ABOLISH SCOTUS

AOC questions legitimacy of Supreme Court and calls Biden ‘historically weak’ on abortion

Sheila Flynn
Sat, June 25, 2022

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has questioned the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and challenged president Joe Biden to “step up” on abortion rights.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez on Saturday forensically laid out, in a Twitter thread, many of the problems she had with Supreme Court judges, calling for Democrats to outline a clearer and more instructional plan for voters on how to codify Roe v Wade – less than 24 hours after the nation’s highest court reversed its 1973 ruling, leaving it up to states to now legislate on abortion.

“Election or not, the Supreme Court has a legitimacy crisis and the public reaffirms it: 75% of the US public reports lacking confidence in SCOTUS, & those numbers were *pre-Roe ruling*” she tweeted Saturday.

She said in reply to another tweet that Mr Biden has been “historically weak on this issue (supported Hyde until ‘19), but now is his chance to step up & grow.”

In addition to highlighting sexual assault allegations against justices and claiming a seat was “stolen,” she wrote that “7 of the 9 justices were appointed by a party that hasn’t won a popular vote more than once in 30 years” and “Several lied to Congress to secure their appointment.”

“In a legitimacy crisis, the solution Biden + Dem leaders must offer can’t just be one of voting, but of statue & authority,” she tweeted, later adding: “The ruling is Roe, but the crisis is democracy ... The President & Dem leaders can no longer get away with familiar tactics of ‘committees’ and ‘studies’ to avoid tackling our crises head-on anymore.”

She called for measures including a restrain on judicial review; the opening of abortion clinics on federal land; court expansion; and the expansion of federal access to and awareness of pill abortion.

To best achieve party goals, she said, Democrats must “be PRECISE with what we need and we will do with that power.

“How many seats does the party need to Codify Roe?” she tweeted. “Dems must SAY THAT. Not just ‘go vote’ or ‘give us $6 to win.’ That is demoralizing, losing, unfocused nonsense.”

Ms Ocasio-Cortez insisted that her party must tell voters which seats were needed, in which states and which races, in addition to outlining what the President and Congress would be “ACTUALLY willing+able to do at 52/60 seats?

“Be honest. Details motivate,” the 32-year-old tweeted, urging people to “stop the handwringing and get moving.”

AOC says Supreme Court justices who lied under oath must face consequences for 'impeachable offense'

Yelena Dzhanova

Sun, June 26, 2022 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Drew Angerer/Getty Image

• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday called for consequences for justices who "lie under oath."

• Ocasio-Cortez was referring to SCOTUS Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.

• Two senators said the justices assured them they believed Roe v. Wade is law, but both voted to overturn it.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday said she believes it's an "impeachable offense" for a Supreme Court justice to lie under oath.

Following the overturn of Roe v. Wade, Sens. Susan Collins and Joe Manchin said they felt misled by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch during their individual confirmation hearings. The two senators, both pro-choice, voted to confirm Kavanaugh and Gorsuch because they assured them that they believed Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision that made abortion a constitutional right nationwide, was law.

Both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, however, voted to strike down Roe earlier this week.

Ocasio-Cortez, speaking in an interview with NBC News' "Meet the Press," said she believes the court is facing a "crisis of legitimacy" and justices must face consequences if they lie under oath.

"If we allow Supreme Court nominees to lie under oath and secure lifetime appointments to the highest court of the land and then issue, without basis," she said, "we must see that through. There must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and a hostile takeover of our democratic institutions."

"To allow that to stand is to allow it to happen," she continued. "And what makes it particularly dangerous is that it sends a blaring signal to all future nominees that they can now lie to duly elected members of the United States Senate in order to secure Supreme Court confirmations and seats on the Supreme Court."

Ocasio-Cortez added that she believes that lying under oath is an impeachable offense.

"I believe that this is something that should be very seriously considered, including by senators like Joe Manchin and Susan Collins," she said.

The decision to overturn Roe v. Wade sparked protests nationwide. Since the decision was made public, a slew of prominent individuals from musician Jack White to lawmakers such as Ocasio-Cortez have blasted the ruling. Attorney General Merrick Garland condemned the court's decision, saying on Friday that it's a "devastating blow to reproductive freedom in the United States."

AOC Says Impeachment Possible 

If Supreme Court Justices Lied 

Under Oath

Murjani Rawls

Mon, June 27, 2022 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) leaves after speaking to abortion-rights activists in front of the U.S. Supreme Court after the Court announced a ruling in the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case in June 24, 2022, in Washington, DC.

During an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y) stated that she felt impeachment should be considered if certain Supreme Court Justices lied in their confirmation hearings about what they felt about Roe v. Wade, according to Axios. Ocasio-Cortez’s comments come after the Supreme Court overturned the abortion rights case on Friday, and Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) both have called the testimony of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh being potentially misleading.

During the confirmation hearings of Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, each stated they would honor precedent. Specifically, when asked about Roe v. Wade, Justice Kavanaugh said it was “precedent on precedent.” This was interpreted as meaning if confirmed, he would uphold the right to an abortion because the case protections had stood the test of time. However, as we saw Friday, that didn’t happen. Ocasio-Cortez believes there should be consequences for this.

From Axios:

“If we allow Supreme Court nominees to lie under oath and secure lifetime appointments to the highest court of the land and then issue—without basis, if you read these opinions—rulings that deeply undermine the human civil rights of the majority of Americans, we must see that through,” the lawmaker said.

“There must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and the hostile takeover of our democratic institutions,” she added.

There are also questions surrounding the legitimacy of Justice Clarence Thomas concerning his wife and her involvement in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election. In his concurring opinion, Thomas hinted that the Supreme Court should look at other rights such as contraception and gay marriage with 14th amendment protections.

Again, from Axios:

“I believe lying under oath is an impeachable offense,” she added, referring to Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. “I believe that violating federal law in not disclosing income from political organizations, as Clarence Thomas did years ago, is also potentially an impeachable offense. I believe that not recusing from cases that one clearly has family members involved in with very deep violations of conflict of interest are also impeachable offenses.”

There has been movement in the House to pass a Supreme Court “code of ethics” that would apply to judges and their employees. It has not been taken up by the Senate yet, primarily because Republicans would never vote for it

Ocasio-Cortez: SCOTUS justices should face consequences for misleading Roe testimony

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said that Supreme Court justices should face consequences including possible impeachment for misleading lawmakers about their stances on Roe vs. Wade during confirmation hearings.

File Pool Photo by Andrew Harnik/UPI | License Photo

June 26 (UPI) -- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday said that members of the Supreme Court who misled Congress about their intentions to overturn Roe vs. Wade should face consequences including possible impeachment.

Appearing on NBC News' Meet the Press, Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., cited comments from Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, that "several Supreme Court Justices misled them" about their stance on Roe vs. Wade during their confirmation hearings and the lead-up to their confirmation.

"There must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and a hostile takeover of our democratic institutions," she said, describing a "crisis of legitimacy" in the high court.

"What makes it particularly dangerous is that it sends a blaring signal to all future nominees that they can now lie to duly elected members of the United States Senate in order to secure Supreme Court confirmations and seats on the Supreme Court," she continued.

Ocasio-Cortez also said that Justice Clarence Thomas violated federal law by not disclosing income from political organizations and should have recused himself from cases representing "very deep violations of conflict of interest" due to his and his wife's conservative activism.

She said that both offenses as well as lying under oath are "impeachable offenses."

"I believe that this is something that should be taken very seriously considered, including by senators like Joe Manchin and Susan Collins," she said.

The Supreme Court's decision Friday set off a series of so-called "trigger laws" in which abortion would be outlawed in 13 states, immediately or shortly after the landmark 1973 decision in Roe vs. Wade was overturned.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem on Sunday defended her state's law, which allows abortion only when needed to protect the life of the mother, and provides no exception in cases of incest and rape, saying that one tragedy is not "a reason to have another tragedy occur."

"I believe every life is precious ... And we know so much more using technology and science than we did even 10, 15 years ago about what these babies go through, the pain they feel in the womb and will continue to make sure that those lives are protected," she told CBS News' Face the Nation.

Noem added that South Dakota would also invest in resources for women who will now be required to carry their pregnancies to term including mental health counseling and family services.

"I would prefer that we continue to make sure we go forward and that we're putting resources in front of these women and walking alongside them, getting them healthcare, the care, the mental health counseling and services that they should need to make sure that we can continue to support them and build stronger families far into the future as well," she said.

Some states, such as California and Minnesota, issued orders protecting women's rights in response to the decision and the laws that went into effect throughout the nation.

Friday's decision also launched protests throughout the nation that continued over the weekend.

In Rhode Island, Democratic state Senate candidate Jennifer Rourke shared video to social media, which she said showed her Republican opponent Jeann Lugo, an off-duty police officer, punching her in the face during a protest in the state on Saturday.

"Last night, after speaking at our Roe rally, my Republican opponent -- a police officer -- violently attacked me," Rourke wrote alongside the video. "This is what it is to be a Black woman running for office. I won't give up."



Rourke told the Providence Journal that she is also seeking to press charges for assault.

Lugo, a three-year veteran of the Providence police department, has been placed on administrative leave and is under criminal investigation, the City of Providence Police Department confirmed in a tweet.

In a Twitter post that was published before he deleted his account, Lugo wrote that he will "not be running for any office this fall," before appearing to close his account.

Before announcing he was dropping out of the race, he told The Washington Post that he found himself "in a situation that no individual should see themselves."

"I stepped in to protect someone that a group of agitators was attacking," he wrote. "At this moment, there's a pending internal investigation and as the facts of the incident come to light, I request that my family and I have privacy."

ABOLISH SCOTUS

Impeaching Clarence Thomas: How Democrats could remove conservative justices

C. Ryan Barber

Mon, June 27, 2022

Protestors filled the streets in response to the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade.Craig Hudson for The Washington Post via Getty Images

• Democrats have increased calls to remove justices in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

• Justice Clarence Thomas previously faced calls for impeachment in connection with January 6.

• Senators have questioned whether Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch lied about their views.

The many controversies and polarizing opinions spilling out of the Supreme Court in recent months have drawn calls for an event not seen in more than two centuries of American history: the impeachment of a sitting justice.

Even before Friday's decision eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion, Democrats including Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez had voiced support for impeaching Justice Clarence Thomas, the longest-tenured sitting member of the Supreme Court. At the time, the demands for his removal centered on the revelation of more than two dozen text messages Thomas' wife, Ginni Thomas, exchanged with onetime White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as she sought to help former President Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election.

And those calls intensified after Thomas joined with other justices in the Supreme Court's conservative bloc to overturn Roe v. Wade, the nearly 50-year-old decision that established a constitutional right to an abortion. Other justices are now facing similar calls for impeachment amid questions about whether they misled the Senate during their confirmation proceedings about their views on Roe.

"I believe lying under oath is an impeachable offense," Ocasio-Cortez said during a recent interview on NBC's Meet the Press, referring to Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Indeed, eyebrows lifted on both sides of the aisle after the Kavanaugh and Gorsuch joined in the reversing Roe. Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who supported Gorsuch's and Kavanaugh's confirmations, said the decision was inconsistent with what the two justices said "in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents that the country has relied upon."

Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, said he "trusted Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh when they testified under oath that they also believed Roe v Wade was settled legal precedent, and I am alarmed they chose to reject the stability the ruling has provided for two generations of Americans."

In his controversial concurring opinion in the abortion case, Thomas argued the Court should also "reconsider" rulings that established rights to same-sex marriage, access to birth control and gay sex.

Amid nationwide protests and anxiety over the potential rollback of those rights, a petition calling for Thomas' impeachment continued to pick up support. The petition, organized in March by the advocacy group MoveOn, had received more than 300,000 signatures.

Thomas on October 26, 2020.Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

How to impeach a Supreme Court justice

The process of impeaching a Supreme Court justice is identical to the more well-tread procedure for removing a sitting president.

First, the House must draft articles of impeachment. The House then needs only a majority, however slim, to impeach a Supreme Court justice or any other federal judge. But a two-thirds majority is required in the Senate to convict.

Given the current political climate — Democrats have the thinnest majority possible, with a 50-50 Senate — it's almost certain that Thomas wouldn't be removed from his lifetime appointment. Republicans are enjoying a significant ideological majority on the Supreme Court, with six of nine justices.

What would be grounds for impeaching Thomas?

Given Ginni Thomas' texts, some Democrats have noted that in January, Clarence Thomas stood out as the only justice to dissent when the Supreme Court rejected Trump's bid to block the release of some presidential records to the House committee investigating the attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.

Thomas had previously dissented in February 2021 when the Supreme Court turned away election challenges filed by Trump and his political allies. Thomas described the decision to not hear the cases as "baffling" and "inexplicable," saying in dissent that the Supreme Court should have taken the opportunity to provide states with guidance for elections.

Some Democrats in 2019 had clamored for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, but no serious impeachment effort in Congress ever materialized.

Samuel Chase in 1811, by the artist John Wesley Jarvis.Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images

Federal judicial impeachments are rare

Federal judges, including those on the Supreme Court, have lifetime appointment — their tenures typically ending with retirement or death.

As a Brennan Center for Justice study noted in 2018, the impeachment of federal judges "is rare, and removal is rarer still." The study found that the House had impeached only 15 judges since 1803 — an average of one every 14 years — and only eight of those proceedings resulted in convictions by the Senate.

The history of impeaching a Supreme Court justice requires a more than 200-year reach back into American history.

In 1804, Justice Samuel Chase went down in history as the first — and, so far, only — sitting member of the Supreme Court to be impeached when the House accused him of refusing to dismiss biased jurors and excluding or limiting defense witnesses in a pair of politically sensitive trials.

An official Senate website describes Chase as a "staunch Federalist with a volcanic personality" who "showed no willingness to tone down his bitter partisan rhetoric after Jeffersonian Republicans gained control of Congress in 1801." Then-President Thomas Jefferson backed the impeachment effort.

But in 1805, Chase survived the impeachment proceedings after his legal team — including "several of the nation's most eminent attorneys" — convinced enough senators that the justice's conduct did not warrant removal from the Supreme Court, according to the Senate website. Chase continued serving on the Supreme Court and died in 1811.

In 2010, the Senate voted to convict Thomas Porteous, then a federal judge in New Orleans, after the House impeached him on allegations of bribery and making false statements. Other judges have resigned in the face of threatened impeachment and removal from their lifetime appointments.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, right, and wife Virginia "Ginni" Thomas arrive for a State Dinner with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and President Donald Trump at the White House in 2019.AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

A text-message brouhaha

Ginni Thomas' text messages were among the more than 2,000 that Meadows turned over to the special House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The messages show how eagerly Thomas promoted and pushed to guide Trump's strategy to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat.

In some of the messages, Thomas elevated the conservative lawyer Sidney Powell, who has since faced sanctions over her lead role advancing Trump's baseless claims of election fraud.

"Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down," Thomas wrote in a November 2020 text to Meadows.

"Suggestion: You need to buck up your team on the inside, Mark," Thomas wrote in another message. "The lower level insiders are scared, fearful or sending out signals of hopelessness vs an awareness of the existential threat to America right now. You can buck them up, strengthen their spirits."

It is unclear whether the 29 messages — 21 sent by Thomas, eight by Meadows — reflected the extent of their communication.

Justice Thomas faced calls for his retirement or resignation even before his wife's text messages with Meadows became public, as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other media outlets illuminated his wife's political activism.

But the text correspondence brought a new tenor to the pressure on Thomas to step down from the Supreme Court.

In March, Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, wrote in a Twitter post that "Clarence Thomas should be impeached."

Ocasio-Cortez threatened Thomas with impeachment if he refused to resign.

"Clarence Thomas should resign," the New York Democrat wrote on Twitter. "If not, his failure to disclose income from right-wing organizations, recuse himself from matters involving his wife, and his vote to block the Jan 6th commission from key information must be investigated and could serve as grounds for impeachment."

Meanwhile, other lawmakers have called for Justice Thomas to recuse himself from cases related to January 6.

Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the text message correspondence "raises a serious question about conflict of interest for Justice Thomas."

"To think that he would consider a case where his wife is frequently contacting the chief of staff for the president and giving advice on matters that are going to be ultimately litigated by the court," Durbin told reporters on Capitol Hill. "For the good of the court, I think he should recuse himself from those cases."

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, called on Thomas to recuse himself from cases involving the Capitol-riot investigation and 2024 election because his "conduct on the Supreme Court looks increasingly corrupt."

President Joe Biden, however, declined to call for Justice Thomas to recuse himself from such cases.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said it would be up to Thomas to decide whether to recuse himself from cases involving the investigation into January 6, 2021.

In an interview with The Washington Free Beacon, Ginni Thomas said, "Clarence doesn't discuss his work with me, and I don't involve him in my work."

But in a 2011 speech, Clarence Thomas appeared to link his service on the Supreme Court to his wife's political advocacy.

"We love being with each other because we love the same things. We believe in the same things ... We are focused on defending liberty. So I admire her and I love her for that because it keeps me going," Thomas said.

The End of Roe and Casey: A Human Rights Perspective

by Anne Lofaso | Jun 28, 2022

On Friday, June 24, 2022, in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the United States Supreme Court in a 5–4 decision spanning over two-hundred pages, overruled Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v Casey, cases which had interpreted the U.S. Constitution as protecting a women’s liberty to choose an abortion up to fetal viability. In one swoop of the judicial quill, five Justices—Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—erased a half-century of U.S. American women’s reproductive freedom. This blog series explores how Dobbs may impact the human rights of women, minorities, LGBTQIA+ individuals, the poor, and other marginalised communities.

Dobbs’ 213-page decision, includes Justice Alito’s 108-page majority decision, joined by Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett; three separate, concurring opinions; and one dissenting opinion written jointly by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Examining a Mississippi state law banning abortion after fifteen weeks, the Alito-authored majority opinion framed the issue narrowly—whether a woman has a right to an abortion—as opposed to whether a woman has a right to bodily autonomy free from government interference. The opinion proceeded in three main parts. First, the majority reviewed the standards set forth in its jurisprudence interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment’s Substantive Due Process Clause, which prohibits “any State” from “depriv[ing] any person of . . . liberty . . . without due process of law”. In its review, the majority found that the U.S. Constitution makes no mention of the word abortion. It also rejected applying the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which prohibits the states from “deny[ing] to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” on the ironic grounds that its own Equal Protection jurisprudence dictates that state regulations of abortion are not prohibited sex-based classifications.

Second, the majority examined whether the right to an abortion is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty”. Relying on a survey of state law as it existed in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification year, and the views of English jurists Henry de Bracton (1210–1268), Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634), Sir Matthew Hale (1609–1676), and Sir William Blackstone (1723–1780), the Court concluded that there simply is no such deeply rooted tradition and therefore no basis for creating such a right.

Third, having determined that neither the Constitution’s text nor U.S. American legal history supports a finding of a right to abortion, the majority reviewed whether Roe and Casey are entitled to stare decisis, the legal doctrine that the Court will adhere to prior legal precedent in making its decisions. The majority acknowledged that stare decisis is critical for legal stability in the U.S. system. However, the majority and especially Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence concluded that these prior decisions were not entitled to such adherence because they were “egregiously wrong,” had “caused significant negative jurisprudential or real-world consequences,” and overruling them “would not unduly upset legitimate reliance interests”.

Justice Thomas’s concurrence is notable for its proclamation that cases such as Griswold v Connecticut (right to contraception); Lawrence v Texas (right to engage in private, consensual intimate acts); Obergefell v Hodges (right to same-sex marriage) should be reconsidered along with all substantive due process precedents. In Thomas’ view, these cases were all erroneously decided, although he leaves open the possibility that another section of the Constitution may protect some of these rights.

Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion, concurring in judgment only, is also notable for its self-proclaimed “measured course”. While Roberts agreed with the majority to “discard[]” Roe and Casey’s viability line because it “never made any sense,” he would have reframed the right as the women’s right to make reproductive choices. Roberts explained that the “right should therefore extend far enough to ensure a reasonable opportunity to choose, but need not extend any further—certainly not all the way to viability”. Roberts thereby concluded that the Mississippi fifteen-week abortion ban “provides sufficient time, absent rare circumstances, for a woman ‘to decide for herself’ whether to terminate her pregnancy”.

The jointly written, sixty-six-page dissent reaffirmed Roe and Casey. According to the dissent, those decisions were entitled to stare decisis because they were rightly—not wrongly—decided and have proven workable in practice. The dissent’s most significant observation, however, was its “prophecy” of how Dobbs will affect future rights. Taking no comfort in the majority’s assurances that Dobbs is limited to abortion, the dissent reminds us that “[r]ights can contract in the same way and for the same reason”. After all, there is “no historical right to contraception” or same-sex marriage or inter-racial marriage.

What does not seem to be in jeopardy, however, is the First Amendment’s protection of the rights of free speech and to petition the Government to redress grievances. We will surely see those rights exercised for years to come.

About Anne Lofaso
Anne Marie Lofaso is the Arthur B. Hodges Professor of Law at West Virginia University College of Law. She was formerly the WVU Law Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development (2011-2015) and a Leadership Fellow in the WVU Office of the Associate Vice President for Creative and Scholarly Activities. She has previously taught at American University Washington College of Law and at the University of Oxford.

Abortion rights: Regressive developments in Poland and US go against global trend

Jennifer Venis  

ttps://www.ibanet.org

Wednesday 22 June 2022

Pic: Aerial shot of protests against anti-abortion law, Warsaw, October 2020. lukszczepanski/Adobe Stock

In late June, the US Supreme Court overturned two previous rulings – Roe and Casey – that created a constitutional right to abortion and enabled states to ban abortion at any stage of pregnancy.

Within hours of the decision in the case Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, ten states had banned abortion, and providers in some states have paused their services while questions about the implications of pre-Roe laws are resolved. In total, 26 states are expected to ban abortion quickly following the decision.

Rights advocates fear criminalisation of healthcare providers and people who have suspected abortions, as well as increased surveillance, denials of lifesaving care and restrictions on travelling to seek healthcare elsewhere.

Matt Kaiser, Vice-Chair of the IBA Criminal Law Committee and a partner at KaiserDillion in Washington, DC, says even before the decision ‘there have been investigations and prosecutions into certain pregnancy outcomes in some states. My understanding is that those are more attention-grabbing outliers than a regular national phenomenon, thankfully.’

In his view, Roe’s overturning means that the ‘floodgates will open […] and it will the worst of how prosecution is done’.

He adds that ‘you could have criminal trials that are really just conflicting medical testimony about, in this situation, how necessary was it to save the life of the mother?’

Others warn of the potential global impact of the ruling. Speaking after the decision appeared in leaked form in May, Mark Stephens, CBE, a Co-Chair of the IBA Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI), said that ‘the [anti-choice] abortion lobby globally is going to take enormous heart if this decision from the US Supreme Court remains as it currently is in its leaked draft.’

Related links

• Rule of law: Poland’s highest court challenges primacy of EU law
• The US Presidency: Abortion at the threshold
• Poland, populism and unpopular judges
• Moves to restrict abortion law trigger global concern over reproductive rights

 

Denying women access to safe abortion can amount to violations of the rights to health, privacy and the right to be free from cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment

Anne Ramberg
Co-Chair, IBA’s Human Rights Institute

Akila Radhakrishnan is President of the US-based Global Justice Center, which works to further reproductive rights globally through the rule of law. She says, ‘there’s the potential for this to have regressive impact’, highlighting that many anti-choice organisations have a global footprint and that tactics used in the US have already been imported elsewhere. ‘We’ve seen the importing of tactics, for example, around protesting at clinics starting to crop up in Africa.’

But Margaret Harpin, Legal Advisor in the Global Legal Strategies Unit at the Center for Reproductive Rights in the US, highlights that regressive moves to restrict abortion go against a global trend. ‘Generally overall in the past 25 years, we’ve seen nearly 60 countries liberalise their abortion laws, and only three have rolled back rights’, she says.

In Poland, pregnant people face heightened scrutiny following an order from the Health Minister, signed in early June, requiring doctors to register all pregnancies in the country. Information collected will include past or current illnesses, medical visits, treatment and blood type.

In light of Poland’s near-total abortion ban, there are fears the register could be weaponised to monitor pregnancy outcomes and persecute women suspected of having abortions or suspected abortion providers – particularly as the information can be accessed by the Polish prosecutor’s office through a court order.

Anne Ramberg, also a Co-Chair of the IBAHRI, tells Global Insight that the ‘grotesquely repressive’ order ‘is of course an infringement of privacy and women’s rights’. She adds that it’s ‘another example of increased surveillance and monitoring of people. It does not belong in a democracy built on the rule of law.’

The announcement comes 18 months after Poland’s heavily restrictive abortion laws – which had already forced 80,000–200,000 women a year to seek illegal or foreign abortions – were superseded by a near-total abortion ban.

In October 2020, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal ruled that allowing abortion in cases of severe and irreversible foetal abnormalities – the grounds for 98 per cent of Poland’s abortions in 2019 – was unconstitutional. The Tribunal claimed ‘an unborn child is a human being’ and Poland’s Constitution guarantees a right to life.

The ban sparked the country’s largest protests in decades, but came into effect in January 2021. It allows exceptions in cases of rape, incest or when the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother. However, the ban has been blamed for the deaths of two women who were allegedly denied abortions after their pregnancies went into crisis.

And despite the exceptions for rape, fewer than five abortions per year were carried out on these grounds in the ten years before Poland’s laws tightened in 2021. To get such an abortion, the woman must provide evidence of their rape through a certified letter from a public prosecutor.

These significant barriers to healthcare are also now affecting the millions of refugees fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, who have entered Poland and found themselves stripped of their reproductive rights. Organisations supporting access to reproductive healthcare have highlighted that many of the refugees have been raped and face re-traumatisation and even forced pregnancy if they’re unable to move further into Europe for healthcare.

Stephens believes the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) may see cases arising out of the conflict ‘because essentially, women are not being allowed access freely, or they’re impeded in getting access to medical health services. And essentially, they’re being required to carry an unwanted pregnancy. That, as we know, is a violation of international human rights law, including the rights to privacy and bodily autonomy.’

He adds that ‘Poland is probably going to be at the wrong end of one of these cases. Because it’s just not acceptable in international law to say to a woman you’ve got to move to Scandinavia or to Holland or wherever in order merely to seek medical assistance with your pregnancy. Medical assistance that you couldn’t achieve in Poland. That’s discriminatory.’

The ECtHR had already received over 1,000 applications challenging Poland’s abortion laws by July 2021, and notified the Polish government of 12 applications. The applicants claim the laws amount to a potential violation of their rights to private lives and freedom from ill treatment.

Ramberg highlights that the European Parliament declared access to safe abortion a human right in 2021. ‘Denying women access to safe abortion can amount to violations of the rights to health, privacy and the right to be free from cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment’, she says.

One Attorney Unpacks The Larger Implications Of The Roe v. Wade Reversal For Marginalized Folks

Janice Gassam Asare

FORBES

Senior Contributor

I help create strategies for more diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Jun 26, 202

On Friday, June 24th, 2022 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. 

GETTY

On Friday, it was announced that the U.S. Supreme Court had reversed Roe v. Wade, which federally protects a person’s right to an abortion. As a result of the news, in major U.S. cities, there were mass protests and many expressed sorrow and anger on social media about the news. J. Carter, Esq. is a principal attorney at the Carter Law Group, an adjunct faculty member at Pepperdine Law School, and was sworn into the Supreme Court Attorney Bar. In an email Carter, who specializes in family, entertainment, business, and estate law, shared her thoughts about the Roe v. Wade reversal, some of the implications of this monumental decision, and how the reversal will disparately impact marginalized folks.

Janice Gassam Asare: What were your initial thoughts around the Roe v. Wade reversal decision? How will this decision impact our country?

Jehan “J.” Carter: The U.S. legal profession is less than 5% Black. There are even fewer Black attorneys than that which are a part of the Supreme Court Attorney Bar, to which I have the honor to be a part of. The recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is an important reminder of why we have to continue to fight for diversity in the legal profession even in the highest courts. In that vein, now more than ever, am I excited for Ketanji Brown Jackson to join the Court.

I am, however, disappointed that the conservative Justices with just one decision would turn back 50 years of precedent based on their political ties and personal beliefs. Women in my generation and younger now have less rights over our bodies than our mothers. I am afraid that this may lead to more women dying and other privacy laws being overturned like contraceptives, marriage equality and gay rights which Justice Clarence Thomas made clear he thought should be reconsidered in his written opinion. There are currently 26 states that have either total abortion bans, six to eight week bans or severe restrictions. Of those 26 states, 13 are ‘trigger’ states whose abortion bans and restrictions took effect automatically once Roe was overturned—Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. While I was fortunate to be sworn in by all the justices including Ruth Bader Ginsburg shortly before she passed, I know this landmark decision has her rolling in her grave. This is a very sad moment for America, regardless of where you stand on the issue.



Jehan “J.” Carter, Esq. is a principal attorney at the Carter Law Group and an adjunct faculty member

Asare: Who will be most harmed by this decision?

Carter: I think that poor women of color and pregnant rape victims will be affected most by this decision. Poor women of color will not be able to afford the gas, flight and hotel fees to travel to a state not in the 26 that now restricts or bans abortions…on top of the fact that they may not be able to take more than one day off from work or have childcare for their other children while traveling. This decision also does not make an exception for women that have been raped including teenagers that are victims of incest. It does however, allow states to make an exception for medical emergencies so states like Texas, Louisiana, Idaho and Missouri have this allowance but all define medical emergency differently, which just adds to the chaos of this decision.

Asare: Some folks who are pro-life have made the argument that Planned Parenthood was created to control the Black population. What are your thoughts around that claim?

Carter: Abortion is a tough issue for most but I think, in particular, Black Americans are divided due sometimes to religious reasons but also because Planned Parenthoods historically have been made more available than primary care clinics in poor Black neighborhoods, which at a minimum, gives the appearance that the government was more willing to kill Black babies versus giving proper healthcare to the Black women in these same communities and some would even say a method of population control. This theory has been backed by some pointing to the fact that in 1939, Margaret Sanger, one of the founders of Planned Parenthood, started the Negro Project alongside Black leaders like W.E.B. DuBois, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, to bring access to birth control to Black communities in the south. While some argue the project was to place Black doctors and nurses in these communities to reduce mistrust of a racist healthcare system, it is also documented that Sanger lost control of the project to white male leadership that had different objectives from her.

Asare: What can a citizen who opposes this decision do, if they live in a state where abortions will become illegal?

Carter: If a woman lives in a state where her abortion is now illegal, she can travel to another state that does not have a restriction or ban. But as discussed earlier, this can be expensive and time-consuming depending on how far that next state is from this person. Also, which is probably the most shocking, you may be sued depending on where you live by traveling to another state to have an abortion done. [According to a recent statement from Governor Gavin Newsom’s office] ‘Missouri recently advanced a proposal to allow private citizens to sue Missouri residents who have an abortion out of state, as well as their providers and anyone who assists them in seeking an abortion.’ Texas and Oklahoma already have abortion legislation that allows private citizens to sue people who perform abortions or who otherwise help someone get one inside of their states. For those that want to continue to learn more and stay up to date on the latest developments of the outcome of this decision, they can visit theBlackLawyers.com and listen to The Black Lawyers Podcast that I host on all major platforms including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

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Janice Gassam Asare
I founded an award-winning consultancy, BWG Business Solutions, where I provide guidance and education for companies and institutions

Harvard Constitutional Law Expert Says

Justice 'Misleadingly' Quoted Him In 

Roe Ruling

Mary Papenfuss

Sat, June 25, 2022 

Outspoken Harvard University Law professor Laurence Tribe on Saturday accused conservative Supreme Court justices of “misleadingly quoting” him to justify their decision to throw out Roe v. Wade.

“Don’t be fooled,” warned Tribe, an expert on the Constitution. “The writings from which the Court cherry-picked my quotes were totally supportive of the result in Roe,” he added.

Tribe didn’t detail how his words were twisted or taken out of context by the conservatives on the Court. But he did call for the decision that affects “tens of millions of women” to be “undone.”

Tribe also called out Justice Samuel Alito for not bothering to fix inaccuracies in his “shoddy” ruling that had been pointed out by historians in his draft of the opinion released last month.

Alito was criticized at the time for justifying his decision by repeatedly quoting someone he characterized as a “great” and “eminent” legal authority: Sir Matthew Hale.

But Hale was hardly that, historians complained. The English judge, who lived from 1609 to 1676, sentenced “witches” to death, and wrote an infamous treatise warning authorities to distrust women who reported being raped. He also declared that in marriage, a woman placed her body under her husband’s “permanent dominion,” rendering any marital rape accusation illegitimate.

In addition, Alito misrepresented facts about Hale’s time when abortion was unregulated until a fetus “quickened,” or was first felt moving in the womb, which can happen as late as 25 weeks into a pregnancy, University of Minnesota Law Professor Jill Elaine Hasday noted in The Washington Post after Alito’s opinion was leaked.

As for Alito’s repetitive citations and gushing praise of Hale (which remained in the final decision), it’s “long past time to leave that misogyny behind,” wrote Hasday.

Tribe complained that Alito paid absolutely no heed to the criticism of Hale because “he and those joining him feel untouchable and answer to no one.”

More on the Supreme Court abortion ruling:

How fetal politics stole Americans’ reproductive rights

Jennifer Holland
Claire Potter
28 June 2022

The US Supreme Court has overturned two landmark cases that protected a woman’s rights over her own body for 50 years. How did ‘fetal politics’ — a political movement that has turned embryos and fetuses into ‘unborn children’ endowed with unique and inviolable civil rights – gain such momentum? And what will be the outcome of this new ruling?


In preparation for the day when a reversed decision on Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey might come, Claire Potter interviewed Jennifer Holland about her book, Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement.


Claire Potter: I want to start with the arresting title of your book, Tiny You. Can you tell our readers why you chose it?

Jennifer Holland: The book describes how a host of white, conservative, religious people become personally invested in fetal politics, and the title comes from a brochure created by the anti-abortion/movement for small children. It explained pregnancy and it said: ‘Everything that you are was there at this moment–a fetus is a “tiny you.”’

Next, the brochure describes abortion as when a parent chooses to kill their fetus. It’s very explicit. So, the pamphlet captures what I think is happening in the movement as a whole: inviting people to have a relationship with fetuses, imagine themselves as fetuses—and especially aborted fetuses.

Claire Potter: So, tell us how do fetuses at all stages, from conception to birth, become transformed into babies and children?

Jennifer Holland: The movement works hard from the beginning to sell this idea. First, they use analogy. They narrate themselves as a civil rights movement, comparing abortion to slavery and the dehumanization of Black people during Jim Crow. But also, they compare abortion to the Nazi Holocaust.

Second, they pair their messaging with fetal imagery to humanize fetuses and persuade people to see them as babies. By the late twentieth century, Americans cannot live their lives without encountering anti-abortion arguments conveyed through visual ephemera.

Claire Potter: What is the tradeoff between images that are arresting and suck people in, and images that risk people turning away and disengaging?

Jennifer Holland: That’s why the movement generates so many kinds of fetal ephemera because they are worried about it. It’s not that they don’t want to keep the gory photos and the embalmed fetuses, but activists realize they’re not good for every situation. For example, in the 1980s, they come up with these little plastic fetus dolls, which you can use in situations with children and young adults, dolls that aren’t going to immediately horrify parents. As the movement develops in the 1980s and 1990s, activists also invest in the idea that they are protecting women from trauma. Those that create crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), turn away from the gorier representations and towards ultrasound imagery and fetal models.




Plastic fetus dolls. Image via Wikimedia Commons

Claire Potter: But the anti-abortion movement does not actually start out as a religious movement, and churches must be persuaded to embrace it.

Jennifer Holland: It’s a little messy, because all the activists are, in fact, religious and they are coming out of religious organizations like the Knights of Columbus, or the Catholic Lawyers Guild. Religious institutions, especially the Catholic churches, prime them for activism. The default assumption is that anti-abortion activism is a top-down movement that individuals can’t possibly be invested in.

But, especially if we look at the early 1970s, that was not the case. The Catholic church hesitated in a way that Catholic activists were upset about. So, you have activists who are meeting with priests and pressing them to give anti-abortion sermons. Not every priest needed to be pushed, but many did. And activists kept meeting with higher-ups saying, you need to commit to this, in infrastructure and money.

By 1975, the Church made those commitments.

Claire Potter: So, a grassroots movement pushed churches into this struggle.

Jennifer Holland: I don’t want to deemphasize how important religious leaders were, especially later and particularly on the religious right. But that doesn’t explain why those leaders have such an audience in the first place, and why they have such power. It’s largely because this movement has already created that audience, and those leaders tell stories that resonate because people already understand them.

By the time activists politicize churches, they’ve already integrated anti-abortion politics into the rhythms of how so many white people experience their faith.

Claire Potter: And some activists must overcome theology. In the Mormon Church, the soul does not enter the human body until birth, so to imagine abortion as killing a soul, Mormons must override their own theology.

Jennifer Holland: There are a lot of people who believe that fetal politics represent their church’s theology, even when it doesn’t. Catholic anti-abortion activists pitch the idea, hard, that the soul enters the body at conception, and the Mormon church doesn’t press hard to correct that.

I don’t think they know this, but Mormons often take up Catholic visions of spirituality and conception and they incorporate it into their vision of what Mormon theology is. Then there is the power of what Mormons are already invested in, social conservatism.

Claire Potter: One of the things I hope our readers are noticing is that you keep saying white Christians, white evangelicals, white activists. Even though many Black and Latinx people are Catholic, they don’t get involved in the anti-abortion movement. Why?

Jennifer Holland: This was a question I had from the beginning, since the book is set in multiracial spaces with a host of religious people who, as you say, are people of color. And I found that they didn’t participate in the movement, or they did for a day at most; they’re very peripheral. Longstanding activists agreed; they had all these explanations for why, but none of them really explained it.

I think that the answer is that this is a movement of white people that co-opts civil rights and racial justice rhetoric and narrates themselves as the inheritors of Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement. They speak in that language, but they don’t do any work in communities of color on any of the other issues around race. They don’t even talk about involuntary sterilization.

The people of color who came in for a day did all sorts of racial justice work, but you don’t see white anti-abortion activists going and doing work alongside them. So, abortion was a civil right that was very contained. It was a movement that was contained to white people and to fetuses that were either narrated as universal subjects or as white. That didn’t sell to communities of color, even conservative ones. They weren’t ready to imagine abortion as the origin of all social problems, which is the primary argument of the movement.

Claire Potter: So, there are people of color who are personally anti-abortion, but the movement is a big turnoff.

Jennifer Holland: Yes. So, surveys show that Latinx Catholics are more against abortion than white Catholics overall, but that does not translate into movement work. For the most part, it does not translate into voting. White activists notice this, and keep saying, ‘We don’t see them around and they don’t seem to vote on this issue.’

Claire Potter: In the book, with narratives about the fetus itself, and then you move outward toward the woman who is carrying the fetus and beyond. One of the things activists realize early on is that they cannot demonize the women who are choosing abortion. Why?

Jennifer Holland: Well, the 1970s is a moment in which feminism is reshaping conversations about sex and gender, as well as American politics. When abortion was illegal, women were punished in myriad ways, but they weren’t often prosecuted. It was abortion providers who were prosecuted.

Abortion seekers were a thorn in the movement’s side because if you’re saying that abortion is murder, well, abortion is murder. Abortion providers are murderers in this formulation, but it only makes sense that women would be too, because they’re hiring abortion providers. However, the movement realizes very quickly that that is not going to sell.

Yet, you do have a deep hostility to women that bubbles up: birth needs to be a repercussion for sex, it holds people accountable. Mostly, the movement tries to not talk about women having sex in that way: instead, they portray motherhood as the thing that makes women special.

But in the 1980s, they come up with a new idea: women are victims of abortion, that that they are both physically damaged and psychologically traumatized by it. They invent the idea of ‘post-abortion syndrome.’ This is not supported by the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, which keep saying, ‘No, this is not a common traumatic event.’

But it doesn’t matter. The movement runs with this idea that women are hurt by abortion. Laws are passed with names like ‘Women’s Right to Know’, or ‘Women’s Protection Act’. Right? And even the Supreme Court, prior to this one, starts to parrot the movement and say that women are hurt by abortion.

Claire Potter: It’s also one of the ways that fake science creeps into conservatism. Rejecting mainstream science and psychology powers a social movement.

Jennifer Holland: I thought about this a lot in relation to contemporary misinformation. Anti-abortion activists started saying very different things than they had a century before. You couldn’t trust doctors, you couldn’t trust universities, or the scholars that produced knowledge there. Even the word ‘fetus’, they argued, was a way that doctors hid the truth from you.

The only people you could really trust were in the movement.

Claire Potter: Then, the anti-abortion movement starts running pseudo-therapy groups for women who have had abortions, where they are taught that everything in their life that has gone wrong is because they had an abortion.

Jennifer Holland: I found that part of the book hard to write, and sometimes when I go back and read it, hard to read, because it’s so manipulative. The movement creates a diagnosis, ‘post-abortion syndrome’, and in CPCs, their fake reproductive health clinics, they organize ‘post-abortion therapy’, or ‘post-abortion education’. They would bring in women who had had abortions and then ask them questions intended to lead them to conclusions about their experiences. Every story led back to the idea that abortion was a traumatic event, and that doctors hadn’t told them what the negative outcomes were.

The counselors organized those details into a story, and they would try to get women to reconcile with God and with their fetus, who would get a name. ‘Can you tell God who you killed? Can you talk to your daughter, Brittany, and tell her why you killed her?’ And they imagined that by reckoning with this, by making peace with abortion, acknowledging it as a moral crime, and reconciling with God, women could regain their well-being.

Then, once they got women to that space, they asked them to become activists and speak to legislatures or go into CPCs to stop other women from having abortions. So, this was not just about emotional health, it was about making their clients into the face of abortion’s damage. What they call ‘post-abortive women’ take up important roles in the movement by the 1980s.

Claire Potter: Perhaps it’s my age, perhaps it’s the circles I run in, but I’ve never known a woman who regretted having an abortion.

Jennifer Holland: That’s what the American Psychiatric Association found too. There were a very small number of people who felt what they called ‘abortion regret’, and even that often coincided with other kinds of things going on in their lives. There were people I found whose lives didn’t pan out the way they expected, who imagined themselves as upwardly mobile, and who thought sex would lead to marriage and a middle-class lifestyle. Instead, the sex they had led them into bad marriages, unexpected pregnancies, abortions, and lives that were more working-class. We can imagine the structural or personal reasons why that occurred, but at least some believed that their lives didn’t pan out because of abortion.

Claire Potter: Let’s dig back into the crisis pregnancy centres. We mentioned them earlier but they’re a highly visible and enduring part of this movement.

Jennifer Holland: The first ones were started in Canada in 1968, but they almost immediately moved into the United States. I call them fake clinics because they masquerade as abortion providers, and their advertising is geared to that. Common advertisements say: ‘Pregnant? Need help? Call this number.’

Once they got abortion seekers into their space, they gave them a political pitch. They gave them free pregnancy tests to make sure they were pregnant, they got ultrasound machines, and then they would make anti-abortion arguments, showing them images and fetal models, and trying to convince people to keep the pregnancy. And they would never refer anyone for abortions or birth control.

One of the later strategies was to put these CPCs right next to abortion providers in the same complex, so that people became confused. And they were. Activists I talked to said that everybody was calling them was looking for an abortion, not to be talked out of it. Only women activists staffed these centres: they imagined themselves as mothers or friends, having a kitchen table conversation. But they also falsely presented themselves as medical providers: taking urine, and giving clients medical arguments about why abortion is murder and the physical damage it will do.

Even if they didn’t convince a ton of people, they convinced some people, so this became a special space for women anti-abortion activists to try to stop abortion one woman at a time. Importantly, these spaces also get an incredible amount of state and federal money, especially as the movement gets stronger in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. And the people who come are young women and poor women and women of color, they’re all people who for one reason or another are not getting their healthcare in other places.

Claire Potter: They’re women who aren’t attached to the healthcare system at all.

Jennifer Holland: Right.

Claire Potter: The other thing this makes me think about is when the Jane Collective began its work in Chicago, they put flyers up on telephone poles that said: ‘Pregnant? Don’t want to be? Call Jane.’ And there’s a number.

Jennifer Holland: I think anti-abortion activists were drawing on that ambiguous message, but of course, they want to reverse the desires of the people coming to them. That’s the whole pitch: luring in people who don’t want your services and convincing them that they do.

And of course, a lot of people became traumatized by this bait and switch. They were shown graphic imagery and films, they were told terrible things, and they had been brought there by deceit. In more feminist-oriented states, Democratic states, you get a lot more interest in trying to get these people to represent themselves accurately. That never really pans out because that would ruin what these centres are built to do.

Claire Potter: These CPCs also decide to work on their clients’ moral fibre too. How does that shift happen?

Jennifer Holland: Well, the fact of the matter is, many abortion seekers live in cities where people circulate knowledge, and one thing CPCs always had was to serve a donations closet with diapers, clothes, used furniture, and so on. They hoped that if they could convince someone not to have an abortion, and provide a little bit of material help, it would be enough. But then, they realized that some people were not actually considering abortion at all, and knew that if they came and said the right things they could get access to things they needed.

And so, you have a whole host of centres who say, ‘These women are taking advantage of us.’ Then, one activist came up with a program that became a national program in CPCs called Earn While You Learn. Some of them were about prenatal care and taking care of your newborn baby. But a lot of classes were about conveying conservative ideology. You had to take these classes to get your ‘mommy dollars’, which you could then use to get things from the donations closet or ‘baby boutique’, as they sometimes call them.

Claire Potter: Then, these activists extend the circle of trauma to living children. Why?

Jennifer Holland: Early on, the movement was concerned that schools and the media were creating a ‘pro-choice generation’ by indoctrinating children. And so, they imagine that they need to come into youth spaces and politicize young people.

One of the central arguments they make is that young people are survivors because they were born, as opposed to being aborted fetuses. And so, as survivors, children have a responsibility to speak on behalf of those who didn’t survive. There are organizations that call themselves Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust that invite young people into the movement, saying: ‘You have a responsibility to engage in these politics because you were born.’

Evangelicals build whole worlds around young people so they don’t have to go outside for their music, their reading – they can just consume evangelically oriented stuff. So, activists come into schools and homes, and churches, and I think it resonates with young people in part because of the ways in which this movement, unlike a lot of conservative movements, draws on rights rhetoric. A lot of young people want to be part of a justice campaign, which was so much a part of American culture by the late twentieth century. Anti-abortion activism means that white conservative youth can do that in a way that feels meaningful, and that doesn’t overturn social hierarchies.

So fetal politics becomes more and more central to what it means to a young person to be evangelical, to be a young conservative, and to be an American. In addition, the idea of young people as lives that have been saved plays an incredibly important role in the movement, since activists imagine that abortion is a slippery slope to all born people being at risk. They argue, inaccurately, that abortion was central to Hitler’s philosophy, a path to dehumanization and genocide, the killing of the elderly, and anyone we don’t want around anymore.

Claire Potter: So, we are entering a period in which abortion will be available in some states, and not in others. How will the movement adapt to partial victory?

Jennifer Holland: There are two big avenues that I see. One is that they will continue working for a total victory. Dobbs is not the end game. People talk all about differences between radical and mainstream anti-abortion activists, and there are differences in strategy. But there are no differences in the end goal, which is to make abortion illegal everywhere. The only exception would be the life of the mother, and that’s not a stable exception.

So, overturning Roe and Casey is not the end. They need to continue working to make abortion illegal everywhere, and that could either come through Congress, and I think they will go back to the court and see if they can get fetuses protected under the 14th Amendment as citizens. So that’s one direction.

We also need to see what the next steps are in terms of the other cases that rely on a right to privacy. Gay rights, birth control, marriage issues—all these things look like they could be on unstable ground.

But I think there are new challenges for the movement because Roe has been an easy punching bag: you had the government protecting at least some abortions in every state. But they don’t have that anymore, and more importantly, in the states where abortion will now be illegal, they will now have the power of the state.

What will they do with that? Anti-abortion activists have been able to imagine a future where everyone is better off without legal abortion. Women are no longer traumatized, they’re having bigger families, violence is stemmed, racism gets better. But once they have the power of the state, and Roe no longer stands, they’re going to have to face it that the future they promised people isn’t coming.

In addition, to stop abortion-seekers in Oklahoma, where I am, they will have to stop those people from moving across state boundaries. They must stop the mail from coming in with abortion pills. Are they going to use the power of the state to do that? Are they going to track people online? Are they going to prosecute people who have sought abortions? Because these things will run up against some of the core arguments they’ve made in the past: that women are not going to be prosecuted, that they were only always victims, and they were going to be better off without an abortion.

The movement is going to have to reckon with that. I’ve heard that some people in the movement think that deeply Republican states will, or the movement itself, will press state legislators to create new social safety nets for all these people who have larger families than they thought. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. I can say pretty certainly that Oklahoma’s legislature is not going to be passing such laws.

So, there is now a possibility that the movement’s own narratives will come under pressure within the movement itself, and potentially, from the voters who’ve supported them for so long.