Red-state progressives fight to protect abortion rights: Turning the tables on right-wing lawmakers

[DonViejo]

Red-state progressives fight to protect abortion rights: Turning the tables on right-wing lawmakers

Bills in five GOP-controlled states seek to protect abortion access from attacks by anti-science conservatives

AMANDA MARCOTTE

In June 2016, the Supreme Court ruled on the biggest abortion case since Roe v. Wade, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. In ruling that regulations on abortion clinics must be rooted in medical necessity and scientific evidence, the court not only struck down two egregious abortion restrictions in Texas, it struck a major blow against the entire anti-choice movement.

For a decade now, conservative activists have passed a series of abortion restrictions under the guise of protecting “women’s health,” even though none of these laws do any such thing. The Supreme Court decision now makes it much harder for states to defend laws that do nothing to improve health outcomes, but only seem to function to make abortion services more expensive and difficult.

It’s good news for pro-choice activists, but there is a wrinkle: No one is quite sure, exactly, what the Whole Woman’s decision means for the dozens of other laws, across dozens of other states, that restrict abortion access using disingenuous claims about women’s health. The Supreme Court’s decision knocked down the Texas laws, but made no specific mention of other states or restrictions such as waiting periods, mandatory ultrasounds, or requiring doctors to read scripts full of scary misinformation to women seeking abortion. Legal experts believe many of those laws would fall under a legal challenge, but so far that hasn’t been tested.

“The Supreme Court decision doesn’t automatically strike all the laws across the country” that restrict abortion access by other means, said Sarah Gillooly, policy director of the ACLU in North Carolina, over the phone. “So in order for the decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt to be real and enacted across the country, it’s going to require a two-part approach.” In practice, she said, that means “litigating every individual law that is in conflict with the Whole Woman’s Health decision, or state legislatures repealing those laws and codifying that decision.

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http://www.salon.com/2017/04/13/red-state-progressives-fight-to-protect-abortion-rights-turning-the-tables-on-right-wing-lawmakers/