Saturday, May 07, 2022 9:24:22 PM
Making Abortion Murder
"How I Lost Faith in the “Pro-Life” Movement .. bits ..
Without Birth Control: 6 zygotes will “die”
With Birth Control: 2 zygotes will “die”"
Overturning Roe is the first step. But the anti-abortion movement has its sights set far beyond.
By Kaia Hubbard May 6, 2022, at 4:27 p.m. U.S. News & World Report
A demonstrator holds up a model of a fetus as she and other anti-abortion demonstrators protest in front of the Supreme Court.
(Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
A series of troubling incidents directly involving legal questions about the unborn drew headlines in recent weeks, even before an unprecedented leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion made abortion rights’ future appear more grim: Five aborted fetuses were found in the D.C. home of an anti-abortion activist who reportedly planned to give them proper burials, Kentucky lawmakers introduced a provision that requires the burial or cremation of fetal remains, and a Texas woman was charged with murder over a self-induced abortion.
On their faces, the incidents may be viewed as isolated. But taken together, they perhaps reveal an undercurrent of an anti-abortion movement with its sights set beyond Roe – beyond merely giving abortion back to the states – and toward recognizing the rights of the fetus and making abortion murder.
[ EXPLAINER: What is Roe v. Wade?
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2022-05-03/explainer-what-is-roe-v-wade ]
That reality inched one step closer on Wednesday, when Republican lawmakers in the Louisiana House of Representatives – emboldened by the Supreme Court draft opinion that shook the nation – advanced a bill out of committee that would classify abortion as homicide, allowing patients to be criminally charged by prosecutors.
“We cannot wait on the Supreme Court to confirm that innocent babies have the right to life in Louisiana,” state Rep. Danny McCormick said during a committee hearing on Wednesday. “The act of abortion ends the life of a human being.”
[INSERT: At this point i disconnected my VPN to see if i could then see the photos mentioned. Couldn't and then was denied access
back into the article. Reconnecting the VPN didn't help, still failed to regain access. So from here i'm only able to edit the article blind.]
Photos: Abortion Protests Erupt
A crowd of people gather outside the Supreme Court, early Tuesday, May 3, 2022 in Washington. A draft opinion circulated among Supreme Court justices suggests that earlier this year a majority of them had thrown support behind overturning the 1973 case Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion nationwide, according to a report published Monday night in Politico. It's unclear if the draft represents the court's final word on the matter. The Associated Press could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the draft Politico posted, which if verified marks a shocking revelation of the high court's secretive deliberation process, particularly before a case is formally decided. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
It’s the latest example in a wave of Republican-dominated statehouses in recent months that have introduced and passed legislation at near-record rates restricting access to abortion ahead of the Supreme Court decision expected out of Mississippi this summer that will likely unravel the almost 50-year-old precedent established in Roe v. Wade. The draft opinion showed the high court doing just that, but a statement from the justices later urged that the votes have not been finalized.
Nevertheless, appearing emboldened by a 6-3 conservative majority on the high court, lawmakers along the way to Roe’s final days have sought harsher and more novel restrictions, like deputizing private citizens as the enforcers of a recent high-profile Texas
abortion law or revoking commonly used exceptions to abortion bans like incest or rape. But perhaps more quietly, they’re also reframing the conversation from one that centers the woman’s health to another advocating for the fetus – no matter the cost. And in doing so, they’re elevating a decades-long push to have fetuses seen as human beings.
[ Read: Could Overturning Roe v. Wade Backfire for Republicans? .. inside ]
Making the Fetus a Person
Whether fetuses are people is a question at the very heart of the abortion debate and can be plainly seen in the differing depictions of early stage pregnancies by some as “babies” versus “clumps of cells” and everything in between. But the idea of “fetal personhood” is a concept with larger legal implications.
Those in opposition to abortion have been seeking to recognize fetuses as people at the legal level since Roe v. Wade, according to Rachel Rebouché, the interim dean of Temple University’s law school and an expert in reproductive health law. She notes that the political will to recognize a fetus as a human being did not exist in the past.
“But now I think what's interesting is you see kind of a renewed enthusiasm because no one really knows what the Supreme Court is going to say,” Rebouché said before the draft opinion surfaced. “Most people think that it will be some kind of overturning or evisceration of Roe. And if that turns on erasing the line of viability as when states can legislate or when they cannot, then why not push the envelope and try to afford fetuses some level of personhood.”
In Roe, the justices decided that up until fetal viability, when a fetus may survive outside of the womb on its own, states do not have a legal interest in the fetus. Rather than insert itself into a complex philosophical question of when life begins, the court decided to base the ability to get an abortion on whether the fetus could survive independently of the mother, creating the viability standard.
“Roe is very clear that the court was not defining the question of when life began and instead just decided the issue of when is there constitutional liberty to end the pregnancy as a choice,” Rebouché says. “And so that's really why the viability line exists. Because it's at that point that the court said there's an interest of the state once a fetus can live outside the womb. And so personhood is really interconnected to this idea of when life begins – the question that the courts said courts shouldn't answer.”
The viability standard, generally understood by experts at present to mean 24 weeks of pregnancy, has stood for nearly half a century. But Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is revisiting that question, raising whether Mississippi has the legal right to pass a law moving that line to 15 weeks, or more broadly, whether states have the right to set earlier gestational limits on abortion.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh during oral arguments over the Mississippi case, in December appeared to again raise that question of choosing between life and liberty, seeming to agree that it’s one that the high court perhaps should not answer.
“Why should this court be the arbiter rather than Congress, the state legislatures, state supreme courts, the people being able to resolve this?” Kavanaugh said. “And there will be different answers in Mississippi and New York, different answers in Alabama than California, because they're two different interests at stake and the people in those states might value those interests somewhat differently.”
Kavanaugh highlighted that, for some in this debate, two interests may be at stake: an interest in the woman and an interest in fetal life, often described as the maternal-fetal conflict.
“The other side would say, and the reason this issue is hard, is that you can't accommodate both interests,” Kavanaugh said. “You have to pick. That's the fundamental problem. And one interest has to prevail over the other at any given point in time. And that's why this is so challenging, I think.”
According to Grace Howard, a professor of Justice Studies at San José State University, when two opposing interests are at stake, “Typically in that dynamic, they will invoke the innocence of the unborn,” adding that the current makeup of the Supreme Court is favorable to the idea of fetal personhood.
[ Read: Overturning Abortion Rights, the Pandemic Turn the Clock Back for Women .. inside ]
The Shift Toward Criminalization
Historically, the anti-abortion movement has been hesitant to punish women who choose to terminate a pregnancy, instead painting them as victims to the abortion practice. But recent developments may suggest a future where states pursue criminal charges not only against abortion providers but also against the people seeking them out.
A recent move in Texas garnered national attention after a woman was charged with murder for what authorities claimed was a self-induced abortion. Experts say it was a misreading of the state law, and the charge was ultimately overturned – but not before the incident could raise eyebrows nationwide to the potential for states to criminalize women getting abortions in the not-so-distant future.
The new bill in Louisiana, known as the “Abolition of Abortion” act, is an even more concrete step toward criminalizing the woman rather than the provider by way of making a fetus a human being. The bill says it would “ensure the right to life and equal protection of the laws to all unborn children from the moment of fertilization by protecting them by the same laws protecting other human beings,” going on to dictate that the the consequences associated with the homicide of any person would be extended to an unborn child.
The occurrence is also happening more subtly, in legal moves unrelated to abortion that sought to criminalize pregnant women for harming an “unborn child,” like in South Carolina and Alabama, where the state supreme courts have upheld convictions ruling that substance use in pregnancy constitutes criminal child abuse.
In reality, the occurrence – of someone being charged with a crime for harming a fetus – is not unusual. As of 2018, at least 38 states had fetal homicide laws conferring rights or protections upon the fetus, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. While some of those laws explicitly set parameters around abortion, excluding it from homicide charges, others make no mention of the procedure. And the charges even appear to have become so prolific that a recent proposal in California would attempt to combat the prosecution of pregnant women for crimes related to pregnancy loss by allowing those who are pregnant to sue prosecutors for incorrectly charging them.
The idea behind moves to criminalize harm to the fetus, experts say, is that by creating legal protections for fetuses in other contexts outside of abortion, advocates could over time chip away at abortion rights as well. But as Roe enters what experts believe is likely its final days, the playing field has likely shifted from taking down Roe and subsequently revoking the limit on when states may restrict abortion – and toward eking out protections for fetuses, presumably on the road toward making abortion illegal everywhere.
In some more recent legislation, the anti-abortion movement also appears to have turned its back on messaging that promoted the “health and safety of the mother” by stripping bills of exemptions to the procedure that have been somewhat common, at least in recent memory: namely, exceptions for incest, rape and the health or wellbeing of the mother.
Mississippi’s ban beyond 15 weeks of pregnancy, along with Texas’ heartbeat abortion ban and more recently bans that have been signed into law in Florida, Arizona and Oklahoma make no exception for rape or incest, despite pleas from those in opposition decrying the “decency” of those exceptions.
“It does certainly make the law seem even more draconian when you're not even willing to protect people who have gone through something terrible. But I guess this is what we get when we extend personhood to the fetus,” Howard says. “If we've really decided the fetus is a person, it wouldn't make sense to have exceptions for rape or incest. If the fetus is a person, then the only answer is no abortion ever – make it as hard as possible to get an abortion. And they finally have kind of a political and legal means to enact that now in a way where you know, maybe 10, 20 years ago it just wouldn't have been possible.”
In recent weeks, Utah’s Republican Party threatened to take things a step further, announcing that it was considering changing its official stance on abortion to eliminate language that supported exceptions not only for rape or incest but also another commonly held exception to abortion bans: to “preserve the life of the mother.”
[ MORE: Poll: Voters Want SCOTUS to Support Abortion .. inside]
The Next Moves
As the Supreme Court deliberates Roe’s future, with a decision expected come summer over the Mississippi case that Americans received a preview of this week, the future of access to abortion in the U.S. remains unclear, and inconsistent, nationwide.
But the overturning of Roe, if that is indeed the high court’s final decision, would mark a massive moment for the country – not only by nullifying what has for decades been the law of the land but also by marking the first step toward making abortion illegal nationwide.
The next step, experts say, is fetal personhood – a glimpse of which was foreshadowed in Louisiana this week.
“It's worth noting that if Roe is overturned and fetuses are people, theoretically someone could be charged with murder if they have an abortion,” Donley says. “Because a fetus is a person that was killed.”
According to Donley, whether the anti-abortion movement takes things that far remains to be seen, but criminalization in some form, she says, is certainly coming. And it’s not necessarily dependent on the fetus becoming a legal person.
“Personhood definitely ups the ante.”
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2022-05-06/the-push-to-make-fetuses-people-and-abortion-murder
See also:
Men Are Mostly Responsible for the End of Roe, So Fuck Up Their World, Too
2022 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=168786423
Personhood: Policing Pregnant Women in America (2020) | Official Trailer HD
There is a little quirk in some psyches which makes a couple of cells a human while millions of fully developed adults subhuman.
2021 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=166598438
The Personhood Movement
"Those state laws do not imply what you would like them to imply."
Where it came from and where it stands today.
1973
U.S. Supreme Court decides Roe v. Wade .. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=410&invol=113 , making abortion legal in all 50 states. But in his majority opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun notes, “If this suggestion of personhood is established, [Roe’s] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment.” A week later, a Maryland congressman proposes .. https://www.congress.gov/bill/93rd-congress/house-joint-resolution/261 .. a Human Life Amendment — the first of more than 330 versions proposed or introduced over the next four decades.
1980
The election of Ronald Reagan and a GOP Senate with many new pro-life members raises hopes among abortion opponents for passage of a constitutional amendment.
2020 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=153100819
33 years ago - ANTI-'PERSONHOOD' PARLEY
[...]
Advocates of abortion rights met here this weekend to marshal arguments against
abortion opponents who contend that a fetus ought to have the rights of a person.
2020 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=153098996
Abortion Isn’t a Necessary Evil. It’s Great
[...]
The end of the line, Pollitt says, is the sort of ridiculous decision made by Planned Parenthood .. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/us/politics/advocates-shun-pro-choice-to-expand-message.html .. in 2013 to move away from the term “pro-choice,” which “was itself a bit of a euphemism: Choose what?” We can hardly be expected to defend abortion effectively if we can't even call the procedure by name.
P - Pollitt convincingly outlines the many reasons that abortion is not only necessary but good for society: “always a choice,” as she writes, “and often a deeply moral decision.”
P - First, and most obviously, if you have a uterus, your life depends on being able to control what goes on inside of it; giving birth necessarily represents a drastic lifestyle change and heavy financial responsibility, which lasts anywhere from nine months to the rest of your natural-born life. Therefore, in order to effectively plan a life and career, you must have some guarantee that you will never be forced to take on the risk or cost of childbirth unless you choose to do so. Birth control and abortion are the only ways to provide such a guarantee. If we are to have leaders and geniuses with uteruses, we must provide them with the reproductive freedom necessary to go to school and build careers.
P - Pregnancy is also a health risk:...
2019 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=148818063
Republicans Push Deeply Unpopular ‘Personhood’ Bill in Congress
Jan 23, 2017, 3:51pm Christine Grimaldi
"Personhood" laws would criminalize abortion with no exception and ban many forms of contraception, in vitro fertilization, and health care for pregnant people.
2018 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=145202210
Shame: "the Republican party platform calls for a ban without exceptions"
Your first link .. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/gop-candidates-ban-abortion-no-exceptions
Shame on the GOP. Whatever happened to your Bible belief.
What the Bible says about Abortion ..each linked inside ..
Abortion is not murder. A fetus is not considered a human life.
If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life. -- Exodus 21:22-23
The Bible places no value on fetuses or infants less than one month old.
And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy estimation shall be three shekels of silver. -- Leviticus 27:6
Fetuses and infants less than one month old are not considered persons.
Number the children of Levi after the house of their fathers, by their families: every male from a month old and upward shalt thou number them. And Moses numbered them according to the word of the LORD. -- Numbers 3:15-16
God sometimes approves of killing fetuses.
2015 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=116106171
Move over, Sarah Palin; Joni Ernst is the GOP's new star
[...]
Ernst wants to overturn Obamacare and is open to the idea of impeaching the president. And, like the Confederates of old, she thinks states can and should nullify federal laws they do not like and resist federal authorities who try to enforce those laws.
P - The freshman senator from Iowa thinks food stamps and the minimum wage are bad ideas. She hates handouts from the government, at least for other people. Her own extended family is reported to have received close to half a million dollars in farm subsidies over the years.
P - Counter to the conclusions of arms control experts, Ernst continues to think that Saddam Hussein really had weapons of mass destruction that justified the invasion of Iraq. She also disagrees with 97% of the world’s scientists who say that climate change is real and caused by human activity. Oh, and she buys into the story making the rounds among paranoid right-wing conspiracy theorists that the United Nations is scheming to drive American farmers off their land and into the cities.
2015 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=110163747
6 Ways Religion Does More Bad Than Good
1. Religion promotes tribalism. Infidel, heathen, heretic. Religion divides insiders from outsiders.
2. Religion anchors believers to the Iron Age. Concubines, magical incantations, chosen people, stonings....
3. Religion makes a virtue out of faith. Trust and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus.
4.Religion diverts generous impulses and good intentions.
5. Religion teaches helplessness.
6. Religions seek power. Think corporate personhood. Religions are man-made institutions, just like for-profit corporations are. And like any corporation, to survive and grow a religion must find a way to build power and wealth and compete for market share. Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity—any large enduring religious institution is as expert at this as Coca-Cola or Chevron. And just like for-profit behemoths, they are willing to wield their power and wealth in the service of self-perpetuation, even it harms society at large.
2014 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=108257800
Here's Why the Democrats Got Crushed—and Why 2016 Won't Be a Cakewalk
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=107880313
If a woman cannot get contraceptives because of the "religious" company she works for, she will get pregnant and have an abortion.
In other words these "religious" companies will be responsible for abortions that should not have had to happen.
Very Christian like.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=104028058
.. and in reply ..
and even more 'personhood' murders since evidence is the ones they refuse to pay for come into play before the sperm invades
the egg, so the woman's body rejects more zygotes than they would if they used the Hobby Lobby rejected birth control methods .
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=104028790
"How I Lost Faith in the “Pro-Life” Movement .. bits ..
Without Birth Control: 6 zygotes will “die”
With Birth Control: 2 zygotes will “die”"
Overturning Roe is the first step. But the anti-abortion movement has its sights set far beyond.
By Kaia Hubbard May 6, 2022, at 4:27 p.m. U.S. News & World Report
A demonstrator holds up a model of a fetus as she and other anti-abortion demonstrators protest in front of the Supreme Court.
(Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
A series of troubling incidents directly involving legal questions about the unborn drew headlines in recent weeks, even before an unprecedented leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion made abortion rights’ future appear more grim: Five aborted fetuses were found in the D.C. home of an anti-abortion activist who reportedly planned to give them proper burials, Kentucky lawmakers introduced a provision that requires the burial or cremation of fetal remains, and a Texas woman was charged with murder over a self-induced abortion.
On their faces, the incidents may be viewed as isolated. But taken together, they perhaps reveal an undercurrent of an anti-abortion movement with its sights set beyond Roe – beyond merely giving abortion back to the states – and toward recognizing the rights of the fetus and making abortion murder.
[ EXPLAINER: What is Roe v. Wade?
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2022-05-03/explainer-what-is-roe-v-wade ]
That reality inched one step closer on Wednesday, when Republican lawmakers in the Louisiana House of Representatives – emboldened by the Supreme Court draft opinion that shook the nation – advanced a bill out of committee that would classify abortion as homicide, allowing patients to be criminally charged by prosecutors.
“We cannot wait on the Supreme Court to confirm that innocent babies have the right to life in Louisiana,” state Rep. Danny McCormick said during a committee hearing on Wednesday. “The act of abortion ends the life of a human being.”
[INSERT: At this point i disconnected my VPN to see if i could then see the photos mentioned. Couldn't and then was denied access
back into the article. Reconnecting the VPN didn't help, still failed to regain access. So from here i'm only able to edit the article blind.]
Photos: Abortion Protests Erupt
A crowd of people gather outside the Supreme Court, early Tuesday, May 3, 2022 in Washington. A draft opinion circulated among Supreme Court justices suggests that earlier this year a majority of them had thrown support behind overturning the 1973 case Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion nationwide, according to a report published Monday night in Politico. It's unclear if the draft represents the court's final word on the matter. The Associated Press could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the draft Politico posted, which if verified marks a shocking revelation of the high court's secretive deliberation process, particularly before a case is formally decided. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
It’s the latest example in a wave of Republican-dominated statehouses in recent months that have introduced and passed legislation at near-record rates restricting access to abortion ahead of the Supreme Court decision expected out of Mississippi this summer that will likely unravel the almost 50-year-old precedent established in Roe v. Wade. The draft opinion showed the high court doing just that, but a statement from the justices later urged that the votes have not been finalized.
Nevertheless, appearing emboldened by a 6-3 conservative majority on the high court, lawmakers along the way to Roe’s final days have sought harsher and more novel restrictions, like deputizing private citizens as the enforcers of a recent high-profile Texas
abortion law or revoking commonly used exceptions to abortion bans like incest or rape. But perhaps more quietly, they’re also reframing the conversation from one that centers the woman’s health to another advocating for the fetus – no matter the cost. And in doing so, they’re elevating a decades-long push to have fetuses seen as human beings.
[ Read: Could Overturning Roe v. Wade Backfire for Republicans? .. inside ]
Making the Fetus a Person
Whether fetuses are people is a question at the very heart of the abortion debate and can be plainly seen in the differing depictions of early stage pregnancies by some as “babies” versus “clumps of cells” and everything in between. But the idea of “fetal personhood” is a concept with larger legal implications.
Those in opposition to abortion have been seeking to recognize fetuses as people at the legal level since Roe v. Wade, according to Rachel Rebouché, the interim dean of Temple University’s law school and an expert in reproductive health law. She notes that the political will to recognize a fetus as a human being did not exist in the past.
“But now I think what's interesting is you see kind of a renewed enthusiasm because no one really knows what the Supreme Court is going to say,” Rebouché said before the draft opinion surfaced. “Most people think that it will be some kind of overturning or evisceration of Roe. And if that turns on erasing the line of viability as when states can legislate or when they cannot, then why not push the envelope and try to afford fetuses some level of personhood.”
In Roe, the justices decided that up until fetal viability, when a fetus may survive outside of the womb on its own, states do not have a legal interest in the fetus. Rather than insert itself into a complex philosophical question of when life begins, the court decided to base the ability to get an abortion on whether the fetus could survive independently of the mother, creating the viability standard.
“Roe is very clear that the court was not defining the question of when life began and instead just decided the issue of when is there constitutional liberty to end the pregnancy as a choice,” Rebouché says. “And so that's really why the viability line exists. Because it's at that point that the court said there's an interest of the state once a fetus can live outside the womb. And so personhood is really interconnected to this idea of when life begins – the question that the courts said courts shouldn't answer.”
The viability standard, generally understood by experts at present to mean 24 weeks of pregnancy, has stood for nearly half a century. But Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is revisiting that question, raising whether Mississippi has the legal right to pass a law moving that line to 15 weeks, or more broadly, whether states have the right to set earlier gestational limits on abortion.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh during oral arguments over the Mississippi case, in December appeared to again raise that question of choosing between life and liberty, seeming to agree that it’s one that the high court perhaps should not answer.
“Why should this court be the arbiter rather than Congress, the state legislatures, state supreme courts, the people being able to resolve this?” Kavanaugh said. “And there will be different answers in Mississippi and New York, different answers in Alabama than California, because they're two different interests at stake and the people in those states might value those interests somewhat differently.”
Kavanaugh highlighted that, for some in this debate, two interests may be at stake: an interest in the woman and an interest in fetal life, often described as the maternal-fetal conflict.
“The other side would say, and the reason this issue is hard, is that you can't accommodate both interests,” Kavanaugh said. “You have to pick. That's the fundamental problem. And one interest has to prevail over the other at any given point in time. And that's why this is so challenging, I think.”
According to Grace Howard, a professor of Justice Studies at San José State University, when two opposing interests are at stake, “Typically in that dynamic, they will invoke the innocence of the unborn,” adding that the current makeup of the Supreme Court is favorable to the idea of fetal personhood.
[ Read: Overturning Abortion Rights, the Pandemic Turn the Clock Back for Women .. inside ]
The Shift Toward Criminalization
Historically, the anti-abortion movement has been hesitant to punish women who choose to terminate a pregnancy, instead painting them as victims to the abortion practice. But recent developments may suggest a future where states pursue criminal charges not only against abortion providers but also against the people seeking them out.
A recent move in Texas garnered national attention after a woman was charged with murder for what authorities claimed was a self-induced abortion. Experts say it was a misreading of the state law, and the charge was ultimately overturned – but not before the incident could raise eyebrows nationwide to the potential for states to criminalize women getting abortions in the not-so-distant future.
The new bill in Louisiana, known as the “Abolition of Abortion” act, is an even more concrete step toward criminalizing the woman rather than the provider by way of making a fetus a human being. The bill says it would “ensure the right to life and equal protection of the laws to all unborn children from the moment of fertilization by protecting them by the same laws protecting other human beings,” going on to dictate that the the consequences associated with the homicide of any person would be extended to an unborn child.
The occurrence is also happening more subtly, in legal moves unrelated to abortion that sought to criminalize pregnant women for harming an “unborn child,” like in South Carolina and Alabama, where the state supreme courts have upheld convictions ruling that substance use in pregnancy constitutes criminal child abuse.
In reality, the occurrence – of someone being charged with a crime for harming a fetus – is not unusual. As of 2018, at least 38 states had fetal homicide laws conferring rights or protections upon the fetus, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. While some of those laws explicitly set parameters around abortion, excluding it from homicide charges, others make no mention of the procedure. And the charges even appear to have become so prolific that a recent proposal in California would attempt to combat the prosecution of pregnant women for crimes related to pregnancy loss by allowing those who are pregnant to sue prosecutors for incorrectly charging them.
The idea behind moves to criminalize harm to the fetus, experts say, is that by creating legal protections for fetuses in other contexts outside of abortion, advocates could over time chip away at abortion rights as well. But as Roe enters what experts believe is likely its final days, the playing field has likely shifted from taking down Roe and subsequently revoking the limit on when states may restrict abortion – and toward eking out protections for fetuses, presumably on the road toward making abortion illegal everywhere.
In some more recent legislation, the anti-abortion movement also appears to have turned its back on messaging that promoted the “health and safety of the mother” by stripping bills of exemptions to the procedure that have been somewhat common, at least in recent memory: namely, exceptions for incest, rape and the health or wellbeing of the mother.
Mississippi’s ban beyond 15 weeks of pregnancy, along with Texas’ heartbeat abortion ban and more recently bans that have been signed into law in Florida, Arizona and Oklahoma make no exception for rape or incest, despite pleas from those in opposition decrying the “decency” of those exceptions.
“It does certainly make the law seem even more draconian when you're not even willing to protect people who have gone through something terrible. But I guess this is what we get when we extend personhood to the fetus,” Howard says. “If we've really decided the fetus is a person, it wouldn't make sense to have exceptions for rape or incest. If the fetus is a person, then the only answer is no abortion ever – make it as hard as possible to get an abortion. And they finally have kind of a political and legal means to enact that now in a way where you know, maybe 10, 20 years ago it just wouldn't have been possible.”
In recent weeks, Utah’s Republican Party threatened to take things a step further, announcing that it was considering changing its official stance on abortion to eliminate language that supported exceptions not only for rape or incest but also another commonly held exception to abortion bans: to “preserve the life of the mother.”
[ MORE: Poll: Voters Want SCOTUS to Support Abortion .. inside]
The Next Moves
As the Supreme Court deliberates Roe’s future, with a decision expected come summer over the Mississippi case that Americans received a preview of this week, the future of access to abortion in the U.S. remains unclear, and inconsistent, nationwide.
But the overturning of Roe, if that is indeed the high court’s final decision, would mark a massive moment for the country – not only by nullifying what has for decades been the law of the land but also by marking the first step toward making abortion illegal nationwide.
The next step, experts say, is fetal personhood – a glimpse of which was foreshadowed in Louisiana this week.
“It's worth noting that if Roe is overturned and fetuses are people, theoretically someone could be charged with murder if they have an abortion,” Donley says. “Because a fetus is a person that was killed.”
According to Donley, whether the anti-abortion movement takes things that far remains to be seen, but criminalization in some form, she says, is certainly coming. And it’s not necessarily dependent on the fetus becoming a legal person.
“Personhood definitely ups the ante.”
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2022-05-06/the-push-to-make-fetuses-people-and-abortion-murder
See also:
Men Are Mostly Responsible for the End of Roe, So Fuck Up Their World, Too
2022 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=168786423
Personhood: Policing Pregnant Women in America (2020) | Official Trailer HD
There is a little quirk in some psyches which makes a couple of cells a human while millions of fully developed adults subhuman.
2021 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=166598438
The Personhood Movement
"Those state laws do not imply what you would like them to imply."
Where it came from and where it stands today.
1973
U.S. Supreme Court decides Roe v. Wade .. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=410&invol=113 , making abortion legal in all 50 states. But in his majority opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun notes, “If this suggestion of personhood is established, [Roe’s] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment.” A week later, a Maryland congressman proposes .. https://www.congress.gov/bill/93rd-congress/house-joint-resolution/261 .. a Human Life Amendment — the first of more than 330 versions proposed or introduced over the next four decades.
1980
The election of Ronald Reagan and a GOP Senate with many new pro-life members raises hopes among abortion opponents for passage of a constitutional amendment.
2020 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=153100819
33 years ago - ANTI-'PERSONHOOD' PARLEY
[...]
Advocates of abortion rights met here this weekend to marshal arguments against
abortion opponents who contend that a fetus ought to have the rights of a person.
2020 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=153098996
Abortion Isn’t a Necessary Evil. It’s Great
[...]
The end of the line, Pollitt says, is the sort of ridiculous decision made by Planned Parenthood .. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/us/politics/advocates-shun-pro-choice-to-expand-message.html .. in 2013 to move away from the term “pro-choice,” which “was itself a bit of a euphemism: Choose what?” We can hardly be expected to defend abortion effectively if we can't even call the procedure by name.
P - Pollitt convincingly outlines the many reasons that abortion is not only necessary but good for society: “always a choice,” as she writes, “and often a deeply moral decision.”
P - First, and most obviously, if you have a uterus, your life depends on being able to control what goes on inside of it; giving birth necessarily represents a drastic lifestyle change and heavy financial responsibility, which lasts anywhere from nine months to the rest of your natural-born life. Therefore, in order to effectively plan a life and career, you must have some guarantee that you will never be forced to take on the risk or cost of childbirth unless you choose to do so. Birth control and abortion are the only ways to provide such a guarantee. If we are to have leaders and geniuses with uteruses, we must provide them with the reproductive freedom necessary to go to school and build careers.
P - Pregnancy is also a health risk:...
2019 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=148818063
Republicans Push Deeply Unpopular ‘Personhood’ Bill in Congress
Jan 23, 2017, 3:51pm Christine Grimaldi
"Personhood" laws would criminalize abortion with no exception and ban many forms of contraception, in vitro fertilization, and health care for pregnant people.
2018 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=145202210
Shame: "the Republican party platform calls for a ban without exceptions"
Your first link .. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/gop-candidates-ban-abortion-no-exceptions
Shame on the GOP. Whatever happened to your Bible belief.
What the Bible says about Abortion ..each linked inside ..
Abortion is not murder. A fetus is not considered a human life.
If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life. -- Exodus 21:22-23
The Bible places no value on fetuses or infants less than one month old.
And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy estimation shall be three shekels of silver. -- Leviticus 27:6
Fetuses and infants less than one month old are not considered persons.
Number the children of Levi after the house of their fathers, by their families: every male from a month old and upward shalt thou number them. And Moses numbered them according to the word of the LORD. -- Numbers 3:15-16
God sometimes approves of killing fetuses.
2015 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=116106171
Move over, Sarah Palin; Joni Ernst is the GOP's new star
[...]
Ernst wants to overturn Obamacare and is open to the idea of impeaching the president. And, like the Confederates of old, she thinks states can and should nullify federal laws they do not like and resist federal authorities who try to enforce those laws.
P - The freshman senator from Iowa thinks food stamps and the minimum wage are bad ideas. She hates handouts from the government, at least for other people. Her own extended family is reported to have received close to half a million dollars in farm subsidies over the years.
P - Counter to the conclusions of arms control experts, Ernst continues to think that Saddam Hussein really had weapons of mass destruction that justified the invasion of Iraq. She also disagrees with 97% of the world’s scientists who say that climate change is real and caused by human activity. Oh, and she buys into the story making the rounds among paranoid right-wing conspiracy theorists that the United Nations is scheming to drive American farmers off their land and into the cities.
2015 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=110163747
6 Ways Religion Does More Bad Than Good
1. Religion promotes tribalism. Infidel, heathen, heretic. Religion divides insiders from outsiders.
2. Religion anchors believers to the Iron Age. Concubines, magical incantations, chosen people, stonings....
3. Religion makes a virtue out of faith. Trust and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus.
4.Religion diverts generous impulses and good intentions.
5. Religion teaches helplessness.
6. Religions seek power. Think corporate personhood. Religions are man-made institutions, just like for-profit corporations are. And like any corporation, to survive and grow a religion must find a way to build power and wealth and compete for market share. Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity—any large enduring religious institution is as expert at this as Coca-Cola or Chevron. And just like for-profit behemoths, they are willing to wield their power and wealth in the service of self-perpetuation, even it harms society at large.
2014 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=108257800
Here's Why the Democrats Got Crushed—and Why 2016 Won't Be a Cakewalk
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=107880313
If a woman cannot get contraceptives because of the "religious" company she works for, she will get pregnant and have an abortion.
In other words these "religious" companies will be responsible for abortions that should not have had to happen.
Very Christian like.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=104028058
.. and in reply ..
and even more 'personhood' murders since evidence is the ones they refuse to pay for come into play before the sperm invades
the egg, so the woman's body rejects more zygotes than they would if they used the Hobby Lobby rejected birth control methods .
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=104028790
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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