The very activisty and conservative Supreme Court refused to hear a struck down 2011 Oklahoma law today that “effectively bans all medical abortions”, which means that the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the law on the grounds that it put an unconstitutional burden on women stands.
Conservatives in Oklahoma were trying to restrict what doctors say is the safest and most effective way of medically inducing an abortion (nothing says pro-life like being anti-women’s lives, apparently).
From Scotus Blog:
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The Supreme Court took off of its docket, and thus will not decide, a plea by the state of Oklahoma to revive a law that restricts doctors’ use of drugs rather than surgery to perform an abortion with the medication RU-486 and others. In a one-sentence order, the Court dismissed as “improvidently granted” the case of Cline, et al., v. Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice (docket 12-1094). In issuing other orders, the Court granted no new cases for review.
That’s a no to overturning the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling that struck the restrictive law. The law restricted the use RU-486 to terminate a pregnancy or to treat an ectopic pregnancy (I have a very close friend who almost died from an ectopic pregnancy – they can be fatal, so thanks for that Republicans).
This victory means something because medical (medication) abortions are a real problem for the anti-choice crowd. A medical abortion is something they can’t always harass women or threaten doctors over as easily, and typical of control freaks, this really bothers them. They are obviously very uncomfortable leaving medical decisions up to a woman, her family, and her doctor. For some reason, conservatives feel they should insert themselves and their alleged values into these personal decisions.
About one in three American women will have had an abortion by the time she reaches age 45, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Also, contrary to right wing myth, abortions are not used only by dark skinned, poor people. In fact, white women make up 36% of women obtaining an abortion, 30% are black non-Hispanic, 25% are Hispanic and 9% are of other racial backgrounds.
And here is the statistic that Republicans always ignore, as they cut food stamps and defund health insurance for children: Sixty-nine percent of women obtaining an abortion are economically disadvantaged. Republicans might want to ponder this as Republican lawmakers are arguing that women should pay more for health insurance because they are the ones who give birth.
Study after study shows that the way to reduce abortions is to provide access to birth control. But alleged “pro-lifers” are against birth control and even against forms of “abortion” that are not really abortion, but rather the prevention of pregnancy such as emergency contraception (aka, plan b).
If Republicans were really pro-life, their platform would look very different. It would look like the Democratic Party’s platform. Republicans are all moral outrage, but underneath the glossy surface of faux morality, they are actively working to create more abortions, starve existing children and punish poor mothers.
This was a victory for women’s rights over their medical decisions, but conservatives will never stop trying to take women back to dangerous, illegal abortions and a lack of full personhood. Speculation that this ruling means the court will find similarly for the Texas and Ohio laws is premature. The court did not agree, they simply refused to hear the case. This activisty court likes to take cases where they can make new law.
From Arizona, we have an attempt to revist Roe V Wade based on “evolving science about pregnancy”:
“Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery wants the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider the limits it set in Roe vs. Wade, its 1973 landmark opinion on abortion, in light of a blocked Arizona law and what he says is evolving science about pregnancy and abortion.”
As for this “evolving science”, I’ve got binders full of women on “a woman’s body can shut pregnancy down if it wants to” and thus no one ever gets pregnant from “real rape”. But back to the real issue — women’s health and reducing abortions: Both can be best honored and achieved by providing access to birth control, which is one of the many jobs of Planned Parenthood — who are being defunded by Republicans.
Republicans would rather deny women access to birth control and then punish them and their babies when biology takes over. No one has explained how this kind of avoidable cruelty is “pro-life”, but it reeks of male privilege and an ongoing attempt to control women. It has nothing to do with taking care of babies, sadly.
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