Monday Must-Read March 25, 2013 Jill Over at Feministing: Stepping into the light of my abortion. It’s a wonderful piece. Read, share, discuss.
http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2013/03/22/north-dakota-bans-all-abortions-by-defining-life-at-conception-so-much-for-gop-reinventing-itself/
That site is super hard to understand, too many links to more pages with more links to more pages… ND (I feel dirty even living next to it), has a whole smorgasbord of bans, infringements, and redefinitions on the docket. What I think got mixed up on the linked site are these two gems: An act to ban abortion after detection of a fetal heart beat and A constitutional amendment defining person-hood The former is definitely going to see major lawsuits since Roe v Wade already establishes the definition of viability, which isn’t happening at six weeks. Or did those utero-bots get invented while I was at work? The latter is the one that I don’t get, since I really only have a high school level grasp on state v federal constitutional law. The amendment, which will go on a ballot in November would in essence ban abortion, but I think they’d still need to pass an actual law to criminalize it. The amendment would give them cover for it, essentially getting them around Roe (this is me hand-waving, just guessing).
A state constitution cannot violate the federal Constitution. A state constitution can go further, give increased protections, talk about different stuff, etc. but cannot outright violate the federal Constitution. Again, this would have to be challenged, though.
And if he doesn’t it still won’t actually make abortions illegal, per Roe and Casey. This is disgusting, but it’s political theater.
Well, the law is unconstitutional per the prior Supreme Court decisions that you mentioned. But as a practical matter, if this claw passes, it will still make abortion illegal in that jurisdiction until someone challenges the law, there is a hearing, and it is found to be unconstitutional. Sometimes that can take some time.
There should be a good case for a preliminary injunction. It’ll take some time for even that, but I’d expect things will move fairly quickly.
There should be a good case for a preliminary injunction. It’ll take some time for even that, but I’d expect things will move fairly quickly. Yep, and in pretty much every case I’m aware of, the injunction has been ordered previously to (or coincident with) the law taking effect. Seriously, I’m not minimizing how awful it is that lawmakers are doing this, but as a practical matter I think it’s important to make it clear that abortion won’t be prohibited.
Wait, so, what do they do with fertilization clinics? Don’t you fertilize a whole bunch of eggs at once during the whole in vitro process? I’m confused.
I think technically the clinics would have to be shut down. Or else they could craft some ludicrous statement requiring all the fertilized eggs to be used (that is, transferred to a womb, doesn’t matter whose) or they can’t be created. But usually, the life-beings-at-conception folks are pretty against IVF. No matter what, though, they wouldn’t let the embryos be destroyed. The Feministe piece was beautiful; thank you for calling our attention to it, Jill.