired and they have not satisfied the requirements to reopen the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.
Mifepristone was approved by the FDA in 2000. Two years later, anti-abortion groups filed a citizen petition asking the FDA to reconsider. The FDA did not respond until 2016, when it rejected the question — on the same day that it released new guidance loosening restrictions on the drug.
Erin Morrow Hawley, an attorney for ADF, said this “agency gamesmanship” — as well as changes to the drug’s dispensing requirements in 2016 and 2021 — gives the court an opening to reconsider the approval.
The DOJ countered that there is a process to challenge delays, which the plaintiffs did not undertake, nor have they explained the gap between that 2016 petition rejection and the 2022 lawsuit filing. Lawyers for the government also argued that the doctors and medical associations who brought this lawsuit have not demonstrated sufficient harm.
In declarations, these medical providers laid out cases where they had to treat patients experiencing adverse effects from medication abortion.
Courts have long recognized that abortion providers have standing to bring suits challenging restrictions on behalf of their patients. ADF argued that this should similarly extend to doctors who oppose abortion.
Straus Harris, representing the FDA, questioned that argument, pointing out that abortion providers and their patients are pursuing the same medical procedure. In this lawsuit, doctors and patients are “diametrically opposed,” in that the doctors want to block medical care their patients may have otherwise sought out.
Kacsmaryk, in questioning the DOJ, raised an argument from the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June Medical Services v. Russo, a 2020 case that knocked down a Louisiana law restricting abortion access. But he cited a dissent from Justice Samuel Alito that argued abortion providers do not have close relationships with their patients and thus don’t have standing.
There was repeated discussion of an amicus brief filed by the attorney general of Mississippi and signed by the attorneys general of 21 other states, including Texas. That brief argued that the continued approval of mifepristone threatens states’ ability to protect their citizens, and “forces States to devote scarce resources to investigating and prosecuting violations of their laws.”
Baptist, the plaintiffs’ attorney agreed, arguing that revoking the FDA’s approval of mifepristone would restore proper power to the states to create and enforce abortion laws, noting that the use of medication abortion “knows no bounds.”
Straus Harris countered that the FDA’s approval does not obligate or require anyone to prescribe or take the medication, and thus does not set state policy; instead, she argued, it is the plaintiffs who are overstepping by trying to set national policy.
And despite the sea change in the last nine months, Straus Harris said all 50 states still allow abortion in some circumstances.
“Every state has an allowance under which mifepristone lawfully could be used,” she said, noting state laws that allow abortion to save the life of the pregnant patient, in cases of rape or incest, or due to lethal fetal anomalies. “An injunction would interfere with every state.”
Before joining the federal bench in 2019, Kacsmaryk worked on anti-abortion causes as deputy general counsel for First Liberty, a religious liberty law firm in Plano. As the only federal judge in Amarillo, he is automatically assigned 95% of the cases filed in that division.
He initially tried to conceal this hearing, keeping it off the docket after he scheduled it during a status hearing on Friday. According to a transcript of the hearing, he initially planned to wait until Tuesday night to announce it publicly, citing security concerns. After The Washington Post reported on the hearing over the weekend, it was docketed Monday afternoon.
At the conclusion of the hearing, Kacsmaryk thanked everyone who “endured the necessary planes, trains and automobiles” it took to get to Amarillo. And he applauded the “excellent, superb” arguments from both sides, saying it was a “smorgasbord of appellate-grade work.”
It will have to be: Whatever Kacsmaryk rules, it’s all but guaranteed that this case will end up before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
3). “Federal judge at center of FDA abortion drug case has history with conservative causes”, March 15, 2023, Eleanor Klibanoff, Texas Tribune, at < https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/15/federal-judge-amarillo-abortion-fda/ >
Federal judge at center of FDA abortion drug case has history with conservative causes
Eleanor Klibanoff 10–12 minutes Texas Tribune, March 15, 2023
U.S. District Matthew Kacsmaryk was once deputy counsel for the First Liberty Institute, the Plano-based conservative Christian law firm.
(Caption: U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Amarillo, Texas. Credit: U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas)
When anti-abortion groups wanted to challenge the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of an abortion-inducing drug, they didn’t file the lawsuit in Maryland, where the FDA is headquartered, or in any state where the pill is still legally prescribed.
They filed it in Amarillo, a Texas city that didn’t have an abortion clinic even before the state all but banned the procedure.
But Amarillo does have a federal courthouse with, importantly, just one federal judge presiding. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk hears 95% of the cases filed in Amarillo.
Before Kacsmaryk was appointed to the federal bench by President Donald Trump in 2019, he was deputy counsel for the First Liberty Institute, a deeply conservative religious liberty law firm based in Plano.
Under his leadership, First Liberty was involved in several legal fights over reproductive health care, including trying to block the “contraception mandate” which required health insurers to pay for birth control. Kacsmaryk himself has been outspoken in his opposition to LGBTQ rights.
Since Kacsmaryk joined the bench, the Texas attorney general and private litigants have brought their most contentious suits to Amarillo, largely with the desired outcome. He reinstated the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy on behalf of Texas. He struck down efforts from the Biden administration to protect LGBTQ workers and trans youth. And he ruled that a longstanding federal program that gives teens confidential contraception violated state law.
The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the anti-abortion group challenging the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, is based in Tennessee. But the group incorporated an Amarillo outpost in August 2022, records from the Texas Secretary of State’s office show, three months before filing the lawsuit. One of the plaintiffs is a doctor from Dumas, north of Amarillo, who claims he and his patients have been harmed by the FDA’s approval of the medication.
Religious liberty background
Kacsmaryk attended Abilene Christian University and the University of Texas School of Law before working in private practice at Baker Botts and serving as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Northern District.
In 2014, he joined First Liberty Institute as deputy general counsel. First Liberty, formerly the Liberty Institute, is a religious liberty legal group based in Plano. Its attorneys have argued several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including one in which the high court found a school district discriminated against a football coach who prayed on the sidelines after a game.
At First Liberty, Kacsmaryk challenged the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that health insurance plans cover birth control and emergency contraception like the morning-after pill. In a lawsuit, First Liberty argued that providing these medications, which they said were abortion-inducing, violated the plaintiff’s sincerely held religious beliefs.
First Liberty settled the suit in 2017 after the Trump administration amended the requirement to exempt those with “conscience-based objections” to providing contraception.
“Our clients have been litigating against the government’s effort to punish business owners and ministry leaders for following their religious beliefs and moral convictions since 2013,” Kacsmaryk said in a statement at the time. “As President Trump recognized … it is time to reaffirm ‘America’s leadership role as a nation that protects religious freedom for everyone.’”
In 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court was considering whether states must allow and recognize same-sex marriages, Kacsmaryk penned an essay in the National Catholic Register entitled “The Abolition of Man … and Woman.” He argued “sexual revolutionaries” had desecrated marriage by allowing no-fault divorce, decriminalizing adultery and legalizing contraception and abortion.
If the Supreme Court undid the “final pillar of marriage law” — that it be between a man and a woman — it would lead to a “clash of absolutes” between religious faiths that see gender as a binary and LGBTQ communities who believe, in Kacsmaryk’s words, “the human person is more like a pluripotent cell whose sex and sexuality are subject to autonomous self-definition.”
In 2016, Kacsmaryk advised parents who successfully challenged new policies at the Fort Worth Independent School District allowing students to use restrooms and pronouns aligned with their gender identity.
“This is not diversity but displacement, the absolutist imposition of a sexually revolutionized view of the human person without any accommodation for religious dissenters who may have a different view of man and woman, male and female,” Kacsmaryk told The Daily Signal.
Kacsmaryk has volunteered for a number of conservative candidates in Texas, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn. He also founded the Fort Worth chapter of The Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization that played an outsized role in choosing judicial nominees during the Trump administration.
Many of Kacsmaryk’s anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ stances were raised during his judicial nomination process. Major LGBTQ advocacy groups opposed his nomination. U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, said it was “really hard to imagine anyone who is less qualified to sit on the federal bench.”
“Every American deserves judges on the bench that protect their constitutional rights, not one that will try to rip them away,” Merkley said in 2019.
Kacsmaryk’s former First Liberty colleague, Jeff Mateer, lost his shot at a federal judgeship after his comments calling transgender kids part of “Satan’s plan” came to light.
But Kacsmaryk was confirmed, on a 52-46 vote, and began his lifetime appointment in June 2019. In his Senate hearing, he vowed to be fair.
“As a judge, I’m no longer in the advocate role,” he said. “I’m in the role of reading and applying with all good faith whatever Supreme Court and 5th Circuit precedent is binding.”
Why so many cases end up in Amarillo
It’s not a coincidence that this reliably conservative judge ends up hearing controversial cases brought by right-wing law firms, private litigants and the state of Texas.
It’s very common for lawyers to file in the district that gives them the best chance of victory. But the design of Texas’ federal judiciary makes it easy to “judge shop,” all but guaranteeing a specific judge will hear a case, said Steve Vladeck, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Texas has four federal district courts, which are further divided into 27 divisions. Each district court sets its own rules for how cases are divided up, but typically, cases are randomly assigned to judges within each division. Houston, for example, splits cases between seven full-time judges and five senior judges who have reduced case loads. But outside the state’s urban centers, there are fewer judges to share the load.
“For reasons that are not remotely nefarious, and that are entirely historical and geographical, the norm in Texas has long been that, in more remote parts of the state, the divisions are staffed by a single judge,” Vladeck said.
Texas has nine single-judge divisions and 10 divisions with just two judges; the ones staffed entirely by Trump appointees have been busy recently. Of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s 26 challenges to the Biden administration, seven were filed before Kacsmaryk and seven more before U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, in Victoria, who has a reputation for being conservative on immigration.
Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, said judge shopping is nothing new, citing examples going back to the civil rights movement.
“Lawyers have a duty to file a case in a district that best serves [their] client,” he said. “If Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit in Judge Kacsmaryk’s court, it’d be malpractice. You choose the forum that favors you best.”
The U.S. Department of Justice has recently tried to block this practice, filing motions to transfer cases out of Kacsmaryk and Tipton’s courtrooms.
“The case does not arise from any event or omission occurring in the Northern District of Texas, much less the Amarillo Division,” the motion before Kacsmaryk reads. “Plaintiffs’ decision to forum shop by filing in the Northern District—and, in particular, in the single judge Amarillo Division, which has no connection whatsoever to this dispute—undermines public confidence in the administration of justice.”
Neither judge is likely to rule to remove cases from their own courtrooms. But these filings may elevate the issue to those who could change the rules, Vladeck said: the chief judges over each district, who could reallocate cases, or Congress, which could institute more uniform rules across the board.
In the meantime, though, the main avenue to challenge rulings from Texas district courts goes through the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is known to be similarly conservative. Only a small portion of cases will eventually go on to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Texas district courts are losing in the Supreme Court,” Vladeck said. “But by the time that happens, no one has noticed because for two years, they got away with it.”
Disclosure: Planned Parenthood, Texas Secretary of State and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
4). “21 South Carolina GOP Lawmakers Propose Death Penalty for Women Who Have Abortions: It’s not just a lone extremist: The bill has 21 co-sponsors in the state’s House of Representatives”, March 13, 2023, Tessa Stuart, Rolling Stone, at <https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/south-carolina-death-penalty-abortion-1234695566/>
“South Carolina Lawmakers Propose Death Penalty for Abortions Seekers” Tessa Stuart 7–9 minutes
21 South Carolina GOP Lawmakers Propose Death Penalty for Women Who Have Abortions
It’s not just a lone extremist: The bill has 21 co-sponsors in the state’s House of Representatives
(Caption: The exterior of the South Carolina State House Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Members of the South Carolina State House are considering a bill that would make a woman who has an abortion in the state eligible for the death penalty.
The “South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023” would amend the state’s code of laws, redefining “person” to include a fertilized egg at the point of conception, affording that zygote “equal protection under the homicide laws of the state” — up to and including the ultimate punishment: death.
The bill was authored by Rep. Rob Harris, a registered nurse and member of the Freedom Caucus; it has attracted 21 co-sponsors to date. (Two former co-sponsors — Rep. Matt Leber and Rep. Kathy Landing — asked to have their names removed as sponsors of the bill. Leber and Landing could not be reached for comment.)
Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican who represents South Carolina in the U.S. House, took to the floor on Friday to call attention to the bill, which she sees as part of a “deeply disturbing” trend. (Multiple Texas lawmakers have floated the idea of executing women who have abortions in the past. Those bills, proposed before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, failed.)
“To see this debate go to the dark places, the dark edges, where it has gone on both sides of the aisle, has been deeply disturbing to me as a woman, as a female legislator, as a mom, and as a victim of rape. I was raped as a teenager at the age of 16,” Mace said. “This debate ought to be a bipartisan debate where we balance the rights of women and we balance the right to life. But we aren’t having that conversation here in D.C. We aren’t having that conversation at home. We aren’t having that conversation with fellow state lawmakers.”
Asked about exceptions for victims of rape, which Mace raised in her remarks on the floor, Harris told Rolling Stone, “There are other bills with exceptions, but will do little or nothing to save the lives of pre-born children.” He went on list exceptions the bill does contain, including: “a ‘duress’ defense for women who are pressured/threatened to have an abortion” and “medical care to save the mother’s life… The functional language in that scenario is whether the baby’s life is forfeited ‘unintentionally’ or ‘intentionally’.” (Asked if he saw any irony between being a member of the so-called “Freedom Caucus” while proposing such harsh restrictions on reproductive freedoms, Harris responded simply: “Murder of the pre-born is harsh.”)
In 2021, legislators in South Carolina — which has experienced difficulty obtaining drugs to carry out executions by lethal injection — revived the electric chair and firing squads as methods to kill inmates convicted of capital crimes. (The South Carolina Supreme Court is currently weighing the constitutionality of that law after a lower court found lawmakers who passed the law “ignored advances in scientific research and evolving standards of humanity and decency.”)
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June, Republican lawmakers in South Carolina’s House and Senate have failed to agree on new abortion restrictions. Republicans in the House have insisted on outlawing abortion at conception, while the GOP majority in the Senate has put forth a proposal that would ban the practice at around six weeks gestation.
Abortion is currently legal in South Carolina up to 21 weeks and 6 days; a 2021 ban outlawing abortion at six weeks was struck down by the state’s Supreme Court in January. Self-managed abortion — obtaining medication to terminate a pregnancy without a doctor’s supervision — is illegal in the state, punishable with a fine of $1000 and up to two years in prison. Earlier this month, a Greenville woman was arrested under that law for taking pills to end a pregnancy in 2021.
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