“State-Imposed Ideological Barriers”: Judge Strikes Down North Carolina’s Forced Ultrasound Law For Violating The First Amendment
Doctors in North Carolina are no longer required to display and describe ultrasound images to their patients before proceeding with an abortion procedure, thanks to a federal judge’s ruling on Friday afternoon. U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles struck down those provisions of North Carolina’s forced ultrasound law because they violate free speech rights.
Requiring women to have an ultrasound before they may have an abortion has become an increasingly popular policy, and is currently in place in 10 states. North Carolina, which first enacted its mandatory ultrasound law in 2011, was one of three states to take it a step further — requiring doctors to show the images to their patients and describe the embryo in detail.
While some women do choose to look at their ultrasound before having an abortion, others would prefer to avoid it. Rather than allowing women to decide how to handle their own medical procedures, however, North Carolina’s forced ultrasound law removed their autonomy from the equation. And according to Eagles, it also forced doctors to deliver an anti-abortion message approved by state lawmakers.
“The Supreme Court has never held that a state has the power to compel a health care provider to speak, in his or her own voice, the state’s ideological message in favor of carrying a pregnancy to term, and this Court declines to do so today,” Eagles wrote in her ruling.
Women’s health advocates celebrated the news.
“Today’s ruling marks a major victory for North Carolina women and sends a message to lawmakers across the country: it is unconstitutional for politicians to interfere in a woman’s personal medical decisions,” Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, noted in a statement.
“The court’s ruling makes clear that politicians cannot use physicians as mouthpieces for their political agenda, and reaffirms the constitutional right of every woman to decide for herself whether to continue or end a pregnancy,” Nancy Northrup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, added.
Anti-choice activists typically assume that if women simply have the chance to see an image of their fetus, they’ll change their mind about having an abortion and decide to carry their pregnancy to term. But there’s no scientific evidence to back up that claim. In fact, a large study published earlier this month found that the vast majority of women who seek out abortion services have already made up their mind, and viewing an ultrasound doesn’t sway them. Earlier research has also confirmed that nearly 90 percent of women are “highly confident” about their decision to end a pregnancy, and state-imposed barriers don’t change that.
Perhaps more broadly, it’s important to remember that most of the women who have abortions aren’t exactly ignorant about the realities of pregnancy. About 61 percent of them already have at least one child, and they already know what an ultrasound looks like.
By: Tara Culp-Ressler, Think Progress, January 21, 2014
“An ‘Impermissible Attempt’ To Coerce Women”: Federal Court Permanently Blocks North Carolina’s Narrated Ultrasound Law
A federal court on Friday permanently blocked a North Carolina law requiring women to undergo coercive counseling and a narrated ultrasound prior to obtaining an abortion. The judge permanently enjoined the unconstitutional law, ruling that “the Act requires providers to deliver the state’s message to women who take steps not to hear it and to women who will be harmed by receiving it with no legitimate purpose.”
United States District Court Judge Catherine Eagles called the law “an impermissible attempt to compel these providers to deliver the state’s message in favor of childbirth and against abortion.”
The decision is a clear victory for doctors and women in the state, and a strong indictment of similar laws intended to pressure or shame women out of accessing basic medical care.
Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, celebrated the ruling in a statement. “Today’s ruling marks a major victory for North Carolina women and sends a message to lawmakers across the country: it is unconstitutional for politicians to interfere in a woman’s personal medical decisions,” she said. “This dangerous law would have required abortion providers to perform an ultrasound and place the image in the woman’s line of sight — even if she asks not to view it. The provider would then be required to describe the image in detail — even over the woman’s objection. It made no exceptions for women under any circumstances, including cases of rape, incest, or those who receive a tragic diagnosis during pregnancy.”
The North Carolina law was a clear overstep, but as Salon has previously noted, forced ultrasound laws do virtually nothing to influence women’s choices, making them little more than intentionally punitive policies intended to shame women for making sound medical choices.
By: Katie McDonough, Salon, January 17, 2014
“Where Beliefs Diverge”: The Issue That Turns Republicans Against Israel
America’s right believes that Israel can do no wrong when it’s building settlements in the occupied territories or trying to prevent a nuclear deal with Iran. But when it comes to social policies, fundamentalists ignore that Israel is far more progressive than the United States.
A new governmental panel is suggesting that the Jewish state pay for all abortions for women aged 20-33. Currently, abortions for medical reasons and for girls under the age of 18 are subsidized by the government.
“Unlike in the United States, abortion has never figured in the country’s political campaigns,” The Times of Israel’s Lamar Berman notes. “In fact, Israel does not even have an active anti-abortion movement.”
The Hyde Amendment makes it illegal for Medicaid to fund any abortions, except in the cases of rape, incest or a threat to the life of the mother. Several Republican state legislatures have passed laws that will require women to purchase an additional waiver to cover abortion.
Israel has a single-payer health care system, which helps keep costs low, as Mitt Romney noted during his visit to the country in 2012.
Christians like to play up their connection to the religious traditions of the Holy Land. But abortion is an issue where beliefs diverge.
“That Jewish law does not consider the fetus to be a legal person goes to the heart of why so-called ‘personhood’ amendments—laws that would declare a fertilized egg to be a person with rights—and other attempts by lawmakers and activists to afford fetuses equal protection rights have a constitutional problem,” Sarah Posner notes. “They reflect a particular religious view, one that is not, as Christian-right activists like to say about their beliefs on reproduction, a ‘Judeo-Christian’ one.”
As the far right has moved even further to the right on abortion — passing more restrictions in the last three years than in the decade before — it also has intensified its embrace of the Jewish state. Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev pointed out in 2011 that if President Obama treated Israel the way Ronald Reagan — who placed an embargo on arms sales to the state — did, he would be impeached.
The growing influence of the Christian Coalition following Pat Robertson’s galvanizing 1988 presidential campaign has shifted power to the evangelicals of the Republican Party and given rise to policies based on Christian Dispensationalism, which argues the Jews must return to Israel for the second coming of Jesus Christ to occur. Some Christians go further and argue that the conversion of the “chosen people” is necessary to bring about the rapture. George W. Bush recently raised funds for a group that is actively engaged in converting Jews.
The drastic dissonance between American fundamentalists and Israeli health experts — who would prefer to fund all abortions for all women but didn’t propose this for budgetary reasons — suggests that the right is willing to ignore differences of opinion on reproductive rights… when they’re focused on bringing about the end of the world.
By: Jason Sattler, Featured Post, The National Memo, January 2, 2014
“The Eugenics Forum”: If This Is What 2016 Is Going To Look Like, The GOP Is In Big Trouble
“In your lifetime, much of your potential — or lack thereof — can be known simply by swabbing the inside of your cheek,” Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said at Liberty University on Monday, during a rally for the Virginia GOP’s nominee for governor, Ken Cuccinelli. “Are we prepared to select out the imperfect among us?”
The senator was making an argument against abortion rights by conjuring eugenics, a pseudo-science of genetic improvement that resulted in sterilization laws across America in the 20th century. And he was possibly plagiarizing from Wikipedia to do it.
If Cuccinelli were leading in polls — even his own poll — appealing to the far right with abstruse arguments that have almost no appeal to swing voters probably wouldn’t be a very good idea with only eight days until the election.
But Paul — a Tea Party favorite — was in Virginia to shore up Cuccinelli’s support among libertarians currently trending to the Libertarian Party nominee Robert Sarvis, who refuses to identify as anti-abortion.
Until the government shutdown and polls that show him losing by as much as 17 percent, Cuccinelli had veered away from social issues, attempting to avoid pointing out that he opposes same-sex sex even as a majority of America accepts same-sex marriage. But at this point the Republican nominee is just trying to hold on to his base, hoping the electorate resembles 2010 much more than 2012.
Meanwhile, Bill Clinton is crisscrossing the state with his old friend, Democratic nominee for governor Terry McAuliffe. And as he did when he barnstormed for President Obama in the final days before the last presidential election, Clinton was aiming right down the center.
“If we become ideological, then we’re blind to evidence,” the former president said on Sunday. “We can only hear people who already agree with us. We think we know everything right now, and we have nothing to learn from anybody.”
McAuliffe is definitely running a far more liberal campaign than his fellow Democrats, Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Tim Kaine (D-VA), who have recently won statewide elections in Virginia.
“Like the president, McAuliffe has endorsed gay marriage; universal background checks for gun purchases; an assault-weapons ban; a pathway to citizenship for immigrants here illegally; a mandate on employers offering health insurance to include free contraception coverage; and limits on carbon emissions from new coal-fired power plants,” The National Journal‘s Ron Brownstein reports, in a story examining how McAuliffe is winning as a “liberal Democrat” in purple Virginia. “He would also reverse the tight restrictions on abortion clinics championed by state Republicans led by Cuccinelli and outgoing Gov. Bob McDonnell.”
The combination of these ideas moving into the mainstream along with the contrast to Cuccinelli’s fundamentalism has given the Democrat a chance to still position himself as a centrist.
While his tone can be harsh, Cuccinelli’s policies are generally in the mainstream of the GOP’s base, represented by 2016 frontrunners Paul, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and former senator Rick Santorum.
Even Governors Scott Walker (R-WI) and Chris Christie (R-NJ) have defunded Planned Parenthood in their states. Still, Christie’s willingness to literally embrace President Obama has positioned him as a “moderate” in the party. If he or former governor Jeb Bush were to win their party’s nomination in 2016, presenting the GOP with its third “moderate” candidate in a row, it’s not hard to imagine the Tea Party wing of the party losing patience and finding its own nominee that would draw voters away from the Republican nominee, as Sarvis seems to be siphoning from Cuccinelli. (Perhaps that third-party nominee could even be Senator Paul, who begins his first run for president by inheriting a grassroots network built up during his father’s two presidential campaigns.)
The next president of the United States will likely have to win in Virginia. And that person is not likely to be the person discussing eugenics a week before the election.
By: Jason Sattler, Featured Post, The National Memo, October 28, 2013
“More Than A Value For Birth”: A Right-Wing Agenda Can Be Defeated
Pope Francis is stirring up all Catholics and the ways that we are involved in the world — including in politics. For too long the leaders of our church were either firmly committed to a narrow view of the Gospel or were timid about speaking of the full message of Jesus. Politicians have been for not toeing the line on the narrow message.
Now we have a breath of fresh air. This fresh air is disturbing to those who have engineered the narrow message. I can only imagine that those who have been focused on abortion and same sex marriage are angry at the sea change. Their crafty plans of using faith for a right-wing political agenda are crashing down around their ears. Pope Francis is saying that the Gospel cannot be used to benefit one political party.
In 2012 U.S. Catholic sisters and my organization, Network, were criticized by the Vatican for not holding their narrow focus. Now we see that our pope knows that no one political party has control of the Gospel message.
The faith value of life is more than a value for birth. Gospel values that mandate a care for the poor are at the heart of our faith and Pope Francis is speaking of that message. I don’t believe that our pope (or God) would be pleased with the Republican effort to eliminate food stamps for hungry people, end housing benefits for struggling workers, deny healthcare for those with no access and to refuse to consider comprehensive immigration reform.
Pope Francis spoke of his own change and conversion to a more compassionate leadership. He is speaking to the heart of those who have been in control with fear and judgment. The test is to see if they can embrace the more challenging role of struggling together to create the common good.
Catholic Democrats also have a test in front of them. They have struggled for years to be faithful in the face of a narrow right-wing agenda. Now the challenge will be for them not to retaliate. The conversion for the Democrats will be to continue to work for the full message of the Gospel and not be arrogant or judgmental themselves.
On the bus we learned that we need the 100 percent to embody our faith. We need the 100 percent to make the Gospel live. And in our pluralistic country I pray that this renewed message will help the 100 percent live our communal and Constitutional mandate to “form a more perfect union.”
By: Sister Simone Campbell, Executive Director of Network, Opinion Pages, The New York Times, September 22, 2013
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