U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia: “Roe fanned into life an issue that has inflamed our national politics…”
Advertisement
Late Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear its first major abortion case in almost a decade.
According to Politico Pro, oral arguments will likely take place this spring, and a ruling is expected before the court’s term concludes in June (Haberkorn, Politico Pro, 11/13). The divide over protecting the unborn and safeguarding the right of a woman to choose is among the starkest differences between the Republican and Democratic candidates. This important new research paints an alarming picture of what the future may be like for women across the country if the Supreme Court does not block this cruel law. Latina women living near the Mexican border and women who, due to cost or clinic proximity, had a hard time getting any reproductive health care at all, including Pap smears and contraception, reported abortion self-induction at significantly higher rates.
Two other provisions of the 2013 law – a ban on abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy and regulations involving abortion-inducing pills – are not part of the challenge. But Gosnell’s clinic – though one of the more horrific – is not an outlier in the abortion industry.
It is illegal under federal law for federal funds to be used for abortion.
Data were collected during a period in which an increasing share of US women seeking to terminate a pregnancy opted for medication abortion-a method that when administered properly has been proven very safe and effective especially early in pregnancy-and in which legislatures in many states passed medically indefensible restrictions on abortion care leading to a sharp decline in access to services.
But medical groups have lined up behind the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is challenging the law, to say the requirements aren’t necessary. “Emergency room physicians, hospital-based physicians and on call specialists already provide prompt and efficient treatment to all patients with urgent medical needs, including women with abortion-related complications”.
Gonidakis said he’s confident the U.S. Supreme Court will respect states’ rights to regulate their residents’ health and safety.
“Poverty, limited resources, and local facility closures limited women’s ability to obtain abortion care in a clinic setting and were key factors in deciding to attempt abortion self-induction”, the Texas Policy Evaluation Project found. Of the Texas women surveyed, 1.7 percent said they had performed an abortion on themselves, but 4.1 percent of them said their best friend had or they suspected she had.
Advertisement
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has, over the years, released 2,500 pages of records sought in the FOIA request, but held back information contained in the Planned Parenthood grant application and inter-agency emails. “She was devastated by the absurdity of the law, noting immediately that if she’d just come yesterday, the same doctor and staff would have been able to help her”, said Hagstrom Miller. “I didn’t have any money to go to San Antonio or Corpus [Christi]”, said a 24-year-old woman interviewed in the second study.
