Introduction: In the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a new and rising batch of laws, rules and regulations have been introduced across the country, each hoping to successfully bring about a court challenge that will overturn the law of the land.
• An explanation of Roe v. Wade
• Why is this court different from prior courts, and why is now the time to challenge Roe?
• What would happen if Roe were overturned?
Abortion Restrictions – Giving Fetuses Rights While Taking Them From Women
• Nebraska – Fetal Pain Bans: The first pre-viability abortion law. Sets up two direct challenges to Roe by challenging viability and not allowing an exception for mother’s health
• Ohio – The “Heartbeat” Ban: An incremental version of “Personhood” that has nearly the effectiveness of a personhood ban without that nasty contraception/IVF complication. A ban that divided abortion opponents by being “too much too fast.”
• Wisconsin – Medication abortion restrictions: Purposefully vague legislation and potential felony charges created an environment that forced all reproductive health clinics in the state to cease offering medication abortions.
• Idaho – The “self-abortion" ruling: Jennie Lynn McCormick's attempt to end her own pregnancy without visiting a doctor due to prohibitive costs could translate into the ability for all women to be able to access abortion without a doctor's permission or a face to face meeting. The idea became so threatening to the state that they jailed her in order to serve as an example to other women in her situation.
• Indiana – Bei Bei Shui ruling: “Feticide" can be expanded into punishing any pregnant women for harm that she does, purposefully or not, to her own fetus as well as what a doctor or nurse believes her intention may have been. This creates a precedent where the fetus becomes more of a "person with rights" than its mother.
Pre-Abortion Access Restrictions and Restricting Access To Contraception: States create multiple access “road blocks” as a means of increasing the cost of obtaining an abortion due to travel, lost wages, daycare, and increased cost of an abortion later in the pregnancy. The access roadblocks, which disproportionately effect poor and rural women, are an overall attempt to see how far Casey v. Planned Parenthood’s ruling on “reasonable restrictions to pre-viability abortion without undue burden” can be stretched.
• Utah – The first non-enjoined 72 hour waiting period. How long is too onerous when it comes to waiting periods?
• Mississippi – Targeted Regulation of Abortion Procedures (TRAP). Does a state HAVE to have a clinic? Is a state obligated to not create a law that could "accidentally" eliminate abortion?
• Kansas – The Conscience Clause. When does the right to not "participate" in something that "may" cause an abortion supersede the right of a woman to have access to health care? Especially when it is an “opinion” versus science, such as when it comes to the alleged abortifacient nature of contraception and emergency contraception?
• Oklahoma – The Forced Mandatory Ultrasound. Oklahoma was the first state to introduce the mandatory ultrasound law, complete with scripts for doctors and a print off of the fetus or embryo for the woman to take with her. Oklahoma’s law was found unconstitutional, but Texas’s identical law was not. The two together set up a near unavoidable trip to the Supreme Court for a final ruling.
Funding Abortions and Health Care – Creating a “separate but equal” health system specifically for women. Beginning with the Hyde rule of “no taxpayer funded abortions except in the case of rape, incest or a mother’s health,” we now see the creation of a “Super-Hyde” rule with no exceptions at all. The Affordable Care Act has only increased the problem by allowing states to reject abortion coverage in health care exchanges, create “abortion riders” and eliminating rape, incest and health as allowable exceptions.
• DC – Medicaid ban on abortion coverage. Congress rules that the District of Columbia may not allow Medicaid to pay for local abortions, despite the District’s own decision otherwise. The rule acts as a single fast track to the Supreme Court due to federal oversight by the courts as well as serving as the first attempt to use Congress to write abortion legislation for the District, who cannot vote against it.
• Texas – Women’s Health Program, reliant on using Planned Parenthood to provide health care, scraps its full program and federal assistance in order to create a new program that not only has no allowance for abortions (which the federal program prohibited, too) but cuts off any funding that might go to Planned Parenthood. As a result, the state will have a program providing less access and care for poor women on Medicaid than for women with health insurance. Texas’s program was challenged, but other states have simply proposed “reprioritizing” funding to ensure it runs out before it can ever get to a Planned Parenthood provider.
• Arizona – The state rules that employers can decide whether or not a woman should have birth control covered under her insurance plan, depending on what she uses the contraception for. The state also protects doctors from lawsuits if they choose not to tell a woman about potential issues with her fetus if the doctor believes she would get an abortion as a result.
Conclusion – What’s next? What could change court make up, how could activists nip a challenge before it happens and what will happen in the next 40 years? Are there any moves that can be made to get all women equal health care access regardless of age, location, race or income?
