Roughly 200 human rights organizations are asking the United Nations to declare that the United States is a violator of “international human rights law” because some states have passed pro-life laws after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. Given that many countries ban and heavily restrict abortion, it is a pitch that is unlikely to gain traction at the U.N. However, the premise shows a significant escalation of rhetoric by groups like Amnesty International, the Human Rights Watch and other organizations.
The 53-page letter informs the U.N. that there are a host of barriers now in place for women and girls in the United States that deny them their human rights. Some of the alleged denials of health care are contestable under existing laws. For example, they claim that there are barriers to “accessing abortion in cases of miscarriage” and “denial of care in cases of ectopic pregnancy.”
The signatories make an “urgent appeal” that “by overturning the established constitutional protection for access to abortion, and through the passage of the state laws discussed above, the US is in violation of its obligations under international human rights law.”
These include:
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)
The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD),
The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT).
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) (unratified)
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) (unratified)
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC),188 and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
While the cited states are seeking to protect what they view as the lives of the unborn, the letter accuses the United States of contravening its “human rights obligations to respect the right to life and the right to health.”
The 13 states expressly named are: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma. Georgia is also named for its severe limitation on abortion rights.
It also shows an increasing effort by individuals and groups to enlist other countries in core fights over rights in the United States. For example, figures such as Hillary Clinton have enlisted foreign governments to compel the censoring of fellow citizens: If Twitter can’t be counted on to censor, perhaps the European Union will be the ideal surrogate to rid social media of these posters if U.S. companies or courts will not do so.
The letter raises a long-standing debate over the role of international law as precedent in U.S. court. The Supreme Court has long debated the question with sharply different views.
In Lawrence v. Texas, Justice Kennedy referenced foreign precedent and practice in his majority opinion declaring sodomy laws to be unconstitutional. Justice Scalia shot back in dissent that “constitutional entitlements do not spring into existence … because foreign nations decriminalize conduct.”
Scalia repeatedly warned about the application of international law as precedent in U.S. cases, as in his concurring opinion in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain where the Court considered whether the Alien Tort Claims Act granted a private right of action to individuals for torts under the law of nations. He wrote:
“The notion that a law of nations, redefined to mean the consensus of states on any subject, can be used by a private citizen to control a sovereignís treatment of its own citizens within its own territory is a 20th-century invention of internationalist law professors and human-rights advocates. The Framers would, I am confident, be appalled by the proposition that, for example, the American peoples’ democratic adoption of the death penalty, … could be judicially nullified because of the disapproving views of foreigners.
… We Americans have a method for making the laws that are over us. We elect representatives to two Houses of Congress, each of which must enact the new law and present it for the approval of a President, whom we also elect. For over two decades now, unelected federal judges have been usurping this lawmaking power by converting what they regard as norms of international law into American law. Today’s opinion approves that process in principle, though urging the lower courts to be more restrained.”
There is evidence of abortion’s adverse mental and physical health effects on women. In the early 2000s, the “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade (Norma McCorvey), for whatever reason, decided to seek relief from the federal court’s order. She put such evidence before the court. As summarized by one of the judges on the 5th Circuit panel:
McCorvey presented evidence that goes to the heart of the balance Roe struck between the choice of a mother and the life of her unborn child. First, there are about a thousand affidavits of women who have had abortions and claim to have suffered long-term emotional damage and impaired relationships from their decision. Studies by scientists, offered by McCorvey, suggest that women may be affected emotionally and physically for years afterward and may be more prone to engage in high-risk, self-destructive conduct as a result of having had abortions. Second, Roe’s assumption that the decision to abort a baby will be made in close consultation with a woman’s private physician is called into question by affidavits from workers at abortion clinics, where most abortions are now performed. According to the affidavits, women are often herded through their procedures with little or no medical or emotional counseling. Third, McCorvey contends that the sociological landscape surrounding unwed motherhood has changed dramatically since Roe was decided. No longer does the unwed mother face social ostracism, and government programs offer medical care, social services, and even, through “Baby Moses” laws in over three-quarters of the states, the option of leaving a newborn directly in the care of the state until it can be adopted. Finally, neonatal and medical science, summarized by McCorvey, now graphically portrays, as science was unable to do 31 years ago, how a baby develops sensitivity to external stimuli and pain much earlier than was then believed. In sum, if courts were to delve into the facts underlying Roe’s balancing scheme with present-day knowledge, they might conclude that the woman’s “choice” is far more risky and less beneficial, and the child’s sentience far more advanced, than the Roe Court knew.
McCorvey v. Hill, No. 03-10711 (5th Cir. 2004)
Old Man (The Blog Stooge) Writes:
Studies by scientists, offered by McCorvey, suggest that women may be affected emotionally and physically for years afterward.
……………………………………..
Stooge (Estovir), we see no links here to any peer-approved, scientific studies.
Who is the “stooge” in the following scenario?
PROSECUTOR: Tell the jury what you saw when you looked out the window.
WITNESS: I saw the defendant raise a gun and fire two shots at the victim at point blank range, whereupon the victim collapsed and fell to the ground.
DEFENSE COUNSEL: Objection, Your Honor, move to strike. This testimony is irrelevant and unfairly prejudices my client. The witness has not offered any peer-approved, scientific studies on the topic of who shot the victim.
HIS HIONOR: Overruled! Another outburst like that in open court will find you replaced as defense counsel and subject to disbarment!
The anonymous commenter below makes multiple false claims. For sake of brevity I’ll only point out a couple.
First, he does state one truth: black fetuses are disproportionately represented among those violently destroyed by abortion, and this is party due to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers locating themselves in minority areas as part of their lucrative business model.
However, pro-lifers don’t suggest this means black women are more “murderous.” It is usually the boyfriend who pressures the woman into having an abortion. It costs him a couple hundred dollars cash on the barrel and then he can walk away and never have to deal with it. Most such relationships end with the man no longer involved in the woman’s life. The availability of the procedure allows men to take advantage of women to satisfy their lust, and then foist the consequences onto the women who have to suffer the loss of a child and the long-term adverse mental and physical health effects that go along with it.
Although anonymous cites one source that is keen on having black women even more involved with abortion than they already are, he overlooks that other black organizations are not happy with black babies are dying in disproportionate numbers due to abortion. See, e.g., http://www.blackgenocide.org
Second, anonymous suggests abortion is primarily an “economic issue.” Reducing it to economics takes the human fetus and the long-term health effects on the mother out of the equation. This is reminiscent of the antebellum South reducing slavery to an economic issue. So Anonymous is in bad company here.
Black Women Disproportionately Represented Amongst Abortion Seekers
In the eight months since the federal right to abortion was eliminated, leaving states free to make their own abortion laws, North Carolina, where the procedure remains legal up to 20 weeks, has become a top destination for people from states where it is banned or severely restricted. North Carolina experienced a 37 percent jump in abortions, according to WeCount, an abortion-tracking project.
Last year, Tina Marshall started a new group: the Black Abortion Defense League. She was hoping to engage more Black volunteers to work with her to preserve abortion rights. On a clear January morning, Ms. Marshall stood in front of a Charlotte clinic yelling, “Baa-aaa-aaa-aaa” at anti-abortion activists, whom she likened to sheep.
Ms. Marshall said she wanted to bolster participation of Black women in an issue that has an especially large effect on their lives. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2020, the most recent year available, showed that 52 percent of abortion recipients in North Carolina were Black, compared with 28 percent who were white. Hispanic women made up 13 percent.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/04/us/abortion-north-carolina.html
…………………………………………………………
KEY PASSAGE ABOVE:
“Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2020, the most recent year available, showed that 52 percent of abortion recipients in North Carolina were Black, compared with 28 percent who were white”.
Do these numbers mean that Black women are more ‘murderous’ than White women? Right-To-Lifers would have us believe that. Though at the same time Right-To-Lifers make claims that Planned Parenthood engages in ‘genocide’ against Blacks.
The truth is that abortion is most often an economic decision. Poor women cannot afford to even carry pregnancies. And by opposing Obamacare, Republicans are not the least bit helpful. But Right-To-Lifers cannot acknowledge this.
To admit that abortion is most often an economic decision, would be admitting that abortion restrictions have a disproportionate impact on the poor. And no one presenting themself as a ‘good Christian’ wants to admit their policies are indifferent to the poor. So Right-To-Lifers simply deny reality here. Instead they conjure up visions of ‘murderous Fem-Nazies.
Do these numbers mean that Black women are more ‘murderous’ than White women? Right-To-Lifers would have us believe that.
This claim is particularly inapt. By holding the African American population down, abortion on demand is a racist’s dream come true. Even under your own logic, pro-lifers favor an increase in the black population as they are aware that abortion disproportionately victimizes African Americans.
“showed that 52 percent of abortion recipients in North Carolina were Black”
“Do these numbers mean that Black women are more ‘murderous’ than White women? “
Some would accuse you, as a white man, of committing black genocide. Blacks are permitting abortions of their young, but you are leading the charge.
Margaret Sanger deliberately targeted black communities for abortion. She considered blacks inferior, and abortion was an ends to reduce the procreation of “undesirables.”
Sadly, Planned Parenthood continues to over represent abortion providers in black communities, continuing Sanger’s racist legacy. Aborting black babies makes Planned Parenthood a lot of money.
Why is unprotected sex, abortion, and single motherhood promoted so heavily in black communities? Why is personal responsibility taboo? This exposes young black Americans to a disproportionate rate of STDs.
Condoms have been available free in all 50 states for years. We’ve known how babies are made, and STDs transmitted, for many years. Why is this demographic so targeted by activists who promote self destructive behavior?
If abortion prevents black people from being poor, then after decades of such a high rate of black abortion, why are black Americans still disproportionately poor? Because the Democrat rhetoric is built on false promises. It’s been decades of Democrats promising to solve black problems for their vote. Democrats have a hegemony in majority-black communities, yet the same problems plague them. Stop believing false promises.
There are statistically indisputable steps to attain a middle class life. Study and stay in school. Get a job after graduation. Don’t do drugs, commit crimes, or hang out with criminals. Wait to have kids until marriage. Don’t be promiscuous and get STDs. In short, act conservatively and avoid risky behavior. Asians have applied this method with more success than whites. It is not a “white” lifestyle. When whites fail to follow these steps, they suffer the same multi-generational crime, poverty, and drug use as any other demographic.
The dark irony of human rights groups advocating for human rites performed for social, redistributive, clinical, political, criminal, and fair weather progress a la witch hunts, warlock trials, human sacrifice of olde.
There is no mystery in sex and conception. A human life from six weeks meets granny in legal state, if not in process. The Pro-Choice ethical religion in association with the twilight faith denies women and men’s dignity and agency, and normalizes human life as negotiable commodities.
That said, a woman, and man, have four choices: to abstain, to prevent conception, to shift responsibility with sympathetic consideration, to share responsibility in empathetic trust, and an equal right to self-defense through reconciliation. The wicked solution is neither a good nor exclusive choice.
Demos-cracy is aborted in darkness, at the twilight fringe.
Dobbs Decision’s Horrifying Impact:
Women Miscarrying Discharged From Hospitals
They arrived at University Hospitals TriPoint Medical Center in Painesville, Ohio, at around 6 a.m. Medical staff there did her bloodwork and an ultrasound – again, there was no heartbeat. To check how much blood she had lost, they measured her hemoglobin level – Christtina Zielke says they told her she hadn’t lost enough for it to be of concern yet.
“At this point, shift changes have happened, I’ve seen a physician, two [or] three different nurses, an ultrasound tech – no one for more than a few minutes at a time,” she says. The whole time, she kept bleeding, filling up diapers with blood.
Zielke wondered if ER staff were hesitant because of Ohio’s new six-week abortion ban.
One nurse mentioned in passing that a D&C is sometimes needed to get heavy bleeding to stop, but Zielke says she wasn’t offered one, nor was she given any other treatment, not even IV fluids or pain medication.
Then, “about two and a half hours into this slew of tests, a nurse comes in and tells me that I’m being discharged,” Zielke says.
The couple was confused by this. It felt to them like Zielke was still experiencing a medical emergency.
“They said they needed to prove there was no fetal development,” she says. “I was told that I could come back in two days for a repeat hormone test to confirm I was miscarrying.”
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/15/1135882310/miscarriage-hemorrhage-abortion-law-ohio
……………………………………………………………………………………..
This story is typical of many published accounts since the Dobbs decision. Women suffering miscarriages are shocked to discover hospitals would rather discharge them than provide needed care. This may explain ‘why’ the U N, and related organizations, feel the United States
has a human rights problem.
Pro-Choice ethical religious zealots. We have seen this with ostensibly “licensed” medical professionals who are constitutionally incapable, technically incompetent, or morally compromised to respect the human rights of the mother and child. They should not be allowed to practice on animals let alone on people. Then there are people who deny human evolution and feel compelled to exercise liberal license to indulge planned parenthood, planned parent/hood, planned personhood, planned Jewhood, etc. schemes for diverse causes including fair weather progress a la witch hunts, warlock trials of the past, and, apparently, the present, and forward-looking. In a similar vein, humanity had Mengele to help people “transition”, and today it’s Levine et al. These people will always be with us. History repeats in rhyme.
+1
This story is typical of many published accounts
Story being the operative word here.
Nothing from the hospital, and nothing about the outcome.
A tale of woe from one perspective. Lots of poor decisions by the mother, and using Dr Google instead of her own OBGYN
This is the kind of childish foot stomping you are reduced to because facts just dont convey the narrative you desire.
EVen Gutmacher – the statistical Arm of PP, has demonstrated over decades that the impact of abortion laws has been that Women make their choices earlier. They have abortions earlier – when they are simpler and less expensive. They are more attentive to Birth control.
These Horror stories are few and rare, and there are going to be horror stories no matter what. The difference is that now they are not typically stories of late term abortions gone horribly wrong.
For those on the left ranting about purported horror stories post Dobbs – I would suggest reading about Gosnell.
If you ignore the infants he murdered – what he did to women – several murdered was horrendous.
“what happened to Zielke — based on her account — was NOT a result of Ohio’s law.”
” there’s nothing explicitly in the law that would have prevented her from being treated. “
You were counting your toes instead of trying to understand the article. Where is the law at fault?
No law that imposes any limits on abortion in any state in the US prevents care after a miscarriage, or ectopic pregnancy.
None.
Zero.
Zip.
Nada.
Would those same organizations declare that China is a violator of human rights for running cobalt mines in the Congo with slave labor, or for their genocide of the Uighur?
It is up to each, individual country to determine abortion laws. American abortion laws are actually more permissive than some European countries.
Rather than leave it up to unelected lifetime Supreme Court justices, it’s better for laws to reflect the will of the people as closely as possible. People seem to want justices to just take care of the abortion issue for them, and then they complain when justices reverse a ruling. Just legislate the issue like any other through elected representatives. I think that states should decide abortion laws, so that those laws will reflect the particular will of the citizens of that state.
In my personal opinion, Democrats are going bananas on many social issues. They teach elementary school children how cool it is to change their gender, and that gender is a malleable state of mind. They say there’s no downside to becoming another gender, and that it can be only temporary, utterly ignoring all evidence of the severe, and sometimes permanent side effects of puberty blockers. Before a child even understands what castration is, Democrat activists put them on the path to one. Activists in schools hide the gender transition of elementary school children from their parents. Many push for not restrictions on abortion whatsoever, even going so far as to talk about unwanted newborns who are born alive after an abortion attempt being “made comfortable” while the mother decides what she wants to do.
This is on top of the years’ long riots, anarchy in CHOP/CHAZ, defunding police and the ensuing skyrocketing murder, rape, and theft, and allowing criminals free rein to steal, driving businesses under.
It’s so extreme. I think that if you asked the average Democrat 10 years ago if they thought a man could just say he’s a woman, compete in women’s sports, gain access to little girls’ changing rooms and battered women shelters, chemically and surgically castrate boys so they could “become girls” at an age where they are not mature enough to buy a beer, defund police, allow thieves to shoplift with impunity…they’d claim it was a conspiracy theory that Democrats would ever support such positions.
Look where we are now…
“[I]t’s better for laws to reflect the will of the people . . .”
That is the horror of majority rule.
Whatever country you’re thinking of, it is not America — a nation based on individual rights and limited government.
The horror of majority rule.
In other words, democracy. It’s true that majority rule has some limits, as specified in the Constitution and particularly the Bill of Rights. But that document says nothing about abortion, expressly or implicitly. Therefore, under the American system of governance, it is left to the democratic process. Contrary to your protestation, that process does not constitute a “horror.”
“But that document says nothing about abortion, expressly or implicitly. Therefore, under the American system of governance, it is left to the democratic process.”
Yet another person who does not understand the nature and purpose of the U.S. Constitution. The *horror* of majority tyranny is specifically why some Founders argued against including a Bill of Rights in the Constitution.
For the nth time: The Bill of Rights is not an exhaustive list of rights.
Sam:
The US is a Republic, not a straight democracy. People elect leaders to legislate.
While it’s true the Constitution guarantees certain individual rights to prevent the dictatorship of the majority, abortion is not listed as a Constitutional right.
Support for abortion decreases as gestation proceeds, especially when the fetus is healthy. Abortion support increases when there is significant fetal abnormality.
As the infamous Dr Kermit Gosnell illustrated, there are plenty of women willing to abort third trimester, healthy unborn children. These abortions require labor and delivery, and take longer and carry more risk than the delivery alone. They paid to have their unborn children killed, rather than just give them up for adoption. Most Americans who followed the case were absolutely horrified.
People who talk about my body, my choice, might think differently if they watched an abortion. In a 2nd trimester abortion, the doctor reaches in blind with forceps, and twists off limbs as the fetus struggles. They line up the body parts to make sure they got it all, including the little face. A third trimester abortion gives the fetus a lethal injection, the mother carries the dead baby inside for a day, returns to ensure the child is dead, then is induced, labors, and gives birth to a stillborn. That’s not the woman’s body, but that of a completely different person.
When people think of abortion, they likely are thinking of a ball of cells. The brief blastula stage. They’re not thinking of a baby sucking its thumb. When they do, they start considering limits. I watched Joy Behar, with my own eyes, say that a third trimester abortion was “murder.” She’s a staunch Democrat. What happened to “my body my choice?” There are either ethical reasons for limits, or not. And if there are ethical reasons to limit abortion, then these attacks on those who wish to limit abortion are unethical.
Even the original Roe v Wade case discussed the child’s potential against the mother’s medical privacy.
Democrat rhetoric indicates they wish to remove all limits on abortion. The only difference would be the unborn breathing air or not. It wouldn’t be that far a leap to then legalize infanticide. What’s the difference, one breath of air?
“[A]bortion is not listed as a Constitutional right.”
Any person who makes such a statement cannot claim to understand the purpose of the U.S. Constitution or of the Bill of Rights.
If you extend that bogus premise, you’ll see that you’ve shot yourself in the foot over issues such as vaccine choice (which also is not “listed as a Constitution right.”)
That said, conservatives do not want to accept the implications of that bogus premise. They just wish to use it, on the issue of abortion, to rationalize criminalizing abortion. It is *not* a principled argument. It is an argument of convenience. For them, that bogus premise is merely a means justified by an (immoral) end.
Professor Turley Writes:
Some of the alleged denials of health care are contestable. For example, they claim that there are barriers to “accessing abortion in cases of miscarriage” and “denial of care in cases of ectopic pregnancy.”
…………………………………………………………
Here the word ‘contestable’ is highlighted. But a simple click reveals yet an older Turley column. In other words, Turley has no documentation proving these claims are contestable.
Since the Dobbs decision, mainstream media has carried numerous stories concerning women with miscarriages who were actually denied treatment at hospitals and told to “Bleed it out at home”.
And ‘no’, rightwing media doesn’t run these stories. These instances are not happening, according to Republican-friendly sources. Miscarriages, in general, are not happening within the rightwing bubble.
But they ‘are’ happening. And women in red states suffer living nightmares when it happens to their pregnancy. The truth is that Republicans have been so bellicose in their efforts to scare doctors, that the healthcare profession errs on the side of caution and just tells women to “go home”.
Turley also brings up ectopic pregnancies. In one of his first, post-Dobbs columns, Turley assured us that all Red States have exceptions on the books allowing for abortions in the case of ectopic pregnancies. But this reader has NEVER seen confirmation of that claim outside of rightwing media.
Slow night in WeHo tonight or is it too early for you ?
Wrap it
This was posted by Estovir, The Blog Stooge. Estovir keeps posting gay-themed junk under the assumption that readers will share his ‘fascination’.
The MSM are known liars and fabricators. The idea that hospitals are turning away women who have already miscarried based on anti-abortion views makes absolutely no sense, since in a miscarriage by definition the fetus is already dead. Anyone who believes such preposterous stories, particularly as propagated by the MSM – a left-wing propaganda machine that has no credibility – is the definition of gullible.
Same goes for ectopic pregnancies. With those, both mother and baby die without abortion. The idea that a pro-life hospital would prefer that outcome is, again, so preposterous that only a highly gullible person would believe such a fabrication.
Re: miscarriage: Old Man, here is a NYT report from Texas:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/17/health/abortion-miscarriage-treatment.html
Alice in Wonderland time again folks….advocating for Life….is a Human Rights violation?
Really….so a Woman (the original Mark I Model that physically conceives and carries to birth of a child) with no threat to her life or body….elects to abort that Child prior to birth…..and her decision to end a human life for sheer convenience trumps any consideration of that Life she is ending?
I shall never buy off on that notion.
Far too many Loons are making it into the Gene Pool for sure….and perhaps retroactive Abortion might a solution for that problem.
You reckon those so supportive of Abortion would go for that?
Have these “Conventions” been signed by the President and approved by 2/3 of the Senate? If not, they are not part of American law. Article II, section 2. Even if they had been approved by 2/3 of the Senate, It is arguable that they still could not contravene the inherent legislative sovereignty of the States in the absence of an express delegation of power in the Constitution to cover the subject matter. Cruz, Limits on Treaty Power, 127 Harv. L. Rev. F. 93 (2014). https://harvardlawreview. org/2014/01/limits-on-the-treaty-power/
Some people commenting on this article have stated that pro-life arguments rely exclusively on religious beliefs. That argument is simplistic and misleading.
There are some arguments based on religion. For example, the argument against artificial contraception, an argument based on when the soul enters the body, or an argument based on someone receiving a revelation from God. But the majority of the time the position is justified based on a universal belief that it is wrong to kill an innocent human being. The difference is whether one side or the other believes an unborn child is an innocent human being.
For example, I have a good friend who is an atheist and a physician. She is pro-life. Her pro-life views are not based on her atheism (obviously). They are based on her knowledge as a physician, and in particular, her knowledge of embryology.
We conflate religion and morality because Judaism and Christianity are based on the Ten Commandments, which are legal-like injunctions. But the religion of the ancient Romans did not contain any moral commandments; nevethless, pre-Chirstiona Roman law recognized the unborn child as a human being.
“Even focusing the analysis of “[a]ncient attitudes” in Rome toward protection of the unborn in the pre-Christian Roman Empire, we see a consistent recognition, summed up by Julian, a pagan Roman jurist of the 2nd c. AD, that “[f]or almost all purposes of civil law, children in utero are considered as existent beings” (Qui in utero sunt…in rerum natura esse)” (D. 1,5,26).” https://www.harvard-jlpp.com/why-justice-blackmuns-appeal-to-roman-law-to-justify-roe-v-wade-is-wrong-grzegorz-blicharz/
Law is ultimately based on morality, and law existed long before the advent of Judaism, Christianity, or similar moralistic religions.
Exactly. I find it a bit macabre that they are citing the US is in violation of The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) when there is solid scientific evidence that an unborn child suffers pain during an abortion. How can anyone with a conscience advocate for killing a viable, unborn child that is close to term. It’s barbaric and one does not need to believe in God to understand that.
Wyoming Republicans Rewrite Abortion Ban
Wyoming was one of more than a dozen states to pass abortion bans designed to take effect when the Supreme Court overturned Roe, the landmark 1973 precedent that guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion.
Such abortion bans have been challenged in court. In Wyoming, a judge issued a preliminary injunction suspending the ban, noting that the measure might violate the state constitution, which explicitly guarantees adults the right to make their own health-care decisions.
In response, state lawmakers drafted a more sweeping antiabortion measure — titled the Life is a Human Right Act — to supersede the earlier ban. It states that abortion is “not health care” but “the intentional termination of the life of an unborn baby.”
The original version of the bill prohibited abortion even in cases of rape and incest and included language interpreting the state constitution to favor an abortion ban, an unusual addition that some lawmakers warned infringed on the power of the judiciary.
Edited From:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/03/03/wyoming-abortion-bill/
…………………………………………………………
KEY PASSAGE ABOVE:
State lawmakers drafted a more sweeping antiabortion measure — titled the Life is a Human Right Act — to supersede the earlier ban. It states that abortion is “not health care” but “the intentional termination of the life of an unborn baby.”
***
See that? “Abortion is not healthcare”. That’s according to Wyoming legislators. That’s how Republicans deal with abortion: “Claiming it’s never healthcare”.
No mention of pregnancy complications, fetal abnormalities, or even common miscarriages. ‘No’, Republicans will not acknowledge that sh1t happens to pregnant women. The medical establishment can disagree all it wants. But state legislators know best.
This article, and most articles on Red State abortion bans, never, ever mention exceptions for escoptic pregnancies. Yet Professor Turley continues claiming those exceptions are written into bans. But we’re not seeing that!
Here is the part of the Wyoming bill which allows for abortions and contraceptives::
W.S. 35-6-124:
(a) It shall not be a violation of W.S. 35‑6‑123 for a licensed physician to:
(i) Perform a pre‑viability separation procedure necessary in the physician’s reasonable medical judgment to prevent the death of the pregnant woman, a substantial risk of death for the pregnant woman because of a physical condition or the serious and permanent impairment of a life‑sustaining organ of a pregnant woman, provided that no separation procedure shall be deemed necessary under this paragraph unless the physician makes all reasonable medical efforts under the circumstances to preserve both the life of the pregnant woman and the life of the unborn baby in a manner consistent with reasonable medical judgment;
(ii) Provide medical treatment to a pregnant woman that results in the accidental or unintentional injury to, or the death of, an unborn baby;
(iii) Perform an abortion on a woman when the pregnancy is the result of incest as defined by W.S. 6‑4‑402 or sexual assault as defined by W.S. 6-2-301. Prior to the performance of any abortion under this paragraph the woman, or the woman’s parent or guardian if the woman is a minor or subject to a guardianship, shall report the act of incest or sexual assault to a law enforcement agency and a copy of the report shall be provided to the physician; or
(iv) Perform an abortion on a woman when in the physician’s reasonable medical judgment, there is a substantial likelihood that the unborn baby has a lethal fetal anomaly or the pregnancy is determined to be a molar pregnancy.
(b) Nothing in this act shall be construed to prohibit the use, sale, prescription or administration of a contraceptive measure, drug, chemical or device if the contraceptive measure, drug, chemical or device is used, sold, prescribed or administered in accordance with manufacturer instructions and is not used, sold, prescribed or administered with the specific intent to cause or induce an abortion.
The statutory definition of “abortion” specifically excludes treatiment for ectopic pregnancies. See W.S. 35-6-121 a) (1)(C).
https://wyoleg.gov/Legislation/2023/HB0152
So, medical care is not being denied to pregnant women.
This statute was drafted to make it clear that abortion is not “health care” to avoid a constitutional challenge based on Wyoming’s Constitution, whose Statement of rights, which says in part:
Article 1, Section 38 Right of health care access.
(a) Each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions. The parent, guardian or legal representative of any other natural person shall have the right to make health care decisions for that person.
https://wyoleg.gov/statutes/compress/title97.pdf
It is unlikely that, in enacting the Constitution, the people of Wyoming believed that “health care” includes the intentional termination of the life of an unborn baby. But if you get the right judge, he/she might creatively so define the term. Even in Wyoming, there are leftists.
“…the state constitution,…guarantees adults the right to make their own health-care decisions.”
– Chief Nutjob
___________
OMG!
“Healthcare” now includes homicide as murder in the case of any inconvenience, either real or imagined, caused by childbirth.
Are you out of your ——- mind?
The lunatics have taken over the asylum.
Where are the responsible adults in this deranged kindergarten?
Turley Adds To Growing List Of Institutions Hostile To Conservatives
Hardly a day goes by where Johnathan Turley isn’t citing some organization or institution that is hostile to American conservatives. Mainstream media is most often mentioned. Yet Teachers, Universities, The CDC and lately the FBI are all major culprits.
But with this column, Turley goes global. It’s now the U.N. and U.N. affiliated organizations that are siding with liberals to discredit ‘good conservatives’. Though in all fairness to Turley, Far-Right factions in the U.S. have never liked the U.N. So in adding the U.N. to his growing list, Turley is not likely to alienate anyone within the rightwing bubble.
However Turley might want to ask himself ‘why’ conservatives are so often misunderstood. There are reasons certain groups get bad publicity. Turley should write a column exploring those reasons.
However Turley might want to ask himself ‘why’ conservatives
That’s what I do with rape victims. I ask them what they did to bring the rape on.
Ignoring the current stupidity of the UN – what is there to like about the UN ?
The UN provides a place for inconsequential nations to chatter.
But in the actual arena of meaningful foreign relations – the US is inconsequential.
Look at things right now – Has the UN even criticized the Russian invasion of Ukraine ?
Possibly, but nothing will get through the UN Security counsel.
Right or wrong the entire foreign relations aspect of the Russia/Ukraine is being dealth with almost exclusively by NATO
Americans must be advocating the Constitution to every nation on this planet.
The Founders understood that the natural and God-given rights and freedoms they enumerated in the Constitution were and remain universal.
Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto 59 years after the adoption of the Constitution because none of the principles of the Communist Manifesto were in the Constitution.
Had the principles of the Communist Manifesto been in the Constitution, Karl Marx would have had no reason to write the Communist Manifesto.
The principles of the Communist Manifesto were not in the Constitution then and the principles of the Communist Manifesto are not in the Constitution now.
Communism is global.
Globalism is communism.
The globalized nations of the world in the U.N. are pure communism.
With any luck, maybe we’ll get kicked out of the UN
One of the main points of the Declaration of Independence and the American revolution as a whole was to not be controlled by Europe anymore. SCOTUS’s movement toward deferring to international law and the views of Europeans on legal issues is, in that sense, anti-Constitutional.
As I mentioned below, the UN has become a cabal of anti-American (and antisemitic) thugs. There’s no way in the world the federal government or the governments of the individual states should be in any way swayed by anything the UN says – particularly on state-level issues such as abortion.
At the point neurological impulses associated with the beginning of human brain, human spinal cord, and human heart development (5 weeks maximum before one even realizes they’ve conceived), are detected is when what is at first defined as an embryo and then a fetus are in actuality the forebearers of a human being. That inevitable and factual process becomes relevant at the time of conception, leaving no doubt that what is is another viable human being to be born into our earthly and communal existence. Something of that will sooner or later in the march of time come to the realization of the courts so that then something definitive might be finally determined as to when a human life actually and legally begins. It will not end the debate about abortion, but it will begin deliberate and careful rationalization for how both and under what circumstances the rights of both the mother and the child are to be humanely considered.
I don’t think there is any doubt from a scientific point of view — even among the most virulent abortionists — about when life begins. The legal question is only “At one point if any is the murder of the child justifiable?”
Actually, there is no scientific agreement. Here’s a discussion of the various scientific views from a developmental biology text by Scott Gilbert: https://web.archive.org/web/20030507095454/http://www.devbio.com/article.php?ch=21&id=162 (scroll down to the section titled “Current Scientific Views of When Human Life Begins”)
In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional state statutes that in no way contradicted any specific provision of the Constitution. This nebulous type of unconstitutionality ignored what had long been the unimpeachable doctrine:
“[N]o court is at liberty to pronounce a statute unconstitutional unless the fact that it is repugnant to some particular designated clause or portion of the constitution is distinctly alleged and clearly shown, or unless it is made indubitably to appear that the statute is contrary to some one or more of the implied restrictions upon the power of the legislature.”
It is telling that on this same issue—abortion—the normally purposivist Lord Denning invoked democracy and literalism as the more prudent course: “Abortion is a subject on which many people feel strongly. . . . Emotions run so high on both sides that I feel that we as judges must go by the very words of the statute— without stretching it one way or the other—and writing nothing in which is not there.” It should not require high-running emotions among the public to encourage judges to follow the letter of the law.
– Reading Law: Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts
Authors Antonin Scalia, Bryan A. Garner
Publisher Thomson/West, 2012
ISBN 031427555X, 9780314275554
Length 567 pages
“The Charge of the Light Brigade”
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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The judicial branch has no power to usurp power, legislate, modify legislation, modify legislation through “interpretation, or amend the Constitution.
The sole duty and obligation of the judicial branch is to assure that actions comport with statutory and fundamental law.
Judges and Justices must support the Constitution or be impeached and convicted – they must simply do and die.
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“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what they forbid.”
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
How can groups such as these profess to support HUMAN rights – when all they advocate for is killing baby humans while in the womb????
Exactly so. They see it as a human right to kill other humans, in particular, the most weak and vulnerable of humans. And Amnesty International is against amnesty for those vulnerable people. It’s this kind of twisted thinking that defines the modern day leftist.
“Roughly 200 human rights organizations are asking the United Nations to declare that the United States is a violator of ‘international human rights law’ because some states have passed pro-life laws after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.”
– Professor Turley
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THE U.N. IS THE ANTIAMERICA
Roughly 200 human rights organizations are criminally hypocritical and certifiably insane.
Posterity, progeny and children of all ages must be celebrated, not murdered.
After 24 hours of fertilization, a living human being exists in its mothers womb.
Abortion of that human being is homicide; homicide is murder.
It is a sin and a crime to kill in every religious text, secular body of law and nation.
Procreation is sane, rational and existentially imperative.
Those who murder their own children are incoherent as to be insane.
The 53-page letter informs the U.N. that there are a host of barriers now in place for women and girls in the United States . . .
Wait, so now women exist, and they’re the ones who can get pregnant? I thought we as a society had moved past that primitive idea.