Appeals Court Blocks Arizona’s Territorial Abortion Ban; ‘Women’s Wave’ Events Held Ahead Of ‘Roevember’ Midterms

Abortion rights supporters won two temporary victories on Friday when judges in Ohio and Arizona suspended state laws banning the procedures.

The New York Times reports, Judges in Ohio and Arizona Temporarily Block States’ Abortion Bans:

In Ohio, a county judge indefinitely suspended a state law prohibiting most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. A few hours later, an appeals court in Arizona temporarily blocked its pre-statehood law banning the procedure.

The decisions marked progress for abortion advocates who have been fighting to restore access to the procedure in states that ban it.

The Ohio decision extends an earlier, temporary suspension of the law that was set to expire next week. The ruling means that the state’s abortion ban is suspended while the court case proceeds, providing a bit more certainty for abortion providers and women.

Without the ban in effect, abortion in Ohio is legal up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.

[T]he ruling in Arizona blocks a near-total ban dating back to 1864. The strict law was reinstated last month by a lower court in Arizona. Though Friday’s ruling temporarily restored the injunction on the 158-year-old ban, a law passed this year restricting abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy is in effect.

In the court’s brief, Presiding Judge Peter J. Eckerstrom wrote that the lower court erred by failing to consider Arizona’s more recent abortion laws, which attorneys for Planned Parenthood say conflict with the pre-statehood ban.

“Arizona courts have a responsibility to attempt to harmonize all of this state’s relevant statutes,” the judge wrote.

Friday’s decisions, though not the final word on the cases, offered a window into which legal arguments might be working in the broader strategy to re-establish abortion rights through state courts.

The anti-abortion extremists are largely drawn from the Christian Nationalist variety, and members of mainstream and other religious faiths, and no religious faith, do not share their religious dogma and their attempt to impose it on others.

Jennifer Rubin writes, Yet another lawsuit shows how abortion bans violate religious freedom:

In July I wrote about a lawsuit in Florida challenging the state’s abortion ban on the grounds that it violates the religious beliefs of Jews — and members of other faiths — who do not believe in the Christian dogma that human life begins at conception. Now, three Jewish women from Kentucky have filed a similar suit.

One of the plaintiffs is undergoing in vitro fertilization. Another one is storing nine embryos. And another is “of advanced maternal age and faces many risk factors if she chooses to have a third child,” the complaint explains. It adds, “Individuals of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry have a heightened risk of passing on genetic anomalies, like Tay-Sachs disease, for which there is no cure and the average life span of those with the condition is four years of age.”

Yet Kentucky’s abortion law, the complaint argues, would arguably make both an abortion after genetic counseling or the destruction of IVF embryos capital murder.

Contrary to the officiousness of the right-wing Supreme Court justices, who seem not to understand that they applied their own religious views in their ruling overturning abortion rights, the complaint explains:

Judaism has never defined life beginning at conception. Jewish views on the beginning of life originate in the Torah. … Millenia of commentary from Jewish scholars has reaffirmed Judaism’s commitment to reproductive rights.

Under Jewish law, a fetus does not become a human being or child until birth. Under no circumstances has Jewish law defined a human being or child as the moment that a human spermatozoon fuses with a human ovum.

The question of when life begins for a human being is a religious and philosophical question without universal beliefs across different religions.

The last sentence is key.The so-called state interest in preserving “fetal life” depends on the assumption that a fetus deserves the same protection as a toddler. But for Jews, “the necessity of protecting birth givers in the event a pregnancy endangers the woman’s life and causes the mother physical and mental harm” must control. Moreover, “the law forces Plaintiffs to spend exorbitant fees to keep their embryos frozen indefinitely or face potential felony charges.”

For that reason, the complaint alleges that the Kentucky abortion law violates the First Amendment and the state constitutional protection for religious freedom — as well as the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The latter part of the lawsuit may become moot should Kentucky voters pass a ballot measure that would declare the state constitution does not protect abortion access. But, in any case, forcing others to comply with the religious-based edicts of one sect flies in the face of the constitutional guarantee of free religious expression.

The complaint also alleges that the Kentucky law should be void for vagueness under the 5th and 14th Amendments. As with so many laws triggered by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that predate modern medicine, it’s not clear whether the law requires preservation of the embryos. Moreover, the complaint argues, Kentucky’s abortion law “does not impose clear standards, rules, or regulations regarding the potential experiences of potential birth givers with regards to their access to reproductive technology.”

Regardless of whether the lawsuit succeeds, it raises three critical issues that apply in legal challenges to abortion bans. First, it pulls back the curtain to reveal that judges are acting on a religious, not scientific, view of personhood. The arrogance in assuming that everyone buys into a specific Christian sectarian viewpoint reveals the degree to which right-wing courts and legislatures ignore or disfavor Americans who are not Christian. It’s critical to force politicians, media, pundits, doctors, researchers and ordinary voters to recognize this.

Second, the lawsuit makes clear the negative impact on IVF, which was not in existence when many state abortion bans were passed in the 19th or early 20th century. The current crop of state lawmakers and Supreme Court justices seems willfully oblivious to the implications for such reproductive care. Do they really want to make a commonly used process for procreation effectively impossible?

Finally, it’s not just the Kentucky law that is vague to the point of unintelligibility. Many state statutes use vague, nonmedical terms to put doctors and patients in untenable positions. Should physicians render care to a pregnant woman experiencing a dangerous pregnancy, risking prosecution under the opaque language of a 19th-century law, or should they let the patient’s condition become so acute that she might fit within an exception for preservation of her life? The uncertainty these laws have imposed seems designed to chill the willingness of doctors to provide care, even if it turns out to be legal.

Over the weekend, Abortion Rights Protesters Turned Out Ahead Of ‘Roevember’ Midterm Elections:

With exactly one month until the 2022 midterm elections, supporters of abortion rights turned out Saturday in places across the country to highlight the gravity of the issues at stake.

Control over the Senate and the House, both currently in the hands of Democrats, is considered to be up for grabs ― and with it, the future of reproductive health care in America.

Republican lawmakers have been taking increasingly tough stances against abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade this summer. This 1973 ruling made abortion legal nationwide. Some states, such as Texas and Oklahoma, now do not even allow abortion in cases of rape or incest; exceptions to their abortion bans can only be made in very limited circumstances to save the pregnant patient’s life. Criminal penalties in certain states mean that medical practitioners might be risking their freedom and livelihood if they perform an abortion in a case that does not conform to lawmakers’ restrictions.

What’s more, a conservative movement is underway to grant fetuses “personhood” rights that would inevitably clash with women’s rights to make their own healthcare decisions.

With all that in mind, demonstrators appeared united behind a push to get out the vote on Nov. 8 at a series of “Women’s Wave” events organized by the Women’s March.

Some demonstrators came with signs casting this coming November as “Roevember,” a referendum on abortion. Already the abortion issue has upended midterm races and forced some conservative candidates to tone down their rhetoric in the aftermath of what has proven to be a widely unpopular Supreme Court decision.

These Republican candidates are simply lying now, hoping that enough voters are not paying attention that they might still get their vote. Pay attention! Stay angry. Don’t be a fool. You can vote early starting this week.