COVID-19 & Healthcare

SCOTUS to hear Texas abortion appeal on Wednesday

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After nine years of having only a limited role in the always heated controversy over abortion rights, the Supreme Court this week moves back into the center, facing again a fundamental question that has not changed much since Roe v. Wade: will women and their doctors have the basic choice about ending a pregnancy? Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog has the Argument preview: New look at abortion after nine years:

Handmaid'sTaleOn Wednesday, March 2, the Court will hold a one-hour hearing on Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, and on the outcome of that case depends the near-term fate of a new emphasis in the anti-abortion movement on the health of women, as intense as has been its long effort to protect the life of the fetus from the moment of conception to live birth.

This time, the Court will be dealing with a law in Texas that is like scores of others enacted in states across the country in recent years: more restrictions on the actual operation of abortion clinics, with the usual — and intended — effect of reducing access to pregnancy termination services. [aka Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) Laws.] That is an approach that potentially could have a greater chance of succeeding in the Court than the other tactic that has been thwarted repeatedly by the Justices: narrowing abortion rights directly by banning the procedure earlier and earlier in pregnancy.

Image from The Handmaid’s Tale.

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SCOTUS stays ‘Clean Power Plan’ during appeals

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Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog reports, Carbon pollution controls put on hold:

carbon-emissionsDividing five to four, the Supreme Court on Tuesday evening ordered the Obama administration not to take any steps to carry out its “Clean Power Plan,” a move that may stall the plan until after the president leaves office next January.

The order — issued in identical form in individual responses to five separate challenges — will spare the operators of coal-fired power plants from having to do anything to begin planning for a shift to energy sources that the government considers to be cleaner. (An example of the five orders is this one, issued in a case filed by twenty-nine states.)

The plan, designed to make sharp reductions in carbon pollution from the smokestacks of generating plants fueled by fossil sources, is now under review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.   It has put the case on an expedited schedule, with a hearing set for June 2.  However, it may not finish its ruling until this fall, and then either side may try to move the case on to the Supreme Court.

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Authoritarian Movement Conservatives Assault The Voter Protection Act

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Last October I warned you about how Authoritarian Movement Conservatism threatens democracy. You should refresh your recollection by re-reading this post.

Arizona has long been a hotbed for radical authoritarian movement conservatism.

Corporate interests and groups like the “Kochtopus” American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have increasingly been pursuing state “preemption” measures to block local control over a range of issues, from the minimum wage, to LGBTQ rights, to immigration. Corporate Interests Take Aim at Local Democracy.

MussoliniIn his state of the state speech, Il Duce, the ice cream man hired by Koch Industries to run their Southwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Arizona, threatened local municipalities from enacting wage and conditions of employment regulations, or he and his henchmen in our lawless Tea-Publican legislature will punish them by withholding state revenue sharing funds. Gov. Ducey warns cities against minimum wage laws. (Note: our lawless Tea-Publican legislature has been sweeping stealing state revenue sharing funds from local municipalities for years to “balance” the state budget with gimmicks, so this isn’t much of a threat).

This is despite the fact that the Arizona Courts have ruled that local municipalities have the legal right to set minimum wage and conditions of employment under a citizens initiative, Prop. 202, enacted by voters in 2006. Court: Arizona cities can raise minimum wage.

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Anti-choicers want dead fetuses to supersede live women

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Some of them really do earnestly describe themselves as “abolitionists” and, yes, they do want to treat “suspicious” miscarriages as murder.

The Arizona Legislature is in session and, as sure as the sun rises in the east, the GOP majority has some anti-choice bills in the hopper. One that warrants highlighting is SB1474, put forth by the famously fetus-fetishizing Senator Nancy Barto. It would prohibit the use of fetal tissue for any research purpose, even if it were donated fully free by the woman the abortion was performed upon:

36-2302. Human fetus or embryo; prohibitions; definitions
A. A PERSON MAY NOT USE A HUMAN FETUS OR EMBRYO OR ANY PART, ORGAN OR FLUID OF THE FETUS OR EMBRYO RESULTING FROM AN ABORTION IN ANIMAL OR HUMAN RESEARCH, EXPERIMENTATION OR STUDY OR FOR TRANSPLANTATION, EXCEPT FOR EITHER OF THE FOLLOWING:
1. DIAGNOSTIC OR REMEDIAL PROCEDURES FOR THE PURPOSE OF DETERMINING THE LIFE OR HEALTH OF THE HUMAN FETUS OR EMBRYO OR THE MOTHER OR FOR PRESERVING THE LIFE OR HEALTH OF THE HUMAN FETUS OR EMBRYO OR THE MOTHER.

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Houston indictments of anti-choice smear merchants show how their claims fall apart under the slightest scrutiny

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Center for Arizona Policy, not dealing well with Monday’s news

So many anti-choicers were having a bad day on Monday with the announcement that a Republican witch hunt of Planned Parenthood in Harris County, Texas had gone hilariously awry, with the perpetrators of the video “sting” being indicted by the grand jury while Planned Parenthood was cleared, that it’s difficult to pick just one to highlight but I’ll go with Andrew Napolitano of Fox News. Napolitano, a former judge, had a meltdown over a Republican prosecutor not just going after Planned Parenthood out of opposition to legal abortion irrespective of whatever evidence came forth in the case.

“The grand jury does not turn around and indict your witnesses, the people who brought you the case, without the prosecutor wanting this to happen!” Napolitano exclaimed.

He continued: “So, why would this prosecutor, appointed by Gov. [Rick] Perry, a former judge, a Republican woman, why would this prosecutor want to do this other than to send a message like, ‘I might be a Republican but leave Planned Parenthood alone’?”

“Leave it alone?” Napolitano shouted. “They’re using tax dollars to kill babies and sell their body parts!”

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