Replies to post #414831 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[sortagreen]

Gambling is illegal in Hawaii. Can they prosecute a resident who goes to a casino Las Vegas?

Is that absurd?

By the way, I think Georgia has that law as well.

[fuagf]

Georgia Just Criminalized Abortion. Women Who Terminate Their Pregnancies Would Receive Life in Prison.

"A Missouri Lawmaker Is Trying To Stop Women From Seeking Abortions In Other States"

Related: Gambling is illegal in Hawaii. Can they prosecute a resident who goes to a casino Las Vegas?
Is that absurd?
By the way, I think Georgia has that law as well.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=168997585

This is dated, still now with the American Taliban going
bonkers looks it may be as relevant as long as they are.

By Mark Joseph Stern
May 07, 2019 2:03 PM


Anti-abortion activists participate in the March for Life, an annual event to mark the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, outside the U.S.
Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 18. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Mnay more links

On Tuesday, Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a “fetal heartbeat” bill that seeks to outlaw abortion after about six weeks. The measure, HB 481 .. http://www.legis.ga.gov/Legislation/en-US/display/20192020/HB/481 , is the most extreme abortion ban in the country—not just because it would impose severe limitations on women’s reproductive rights, but also because it would subject women who get illegal abortions to life imprisonment and the death penalty.

The primary purpose of HB 481 is to prohibit doctors from terminating any pregnancy after they can detect “embryonic or fetal cardiac activity,” which typically occurs at six weeks’ gestation. But the bill does far more than that. In one sweeping provision, it declares that “unborn children are a class of living, distinct person” that deserves “full legal recognition.” Thus, Georgia law must “recognize unborn children as natural persons”—not just for the purposes of abortion, but as a legal rule.
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This radical revision of Georgia law is quite deliberate: The bill confirms that fetuses “shall be included in population based determinations” from now on, because they are legally humans, and residents of the state. But it is not clear whether the bill’s drafters contemplated the more dramatic consequences of granting legal personhood to fetuses. For instance, as Georgia appellate attorney Andrew Fleischman has pointed out ..

Georgia has just passed a bill granting full 14th Amendment rights to all unborn children.

As of this minute, Georgia is now holding thousands of citizens in jail without bond in violation of their rights and without a Gerstein hearing. /1 pic.twitter.com/UY40FjIG92

— Andrew Fleischman (@ASFleischman) May 7, 2019

.. , the moment this bill takes effect on Jan. 1, 2020, the state will be illegally holding thousands of citizens in jail without bond. That’s because, under HB 481, pregnant inmates’ fetuses have independent rights—including the right to due process. Can a juvenile attorney represent an inmate’s fetus and demand its release? If not, why? It is an egregious due process violation to punish one human for the crimes of another. If an inmate’s fetus is a human, how can Georgia lawfully detain it for a crime it did not commit?

But the most startling effect of HB 481 may be its criminalization of women who seek out unlawful abortions or terminate their own pregnancies. An earlier Georgia law imposing criminal penalties for illegal abortions does not apply to women who self-terminate; the new measure, by contrast, conspicuously lacks such a limitation. It can, and would, be used to prosecute women. Misoprostol, a drug that treats stomach ulcers but also induces abortions, is extremely easy to obtain on the internet, and American women routinely use it to self-terminate. It is highly effective in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Anti-abortion advocates generally insist that they do not want to punish women who undergo abortions. But HB 481 does exactly that. Once it takes effect, a woman who self-terminates will have, as a matter of law, killed a human—thereby committing murder .. https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-16/chapter-5/article-1/16-5-1 . The penalty for that crime in Georgia is life imprisonment or capital punishment.

--
It is entirely possible that Georgia prosecutors armed
with this new statute will bring charges against women.
--

HB 481 would also have consequences for women who get abortions from doctors or miscarry. A woman who seeks out an illegal abortion from a health care provider would be a party to murder .. https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-16/chapter-2/article-2/16-2-20/ , subject to life in prison. And a woman who miscarries because of her own conduct—say, using drugs while pregnant—would be liable for second-degree murder, punishable by 10 to 30 years’ imprisonment. Prosecutors may interrogate women who miscarry to determine whether they can be held responsible; if they find evidence of culpability, they may charge, detain, and try these women for the death of their fetuses.

Even women who seek lawful abortions out of state may not escape punishment. If a Georgia resident plans to travel elsewhere to obtain an abortion, she may be charged with conspiracy to commit murder, punishable by 10 years’ imprisonment. An individual who helps a woman plan her trip to get an out-of-state abortion, or transports her to the clinic, may also be charged with conspiracy. These individuals, after all, are “conspiring” to end of the life of a “person” with “full legal recognition” under Georgia law.

It is entirely possible that Georgia prosecutors armed with this new statute will bring charges against women who terminate their pregnancies illegally. In 2015, a Georgia prosecutor charged Kenlissia Jones with murder after she self-terminated; he only dropped the charges after concluding .. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/06/kenlissa-jones-case-murder-charge-against-woman-who-took-abortion-pill-dropped.html .. that “criminal prosecution of a pregnant woman for her own actions against her unborn child does not seem permitted.” Starting in 2020, however, Georgia law will permit precisely this kind of prosecution. There is no reason to doubt that history will repeat itself, and more prosecutors will charge women who undergo abortions with murder.

For now, Supreme Court precedent .. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1991/91-744 .. protecting women’s reproductive rights should bar such prosecutions .. https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/06/jennie-linn-mccormack-case-court-strikes-down-idahos-abortion-laws.html —and indeed, require the invalidation of HB 481. But the court’s conservative majority may be on the verge of dismantling Roe v. Wade. If that happens, Georgia and other conservative states .. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/11/712455980/a-bill-banning-most-abortions-becomes-law-in-ohio .. will be free to outlaw abortion, and to imprison women who self-terminate. HB 481 is further proof that once Roe is gone, it won’t just be abortion providers who risk legal jeopardy: Women will be punished, too .. https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/07/misoprostol-and-roe-v-wade-abortion-is-increasingly-something-a-woman-can-do-to-herself.html .

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/hb-481-georgia-law-criminalizes-abortion-subjects-women-to-life-in-prison.html

[fuagf]

Opinion | Four Collisions to Expect if Roe Is Repealed

"A Missouri Lawmaker Is Trying To Stop Women From Seeking Abortions In Other States
GOP state Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman wants to copy the enforcement mechanism
from Texas' abortion ban to stop people from traveling out of state. "

There are a number of unsettled questions and jurisdictional battles that are set to ensue if Roe is overturned.


A woman attends to her child as she arrives at the Utah State Capitol to protest and show their support for Roe v. Wade and abortion on May 3, 2022, in Salt Lake City, Utah. | George Frey/Getty Images

Opinion by Rachel Rebouché, Greer Donley and David S. Cohen
05/05/2022 04:30 AM EDT

Rachel Rebouché is a professor of law and the interim dean of Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, where her scholarship focuses on reproductive health, family law and public health.

Greer Donley is an assistant professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh Law School, where her scholarship focuses on reproductive justice, bioethics and F.D.A. law.

David S. Cohen is a professor of law at Drexel University’s Kline School of Law and a co-author of “Obstacle Course: The Everyday Struggle to Get an Abortion in America.”

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, as a draft opinion .. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473 .. suggests it will do, the impact on American law will have repercussions beyond Washington or the states set to ban most abortions.

Some conservatives see the Roe opinion as a simple matter of returning the abortion issue to the states, and Justice Samuel Alito’s draft suggests he sees it the same way: “The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion,” he concludes. “Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”

But it’s not that simple.

Our research demonstrates that a post-Roe landscape is far more complicated than most Americans appreciate. Overturning Roe won’t simply kick the matter back to state governments. It will trigger new kinds of battles — among the states, and between states and the federal government — that will strain our federalist system.

If the Court overturns Roe, as the draft opinion indicates will happen, each state will be allowed to set its own abortion policy — banning it entirely or protecting it aggressively. That means roughly half the country will ban abortion and half the country will not .. https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2021/10/26-states-are-certain-or-likely-ban-abortion-without-roe-heres-which-ones-and-why .

..........Insert: I can't reproduce the map so went looking. This will do for now:
October 28, 2021
News Release
If Roe v. Wade Is Overturned: New Interactive Map Shows How Far People Seeking Abortion in the 26 States Certain or Likely to Ban the Procedure Will Need to Travel to Get the Care They Need
Interactive map offers data for three scenarios that could become reality—a total ban, a ban at 15 weeks of gestation and a ban at 20 weeks of gestation
Washington, DC - People seeking abortion in many states would have to travel much farther to get care if federal constitutional protections for abortion are weakened or overturned, according to new Guttmacher Institute data .. https://states.guttmacher.org/ .. [the map is inside that link, click on the state for the detail] released today. Guttmacher experts predict that if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion.
https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2021/if-roe-v-wade-overturned-new-interactive-map-shows-how-far-people-seeking-abortion
end insert ----------

But it won’t end there. The anti-abortion movement’s ultimate goal is to end abortion nationwide. To that end, some anti-abortion legislators and prosecutors will try to legislate beyond their borders to chill abortion everywhere. In response, abortion rights legislators will attempt to make their states abortion havens.

Here are just a few of the unsettled questions coming down the pike that show the myriad uncertainties of a post-Roe country.

Can a state’s anti-abortion laws apply beyond its borders?

The end goal of the anti-abortion movement is to ban abortion nationwide .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/02/abortion-ban-roe-supreme-court-mississippi/ . While it waits to have the votes necessary to pass such a federal law, anti-abortion legislators, prosecutors and advocates may attempt to use other state tools to stop as many abortions as possible, reaching outside state borders to limit travel or punish out-of-state providers who provide abortion for their citizens.

Missouri already has given us a taste of what this will look like. Earlier this year, a Missouri legislator introduced an amendment .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/08/missouri-abortion-ban-texas-supreme-court/ .. that would create civil liability for anyone who helps another person travel out of state to get an abortion. While this bill did not become law, it is a clear signal that anti-abortion legislators are already thinking about this next frontier.

If they do move in this direction, they will be acting against basic principles of how Americans think about travel and law. Most of us assume that if we travel out of state, we must follow the laws of wherever we are and that the laws of our home state do not apply. Think of gambling in Las Vegas before it was widely legal elsewhere — people traveled there without even a thought that their home state, where gambling was illegal, would punish them when they returned from Nevada.

[H/t sortagreen, Gambling is illegal in Hawaii. Can they prosecute a resident who goes to a casino Las Vegas?
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=168997585]

However, there is no settled law that clearly reflects this understanding. Though there are strong arguments that various parts of the Constitution — including the Due Process Clause, the Privileges or Immunities Clause, the Citizenship Clause and the Dormant Commerce Clause — prohibit states from exercising their jurisdiction beyond their borders, the precedent on these points is not well developed. This lack of precedent is easily manipulable by anti-abortion judges and justices to uphold state efforts to limit abortion travel or prosecute out-of-state providers. After all, few people believed that SB8, the Texas law that creates civil liability for providers offering abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, would be upheld, but the current Supreme Court did just that.

Can liberal states provide abortion care for people from out of state?

As abortion restrictions tighten, states with abortion rights legislators are already acting to help out-of-state people seeking abortions. Connecticut [hooray] is leading the way .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/30/connecticut-abortion-rights/ , passing a bill that awaits the governor’s signature that will make the state a safe place for providers to care for people from other states. The bill says that the courts and agencies of Connecticut will not participate in out-of-state investigations, lawsuits or criminal prosecutions related to abortion that is lawfully performed in the state. It also allows Connecticut residents to countersue in state courts if they are roped into an SB8-style civil lawsuit after offering assistance to abortion patients in another state. Efforts to pass similar laws are already underway in California .. https://www.kcra.com/article/ca-lawmakers-abortion-rights-leaked-roe-v-wade-draft/39899616 , New York and Illinois, and other abortion-supportive states are sure to follow suit in the wake of Roe’s demise.

These laws are creative ways to protect abortion access. However, even these bills’ most ardent supporters recognize that they undermine some of the key principles of our federalist structure. States normally cooperate out of respect for one another. These abortion-supportive bills test this basic principle of interstate comity. We have advocated elsewhere about the importance of such laws, but we can’t fail to recognize that these laws would chip away at a key facet of our national structure. These interstate conflicts could also wind up before the Supreme Court, where basic constitutional issues around national citizenship and state sovereignty will be at stake.

[Ok. It must then go without saying that laws passed by the most ardent anti-abortion zealots supporters designed to
stop women traveling inter-state for an abortion also "undermine some of the key principles of our federalist structure."]

Supreme Court
Read Justice Alito’s initial draft abortion opinion which would overturn Roe v. Wade
By POLITICO Staff > https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/read-justice-alito-initial-abortion-opinion-overturn-roe-v-wade-pdf-00029504

What about abortion by mail?

Historically, states have controlled abortion by controlling the providers who performed abortion procedures. But medication abortion .. https://www.guttmacher.org/evidence-you-can-use/medication-abortion — the two-drug regimen that the FDA has approved to end a pregnancy in the first 10 weeks — is now available by mail. People who live in a state where abortion is illegal can buy abortion pills online, either on their own or with the help of international providers. And patients have found ways to obtain abortion pills via telehealth even when they live in states that forbid the practice by using mail forwarding or giving the address of a friend or family member who can forward the medication to them.

This exposes patients, particularly the most vulnerable patients, to various legal risks. But with state and local officials having no ability to tell what a package contains (and no legal authority to inspect packages without specific suspicion and a warrant), mailed pills will be difficult to police. Anti-abortion states understand that the changing landscape of early abortion care threatens to undermine abortion bans. To that end, states are increasingly passing bans on telehealth for abortion and banning distribution of the drugs within the state. Nevertheless, the practical reality is that some of those laws are going to be very difficult to enforce.

What role can the federal government play post-Roe?

Federal law is supreme over state law, so when state laws conflict with federal law, federal law prevails. There are a variety of federal laws and regulations, including those that govern its regulation of medication abortion through the FDA, as well as medical emergencies that might conflict with state abortion laws and poke holes in a state’s ability to ban abortion. For instance, advocates might argue that the FDA’s approval and regulation of medication abortion could invalidate a state’s attempt to ban it .. https://time.com/6141517/abortion-federal-law-preemption-roe-v-wade/ .. or that the federal law requiring hospitals to treat medical emergencies prohibits states from denying medically-necessary abortion care to patients.

The government could, conceivably, try to use its power over federal land to permit abortions in anti-abortion states, although there are limits to this power. If the federal government were to lease property to an abortion provider, for instance, there are legal arguments that state abortion laws might not apply to abortions on the federal land. These arguments rely on the basic principle that the federal government controls the laws on federal lands — and, as yet, there are no specific federal laws banning abortion. To be clear, there is no movement behind this idea yet, but this is one way the Biden administration could work around the policies of anti-abortion states. Once again, how the Supreme Court rules on such a move would be hard to predict.

The interstate and interjurisdictional conflicts on the horizon will test fundamental assumptions about the reach of state and federal power. If Roe is overturned, as is looking very likely, the draft opinion’s approach of returning this issue to the states could create more interjurisdictional battles than ever before, which is likely to only intensify the political conflict over abortion rights.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/05/leave-abortion-to-states-not-easy-00029978