“Next Year’s SCOTUS Sensation?”: Irresponsible And Blatantly Unconstitutional Abortion Restrictions
As commentators begin to run out of words to speculate about the murky maneuverings of the Supreme Court on same-sex marriage issues as reflected in oral arguments, it’s occurring to some to compare and contrast the trajectories of law and public opinion on gay marriage and that other hardy perennial of the Culture Wars, abortion.
At Wonkblog, Sarah Kliff sums up the anomaly:
Tuesday marked for a watershed day for gay rights activists as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on a case with the potential to legalize same-sex marriage across the country.
Across the country and 1,500 miles west of Washington, an equally notable event took place: North Dakota enacted the country’s most restrictive abortion law, barring all procedures after six weeks.
For decades, support (or opposition) for gay marriage and abortion went hand in hand. They were the line-in-the-sand “values” issues that sharply divided the political parties.
Not anymore. ”As recently as 2004, we talked about abortion and same sex marriage in the same breath,” says Daniel Cox, research director at the Public Religion Research Institute. “They were the values issues. Now, it doesn’t make sense to lump them together anymore. We’ve seen a decoupling.”
Actually, I beg to differ in part: abortion policy is, more than ever, a reliable and quasi-universal item that divides the two major political parties.
What’s different is that there’s no clear generational trend on abortion that makes the conservative and Republican position doomed, as Kliff notes:
Younger Americans have become increasingly supportive of gay marriage in a way that hasn’t necessarily happened for abortion rights. Young Americans’ views on same-sex unions look nothing like previous generations. But when it comes to abortion rights, Millennials look a lot more lilke their parents.
Millennials, PRRI has found, have similar views to the general population on the morality and legality of abortion. Fifty-two percent of the general public thinks abortion is “morally wrong.” Among Millennials, that number stands at 50 percent. Fifty-six percent of all Americans think abortion ought to be legal, compared to 60 percent of the younger crowd.
In terms of state activity, the irony is that a development adverse to the anti-choicers–President Obama’s re-election–is partially responsible for the wild competition Republican legislators around the country have been undertaking to enact the most irresponsible and–under existing precedents–blatantly unconstitutional abortion restrictions. Now that they’ve been denied a Romney presidency where Supreme Court appointments would be carried out under a strict anti-choice litmus test, abortion-rights foes have clearly decided to initiate a challenge that will test the commitment to Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey of the existing Court–and particularly its erratic “swing vote,” Justice Kennedy, who opened the door to new abortion restrictions in his bizarre opinion in a 2007 decision upholding a federal ban on so-called “partial-birth-abortion.”
When North Dakota’s Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed that batch of radical bills on abortion yesterday, he might as well have been holding up a big sign reading: “Hey, Anthony Kennedy! These bills are for you!” So I wouldn’t be surprised if abortion is the big issue in oral arguments before the Supremes next year or the year after that.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, March 27, 2013
“Romney’s Latest Abortion U-Turn”: A Cynical, Shameless, Blantant And Misleading Incremental Republican Strategy
How embarrassing is it to have a surrogate caught on tape saying exactly the opposite of what you’ve been saying for years? Not very embarrassing, apparently, if you’re Mitt Romney, and especially if the topic is abortion rights. Then, cynical shamelessness is your standard operating procedure.
Yesterday, former Republican Sen. Norm Coleman told a Republican Jewish Coalition gathering in Ohio that when it comes to Roe v. Wade, pay no attention to those men in black robes. “President Bush was president eight years, Roe v. Wade wasn’t reversed. He had two Supreme Court picks, Roe v. Wade wasn’t reversed,” Coleman said. “It’s not going to be reversed.”
That’s blatantly and intentionally misleading, crafted to assuage voters who are presumably socially liberal in what looks to be the most crucial state for the election. It’s also the exact opposite of what Romney has promised he’ll support, publicly and often.
Coleman’s plausible deniability comes from the fact that it looks as though not much changed under the last Republican president. But as I reported last week, these kinds of shifts don’t happen overnight — not only because it takes years for laws to be passed and then to wind their way through the court system, but because many in the anti-choice movement have opted for an incremental strategy to avoid scaring the public, even as they prepare the legal, political and societal groundwork for the full-on abortion ban they desire.
As for Bush, he got two Supreme Court appointments, both replacing Republican-appointed justices, and an initial pick, Harriet Miers, was rejected by conservatives partly because they feared she wasn’t absolutist enough on abortion rights. The judge they did get, Samuel Alito, replaced Sandra Day O’Connor, who had been relatively moderate on abortion rights. The result was that when a major abortion case came before that court, it upheld an abortion restriction it had overturned several years before. The right has always had its eye on the ultimate prize, which is overturning Roe. With the retirement or death of a single liberal justice, they’re likely to get it, or come close.
Indeed, it’s worth looking at who seems fairly confident that a Romney presidency would change abortion access in this country: anti-choice activists, who passed on him in the primary but have publicly been a united front on his behalf ever since. Just check out this story in Life News noting that “Leading pro-life attorneys like Jordan Sekulow, David French, and James Bopp have confirmed they trust Romney as president when it comes to judges,” and quotes the president of Americans United for Life saying that the impact on abortion law via the Supreme Court would be “bigger than everything else combined, because of the long-term consequences.”
And though the Supreme Court appointments are indeed the most lasting legacy, the president also has other important powers when it comes to reproductive rights, from nominating lower court judges to choosing the heads of the Departments of Health and Human Services, the FDA and the CDC, as well as the attorney general, all of whom have discretion on these issues.
The past couple of weeks have been an interesting exercise in some Republicans running as far as they can from the prevailing stances of their own compatriots, and in Romney’s case, current and previous versions of himself. In Washington state, Republican Senate candidate Michael Baumgartner said he opposes abortion except in case of life endangerment but insisted, “Social issues and abortion isn’t the focus of this campaign. You wouldn’t see me voting to change any abortion laws at the federal level.” Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s tactic on Sunday was to deny that the issue even matters, that voters care more about Benghazi. “Abortion doesn’t even show up,” he said, and claimed that “it’s not even an issue here in Wisconsin, it doesn’t even move the radar at all.” (Someone should tell Paul Ryan that!)
It’s almost as if they know that their policy aims are highly unpopular with a whole lot of voters.
By: Irin Carmon, Salon, October 30, 2012
“His Position Is Our Position”: Why Is Mitt Romney Outraged At Todd Akin And Not At Paul Ryan?
Mitt Romney is outraged! He’s insulted! He’s offended!
Why? A Republican Senate candidate dared to state a position on choice that is exactly the same as that of Romney’s own running mate.
Missouri Rep. Todd Akin is attracting plenty of attention for his bizarre and idiotic justification for refusing to allow rape victims to have abortions. But the extreme policy position behind those comments — a policy that is the GOP standard — should be getting just as much attention.
Akin explained this weekend how rape victims shouldn’t be allowed reproductive choice because they already have access to some mysterious anti-pregnancy control system: “First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Romney responded today in an interview with the National Review:
“Congressman’s Akin comments on rape are insulting, inexcusable, and, frankly, wrong,” Romney said. “Like millions of other Americans, we found them to be offensive.”
“I have an entirely different view,” Romney said. “What he said is entirely without merit and he should correct it.”
What is Romney’s “entirely different view”? That Rep. Akin doesn’t have a basic understanding of the female anatomy that he’s so interested in legislating? That Akin feels the need to draw a distinction between “legitimate rape” and “illegitimate rape”? That Akin thinks rape victims shouldn’t be able to choose whether to carry their rapists’ children?
Romney should start by directing his outrage at his own running mate. Rep. Paul Ryan not only opposes abortion rights for rape victims, he was a cosponsor of a so-called “personhood” amendment that would have classified abortion as first degree murder and outlawed common types of birth control. Ryan has also bought into the “legitimate rape” nonsense, cosponsoring legislation with Akin that would have limited federal services to victims of “forcible rape” — a deliberate attempt to write out some victims of date rape and statutory rape.
Romney himself has flirted with the “personhood” idea, telling Mike Huckabee during the primary that he’d “absolutely” support such a measure. When he was later confronted about the comment at a town hall meeting, it became clear that Romney had no idea how the process he wanted to legislate actually worked.
And Romney hasn’t always been keen to stand up for the victims of rape. In a Republican debate in February, he actually got in an argument with Newt Gingrich over who was least in favor of requiring hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims they were treating.
Now the Romney campaign is trying to distance itself from Akin by saying that “a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape.” But Romney has also vowed to nominate Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, returning to states the power to outlaw or allow abortion as they choose. If Romney and anti-choice activists get their wish from the Supreme Court, a Romney-Ryan administration would have no power to stop states from imposing whichever abortion bans they decide to impose. The promise to carve out an exception for rape victims is not a promise they would be able to keep.
The real scandal of Rep. Akin’s comments isn’t the faulty sex-ed he’s teaching. Instead, his comments expose the anti-choice movement’s skewed and condescending view of women. Akin can’t accept that a woman who fits his definition of virtue — the victim of a “legitimate rape” — would also need to seek an abortion, and he has made up false science to support that assumption. But with or without the weird right-wing science, that same false distinction underlies all anti-choice policies — including those embraced by Romney and Ryan.
Romney can feign all the outrage he wants at Rep. Akin’s misogynistic pseudo-science. But until he can draw a clear distinction between Akin’s policies and his own, his protests will ring hollow.
By: Michael B. Keegan, The Huffington Post Blog, October 20, 2012
“You’re Welcome Ladies”: What Mitt Romney Will Actually Do On Abortion
During Tuesday’s debate, Mitt Romney did a sneaky little pivot on the issue of contraception coverage that surely went over the head of most of the people watching. What Romney supports is a Republican bill, the Blunt amendment, that would allow any employer to refuse to include coverage for contraception in employees’ health insurance. For many women, that would mean they would be shut out of getting contraception through the plans that, we should note, they paid for themselves (insurance coverage isn’t a favor your employer does for you, it’s part of your compensation that you get in return for your labor, which means you paid for it). But when it came up in the debate, Romney said this:
“I don’t believe that bureaucrats in Washington should tell someone whether they can use contraceptives or not. And I don’t believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care of not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives. And—and the—and the president’s statement of my policy is completely and totally wrong.”
See what he did there? Instead of answering the actual question of whether your boss should be able to take your coverage for contraception away, he answered a question nobody ever asked, which is whether the government should ban contraception, or whether your boss should be able to literally come to your doctor’s office during your appointment and grab the prescription for birth control pills out of your hand. In other words, Romney thinks your boss should be able to cancel your coverage for contraception, but he generously acknowledges that your boss shouldn’t actually tell you whether you can use contraception or not. You’re welcome, ladies.
Romney is doing something similar on abortion. On the one hand, he has said multiple times that he wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned and wants to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood; on the other he’s been claiming that he really has no abortion agenda at all; nothing to see here, everything will stay as it is (here’s an ad pitched at women, making the case for Mitt the Moderate on both issues). As Michelle Goldberg tells us, social conservatives haven’t said a peep about Romney’s new abortion moderation. Why? Because they know it’s just for show, and they know what really matters.
I’m sure there are more than a few voters who listen to Romney and say, “Well, he doesn’t seem like one of those radical pro-lifers, so I guess I’m OK with him.” But this is a helpful reminder that what’s in the president’s heart is of only minimal importance. The question “Is Mitt Romney really pro-life?” is all but meaningless, not only because it’s Mitt Romney we’re talking about, and when it comes to policy he has no “real” beliefs that exist outside of the pressures and incentives he has at a given moment. More importantly, when we elect a president we effectively elect an entire party, and the party Mitt Romney represents is the GOP circa 2012, a party more conservative than it has ever been before. There are 3,000 appointed positions in the federal government. Who’s going to fill these positions? Why, Republicans, of course. Who’s going to be running the Department of Health and Human Services? People who are committed to undermining the Affordable Care Act, because that’s what Republicans who work on health care policy believe. Who’s going to be running the Department of Labor? Representatives of business who are committed to destroying unions and reducing protections for workers, because that’s what Republicans who work on labor issues believe. Who’s going to be running the EPA? People who are committed to undermining environmental protections and making it easier for industry to pollute, because that’s what Republicans who work on environmental issues believe.
And if Stephen Breyer or Ruth Bader Ginsburg decides to retire in two years, would President Romney say, “Just find me the best candidate; I don’t really care if they may vote to uphold Roe v. Wade“? Hell no. He’ll do exactly what everyone on both sides expects, which is to locate the next Samuel Alito, someone who went to the best schools of course and has an admirable elite pedigree, but who also was nurtured within the conservative movement, someone who will make the right wing weep with joy. During his confirmation hearings this prospective justice will say solemnly that he shouldn’t comment on issues that might come before the Court, so he really can’t comment specifically on Roe, but rest assured that he’ll faithfully apply the Constitution and just call those balls and strikes, as John Roberts so memorably put it in his own hearings. Democrats will complain, most will vote against the nominee, but he’ll be confirmed. And within weeks, a dozen lawsuits will be filed with the intention of forcing the Court to revisit Roe. Those cases will fly up the judicial ladder with all deliberate speed, and the four conservatives on the Court and their new colleague will finally get the opportunity they’ve been waiting for. And that will be that.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, October 18, 2012
“Women And Their Beans”: Why Does Abortion Have To Be A Personal Question For Men?
I have a nasty head cold, and it’s sort of surprising that I was even able to stay up to watch the vice-presidential debate, so I’ll just have a couple of quick takeaways here.
Because both candidates are Catholic, it was widely expected they’d be asked questions relating to abortion and the contraception mandate. On the latter, Paul Ryan predictably portrayed it as an “assault on religious liberty” and Joe Biden pointed out that no Catholic institution is actually being required to provide, refer for, or pay for contraception. It wasn’t the most elaborate discussion of the constitutional questions there, but it was pretty standard fare.
Moderator Martha Raddatz, who, incidentally, was otherwise really, really good, asked both candidates to discuss their views, as Catholics, on abortion from a “personal” perspective. It was intended for some tension, of course, given their opposing political views. And Ryan was prepared to talk about Bean. Everyone who has had a child since the invention of the ultrasound has seen their own Bean. Does that make Ryan’s public policy position on abortion more legitimate than someone who rejoices over their own Bean and still thinks abortion should be legal?
Biden pointed out that he personally agrees with the Church on abortion but doesn’t want to impose his religious beliefs on others. Which is, of course, the heart of the answer to both the abortion and contraception questions. Raddatz gave both men the chance to discuss their faith. Ryan pointed out that faith informs everything he does; Biden took pains to highlight that as important as his faith is to him, he wouldn’t use it to force others to adhere to his beliefs. And as it happens, most Catholic voters don’t really rate abortion and contraception at the top of their list of concerns.
As the other Sarah discussed earlier today, Catholic doctrine has a lot to say about issues unrelated to reproductive matters. Biden took a probably little noticed dig at Ryan when he pointed out that the Republican’s economic policy proposals are at odds with Catholic social justice teaching. Raddatz could have asked about how quite a number of Catholic theologians have something to say about that. Of course it seems preposterous that we would mix up religious doctrine with economic policy, doesn’t it? But somehow men must opine about their personal religious beliefs about women’s bodies.
By: Sarah Posner, Religion Dispatches, October 11, 2012
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 