Who Are We Forcing To Give Birth Today? (Everybody, Basically)

Your abortion news roundup

We have several front-line dispatches from the Republican war on women's bodily autonomy, which keeps getting uglier. Let's take a look at what the bastards are up to this week:

Michigan: House GOP Does D & E On Repeal Of 1931 Abortion Ban

In Michigan, Democrats in the Republican-dominated state legislature have been trying to get a vote on repealing the state's 1931 near-total ban on abortions. Once the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, that 1931 law would have come back into effect, but it was blocked by a judge after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer sued. But if that order is reversed by the appeals process, the law would snap right back into effect.

Michigan House Democrats on Wednesday attempted to "tie bar" all bills under consideration to a measure repealing the 1931 law — a maneuver that would require a vote on repeal in order for other bills to pass. But the attempt was thwarted by the Republicans, using a rare, antiquated procedural rule that hasn't actually been invoked in decades. Republicans declared the amendment motion "dilatory," meaning that it was simply an attempt to "obstruct or thwart the will of the assembly;" i.e., a meaningless delay tactic.

Which is to say, the amendment, offered by state Rep. Carol Glanville, was killed before it could even be debated. Oh look, video!

“🚨 BREAKING 🚨House Republicans just shut down the 1931 Abortion Ban Repeal with a rare ‘Dilatory’ ruling. 'Dilatory' is reserved for items perceived to be a waste of the House's time. We couldn't possibly disagree more when it comes to the constitutional rights of Michigan women”

— MI House Democrats (@MI House Democrats) 1664387008 

So that was what you'd have to call a Dilatory Evacuation of the amendment.

House Democratic Leader Donna Lasinski condemned the ruling, calling it

insulting and completely detached from the reality facing women across our state and the clear demand that these rights be protected. Lansing Republicans ruled our efforts to do just that a waste of their time

Lasinski said the measure deserved an up-or-down roll call vote, to get members of the House on the record, and noted that "instead we get this: a majority party pulling out every ancient tool they can dust off to trample any notion of protecting these rights.”

Fortunately, Michigan voters will still be able to vote in November's general election on a constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights, which would put the 1931 law out of its misery once and for all. [ Michigan Democrats / Michigan Advance ]

If 1931's Too Recent, There's Arizona's Just-Restored 1864 Ban

One week ago, a judge in Arizona ruled that the state's prohibition of nearly all abortions, passed when Arizona was still a territory, could go into effect. Abortions in Arizona were banned immediately, and in the week since the ruling by Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson, clinics across the state have tried to help patients arrange to get their procedures in neighboring states like California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado, where abortion remains legal.

The Arizona law contains no exceptions for rape or incest, with only an exception to protect the life of a pregnant patient, which, as in many other states, is so vaguely-defined as to be nearly useless, since providers are likely to delay treatment until a patient's life is "endangered enough" to meet the law.

Planned Parenthood Arizona on Monday filed a request for Johnson to put the ruling on hold while her decision is appealed, since in addition to the territorial law, there's also a more recent "trigger ban" law in Arizona that bans abortion after 15 weeks, as well as other laws regulating abortions in the state. That request for a stay was joined yesterday by the Pima County Attorney, but so far Judge Johnson has not responded. [ Politico / PBS NewsHour / KGUN-TV ]

Ohio: Two More Minors Who Were Raped Unable To Get Abortions

In Ohio, affidavits in a lawsuit against the state's ban on abortion say that at least two more minors who became pregnant after being raped were forced to travel to other states to get abortions. Ohio became the focus of worldwide criticism shortly after Roe v Wade was overturned, when news broke that a 10-year-old rape victim had to go to Indiana to get an abortion since she was just past the six-week cutoff for a legal abortion.

The affidavits are part of a lawsuit against the 2019 "trigger" law that forced that girl to go to Indiana; the bill forbids abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be detected by an ultrasound. That bill is currently blocked from enforcement until at least October 14 due to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs in the suit argue that the Ohio law is so extreme that it violates women's due process rights under Ohio's constitution.

In addition to the minors who were raped — one girl was 16; the age of the other isn't given in the Ohio Capital Journal story — the affidavits detail how the law has resulted in extreme medical and psychological distress for at least two dozen other women:

The descriptions include those of three women who threatened suicide. They also include two women with cancer who couldn’t terminate their pregnancies and also couldn’t get cancer treatment while they were pregnant.

Another three examples were of women whose fetuses had severe abnormalities or other conditions that made a successful pregnancy impossible. Even so, they couldn’t get abortions in Ohio.

And in three cases, debilitating vomiting was caused by pregnancy — so bad in one case that a woman couldn’t get off the clinic floor. But neither could these women get abortions in Ohio, the affidavits said.

The case of the 16-year-old also illustrates how the abortion ban has complicated police investigation of sex crimes against minors. The operations manager of Women’s Med Center in Dayton, Aeran Trick, said the girl became pregnant "after being sexually assaulted by a family member." She went to Indiana to get an abortion, and Trick wrote that local law enforcement in Ohio, which had been investigating the case already,

had to drive to our Indianapolis clinic to retrieve the tissue for crime lab testing related to the sexual assault investigation. [...] I am concerned that Ohio’s ban and the need to travel increasingly far distances to obtain abortion care not only causes unimaginable harm to these young victims, but could also hamper law enforcement’s ability to investigate and prosecute these cases in the future.

The women with cancer were denied treatment in Ohio because providers feared the women weren't sick enough yet to meet the statute's vague exception allowing abortions to protect a patient's life or health. As a result, they both had to delay chemotherapy until after pregnancy or went to other states for abortions.

And despite anti-abortion activists' insistence that nobody would ever be denied treatment of an ectopic pregnancy under abortion bans, two Ohio women did in fact have their treatment delayed at emergency rooms because the hospitals couldn't be absolutely certain there was no pregnancy in the uterus as well. One woman convinced a physician to treat her several days later; another only got treatment after a fallopian tube ruptured, requiring emergency surgery that could have been avoided if the tubal pregnancy had been treated with medication earlier.

As we keep pointing out, abortion-banners are perfectly fine with such suffering, because women shouldn't have sex anyway, and if some suffer or die because they delay treatment, that's an acceptable loss as long as there's an extremely slim chance a Holy Fetus might survive a high-risk pregnancy. [ Ohio Capital Journal ]

Maine Congressional Debate Moderator Asks Men Abortion Question, Forgets Woman Candidate

Hey, at least this story doesn't actually involve legislators restricting abortion rights, so it's arguably the nicest one in our roundup. During Tuesday night's televised debate in the race for Maine's Second Congressional District, moderator Pat Callaghan of WCSH-TV only addressed questions about possible federal laws on abortion to the Democratic incumbent, Jared Golden, and the Republican candidate, former Rep. Bruce Poliquin, without offering independent Tiffany Bond a chance to answer. Even though Bond is very much a long-shot candidate, for fuckssake you don't exclude the only woman on the set when the question is abortion! Here's video:

“"Does a woman get to answer that question?" Watch as the moderator for the #ME02 race asks both men on the stage about their stances on abortion and reproductive rights but completely fails to ask the only woman on stage, @TiffanyBond. https: //t.co/VTbl3smokw”

— Holly Figueroa O'Reilly (@Holly Figueroa O'Reilly) 1664468917 

Golden defended his vote for a national bill enshrining Roe in law, and said he supported the right of abortion up to the point of viability and when medically necessary (in an attempt to bypass dishonest GOP distractions about "late-term abortion," as if anyone has an abortion on a whim in the second or third trimester). Polquin semi-sidestepped a question about whether he'd vote for a possible national abortion ban, saying abortion law should be left up to the states but not giving a firm "no." When Callaghan started to move on to a new question, Bond interrupted, asking, "Does a woman get to answer that question?" She actually offered a more direct answer than Golden, too:

This should not be legislated at all, including late-term terminations, which are not women who are harlots willy-nilly running around getting pregnant and terminating eight months. Those are families that are grieving the loss of very wanted children.

Hilariously, Callaghan's near-skipping of Bond isn't even mentioned in WCSH's reporting on the debate. [ WCSH-TV ]

And that's about as bad as we've got for the moment, with the caution that it can always get worse.

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