Important Takeaways:
- The moral logic at work here is inexorable. What you see now at the DNC you will eventually see at the RNC.
- Did you hear about the free abortions and sterilizations on offer at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week? Incredibly, the news is real. Abortion-inducing drugs (mifepristone and Plan B) will be doled out from the back of a Planned Parenthood RV, along with vasectomies, just a few blocks from a convention that will embrace a radical abortion-until-birth policy that would have been unthinkable, even for Democrats, just a decade ago.
- Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance was savaged by the corporate press for repeatedly describing Democrats as “anti-family” in media appearances last week. Now, as if to prove Vance’s point, here they are with an abortion van at their convention and supporters marching through the streets dressed as abortion pills.
- What’s more difficult to understand and accept is how all of this is the inevitable consequence of a liberal worldview that the GOP has already accepted, which means what we’re seeing this week at the DNC we will eventually see at the RNC.
- I don’t just mean that the Trump campaign and the Republican Party have softened their opposition to abortion in the post-Dobbs era. It’s not merely that abortion was all but removed from the GOP platform and the party’s previous position in favor of federal abortion limits was abandoned. It’s that Trump and his Republican Party would like very much to stop talking about abortion altogether now, as if the matter is settled and we can move on to more important matters, like the border and inflation.
- The choice to take these issues off the table, or try to, is usually framed as pragmatic. We want a big tent, Democrats are radical, Republicans can present their side as reasonable.
- But it doesn’t work like that. There’s a reason the Democrats went from talking about how abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” in the 1990s to celebrating it with free abortions from the back of an RV in 2024. Once you cede the principle of the thing, once you accept the premise that it’s justifiable to kill the unborn under certain circumstances, the list of allowable circumstances will continuously expand.
- The point here is not to sow discord on the right or decry a big tent strategy for the GOP, but merely to point out that when you violate the moral principles on which a social order is based, you don’t get to say when enough is enough. The slippery slope does not cease to be slippery when you think you’ve had enough. You will go all the way down it.
- Put another way, the time to say “no” was before the moral principle was violated, not after.
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Important Takeaways:
- The informational pamphlet that will be sent to Arizona voters this fall will call fetuses “unborn human beings” in the description of a citizen initiative that would restore Roe-era abortion protections.
- Abortion rights advocates say the language is biased and meant to confuse and scare voters.
- The GOP-controlled legislative council wrote the description, which uses the term “unborn human being” in the first sentence.
- Arizona for Abortion Access, the campaign backing the initiative, sued to change the language to “fetus,” arguing it was a more impartial term.
- The Maricopa County Superior Court sided with the campaign, but the state Supreme Court — the same court that allowed Arizona’s 1864 near-total abortion ban to take effect earlier this year — said the language met impartiality standards and reversed the lower court’s ruling Wednesday.
- The Arizona Abortion Access Act would allow abortion access up to fetal viability, about 24 weeks of pregnancy.
- “This decision is beyond disgraceful … But no matter what type of dirty tricks they try to pull to slow down our momentum, we know Arizonans will show up and vote for their freedoms this November,” Reproductive Freedom for All Arizona director Athena Salman said in a statement.
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Important Takeaways:
- As Iowa prepares to enact one of the nation’s strictest abortion laws, elected officials in Minnesota are ensuring out of state abortion seekers they are welcome to visit and access services.
- On Thursday, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Bloomington Mayor Tim Busse toured abortion provider Whole Women’s Health Alliance in Bloomington.
- “I’m really honored to be here,” Flanagan said after she and others toured the facility. “Sometimes the stigma that is attached to abortion care is just because people don’t know what happens.”
- The Bloomington clinic provides abortions up to 20 weeks, but Founder and CEO Amy Hagstrom Miller says the hope is to expand to 24 weeks.
- “One of the cool things about abortion is we get to sit with someone as they choose the course for their lives,” Hagstrom Miller said. “Abortion is a solution to an unplanned pregnancy, and unplanned pregnancy really shines a bright light on people’s lives. It has them examine their hopes and their dreams for their future.”
- “Let me just be clear. For our friends in Iowa, you are welcome here,” Flanagan said. “There are people who will provide care for you, and we are good neighbors here in Minnesota. So, if you’re afraid, come to Minnesota, we’ve got you.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Organizers didn’t submit all the required paperwork for the measure to appear on the November ballot, Secretary of State John Thurston said.
- “By contrast, other sponsors of initiative petitions complied with this requirement. Therefore, I must reject your submission,” wrote Thurston, a Republican.
- Rebecca Bobrow, a spokesperson for Arkansans for Limited Government, said that the group “will fight this ridiculous disqualification attempt with everything we have.”
- Arkansas is one of 11 states where organizers formally launched efforts to place pro-abortion-rights amendments on their fall ballots.
- The measures are officially on the ballots in six states: Colorado, Maryland, Florida, South Dakota, Nevada and New York. Organizers in four more — Arizona, Missouri, Montana and Nebraska — have submitted signatures, but further steps remain before those initiatives are certified to appear on the ballots.
- Arkansans for Limited Government — unlike the coalitions fighting for similar measures in other states — does not have any support or backing from major national abortion-rights groups, such as Planned Parenthood, which has said the measure does not go far enough in its goals of expanding abortion access.
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Important Takeaways:
- In two 5-1 opinions, the court built on a 2019 decision in which it said the state’s Constitution protects abortion rights and that lawmakers seeking to restrict abortion must meet a high “strict scrutiny” test.
- The decisions cement Kansas’ role as a key abortion access point for patients across the broader region.
- The Kansas Supreme Court struck down two laws restricting abortion on Friday, affirming its prior interpretation that ending a pregnancy remains a constitutionally protected right in Kansas.
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Important Takeaways:
- The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday allowing abortions for women facing medical emergencies in Idaho – for now – despite the state’s near-total ban on the procedure does nothing to lift the confusion in many states surrounding when emergency abortions are permissible, according to legal experts.
- The case is one of several around the United States over when abortion is legally available in medical emergencies under exceptions to state abortion bans.
- Doctors have said that they are unable to perform abortions that they believe are medically necessary for fear of prosecution because it is not clear what is allowed
- In Thursday’s order, the Supreme Court found it should not have agreed to hear the case in the first place because lower courts needed more time to work through factual and legal issues, and dismissed it – restoring the judge’s order blocking the law while the case proceeds.
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Important Takeaways:
- That will replace the state’s current ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
- Abortions after six weeks of pregnancy will be allowed in cases of rape if the assault is reported to law enforcement within 45 days, in cases of incest reported within 140 days, and if the pregnancy endangers the life of the pregnant person. It allows abortion in the case of life-threatening fetal abnormalities.
- The law had been in effect for a few days after Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed it last year but was blocked by a lower court in a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood of the Heartland.
- Today the court found that there is a “rational basis” to write a law banning abortion based on the detection of a fetal heartbeat, stating, “We conclude that the fetal heartbeat statute is rationally related to the state’s legitimate interest in protecting unborn life.”
- The Midwest is still a mixed picture for abortion rights. Neighboring Iowa are Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas and Illinois that still allow access to abortion beyond 20 weeks. But Missouri and the Dakotas have near-total bans and Nebraska has a 12-week ban.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Supreme Court on Wednesday grappled with whether provisions of Idaho’s near-total abortion ban unlawfully conflict with a federal law aimed at ensuring certain standards for emergency medical care for patients, including pregnant women.
- The justices are weighing an appeal brought by Idaho officials who are contesting a lawsuit filed by the Biden administration over abortion access in emergency situations.
- The state law says that anyone who performs an abortion is subject to criminal penalties, including up to five years in prison.
- The Biden administration argues that care should include abortions in certain situations. The law applies to any hospital that receives federal funding under the Medicare program.
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Important Takeaways:
- Florida is set to become one of the most restrictive states in the nation to get an abortion next week.
- President Joe Biden visited Tampa Tuesday, calling Florida’s six-week abortion ban “one of the nation’s most extreme anti-abortion laws.”
- “It’s very dangerous situation,” Heidi Davis, a volunteer with the St. Petersburg League of Women Voters, agreed. “It’s as my shirt says, ‘Abortion is healthcare.’”
- “We need to make sure that we don’t have politicians interfering with the women’s medical decisions,” she continued.
- “It is pro-abortion through nine months, most people even if they’re pro-choice don’t agree with abortion through nine months.”
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Important Takeaways:
- In a video posted to Truth Social, Trump said the issue of abortion is about “the will of the people” and should be left up to states to decide. The 45th president touted his role in nominating the Supreme Court justices who ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade in their Dobbs decision — ending 50 years of an invented constitutional right to abortion and sending the issue back to individual states and their elected representatives.
- “My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide, must be the law of the land,” Trump said.
- “This is all about the will of the people. You must follow your heart or in many cases, your religion or your faith. Do what’s right for your family, and do what’s right for yourself,” he continued. “Do what’s right for your children. Do what’s right for our country, and vote–so important to vote. At the end of the day, it’s all about the will of the people.”
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