Written by Adele Stan for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

As the House of Representatives gears up for Tuesday’s debate on HR 1797, a bill that would outlaw virtually all abortions 20 weeks post fertilization, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) argued in favor of banning abortions even earlier in pregnancy because, he said, male fetuses that age were already, shall we say, spanking the monkey.

“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful,” said Burgess, a former OB/GYN. “They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”

That observation led Burgess to say he had argued for the abortion ban to start at a much earlier stage of gestation, 15 or 16 weeks. (This is less than halfway through a pregnancy.) He appeared to liken Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, to the 1893 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that formally legalized racial segregation, and was not fully reversed until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The rationale for the Republican bill, which advanced through the House Judiciary last week on a near-total party-line vote, is one scientifically disputed study, touted by Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) in his opening remarks at today’s Rules Committee hearing, that asserts fetuses can feel pain as early as 20 weeks after sperm meets egg.

“Well, I think all the members are cognizant of the fact that this is not a Congress that cares much about science,” said Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), the Rules Committee’s ranking member, in her questioning of Goodlatte, who refuted that claim by saying that since 1973, the year when the Supreme Court legalized abortion, much more had been learned about fetal development.

Major medical bodies in the United States and the United Kingdom have refuted the claim of fetal pain before the third trimester.

The 20-week abortion ban, if passed into law, would set up a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, which allows abortion up to the point of fetal viability outside the womb, and mandates exceptions for abortions in the case of pregnancies that threaten the life or health of the woman.

When first drafted, the 20-week ban was meant to apply only to the District of Columbia, over which Congress has a great deal of control. But with the arrest and murder conviction of Kermit Gosnell, who ran an illegal abortion clinic in Philadelphia, right-wing forces have sought to use justifiable public revulsion at Gosnell’s actions to further restrict women’s rights—and in contradiction to the common right-wing assertion of state sovereignty.

Former Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, speaking before a right-wing gathering in Washington, DC, last week, put it this way: “This is a time for the pro-life movement like we have not had in decades. We must seize the moment.”

Goodlatte, in his opening statement, framed the ban as a measure to prevent practices such as Gosnell’s, a conflation that Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) termed “a red herring” which, he said, had nothing to do with the way abortion is practiced in legal clinics.

Rebutting Goodlatte’s pronouncements on the stage of development at which fetuses feel pain, Nadler (D-NY) noted doubts that the study’s own author, Kanwaljeet “Sunny” Anand, MD, had about its assertions, having stated in 2005 testimony that evidence of fetal pain in the second trimester of pregnancy “was uncertain.”

Nadler also took issue with the tepid exception to the ban for women who were pregnant through rape or incest—a measure added last minute after Rep. Trent Franks, the bill’s sponsor, said at last week’s Judiciary Committee hearing that the incidence of pregnancy from rape is low. With the 2014 midterm elections looming, GOP leaders scrambled to avoid the kind of fallout encountered in 2012 when Republican senatorial candidates Todd Akin (MO) and Richard Mourdock (IN) saw their campaigns tank after making comments about rape, pregnancy, and abortion.

The exception applies only to women who “first reported the rape or the incest to the authorities,” Nadler said, and, in the case of incest, the exception applied only to minors, even if an adult woman had been abused by the relative who had impregnated her since she was a child.

“It would be great if every rape or assault would be reported,” Nadler said, but the Republicans’ last-minute amendment—made after Republicans in the Judiciary Committee rejected a rape-and-incest exception offered by the Democrats—made no allowance for the toll often taken on rape victims in the judicial system, he said, including sometimes facing death threats from the friends and neighbors of the perpetrator.

“So, the authors of this bill apparently believe that women are too dishonest to be believed when they say they were raped or the victims of incest,” Nadler said. “It is Congress siding with her abuser…”.

There is also no protection for the health of the woman in the bill, nor an exception allowing for saving the life of the woman, except in terms defined so narrowly, Nadler continued, as to be virtually useless.

Democrats have been quick to note, as Slaughter did in the Rules Committee hearing, that the Republicans who voted the bill to the floor in the House Judiciary Committee were all men, due to the fact that the GOP hasn’t appointed a single woman to one of Congress’ most important committees.

So, when the 20-week abortion ban bill—deceptively titled the “Pain-Capable Infant Protection Act” —comes to the floor of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, you won’t find Trent Franks managing the floor debate. Instead, GOP leaders have tapped the ardently anti-choice Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) to lead that charge.

Update: Here’s video of the remarks via AmericaBlog.

Written by Tara Murtha for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Pennsylvania is the another front in the war on women.

As we saw with 2011’s targeted regulation of abortion providers (TRAP) bill, the Republican-dominated Pennsylvania legislature routinely ignores protests from medical associations and professionals in passing bad-faith bills that politicize and endanger women’s health.

Now, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, already suffering low approval ratings in large part because of a significant gender gap, is poised to sign HB 818. The bill intrudes on the free market by prohibiting private insurance companies that plan to sell health-care plans through Pennsylvania’s forthcoming state health insurance exchange from covering abortion, even in cases of medical emergency, health of the mother, and severe fetal anomaly.

Even more troubling, lawmakers supporting HB 818 are attempting to deceive the public by offering a non-solution: allowing Pennsylvania women to purchase abortion-specific riders from private companies not participating in the exchange.

The problem is that such abortion riders do not appear to exist.

HB 818

Even though the state exchange, established by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), won’t be set up until next year, Pennsylvania lawmakers have been working on versions of the bill since Corbett’s first week in office back in 2011.

The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Donna Oberlander (R-Clarion/Armstrong), insists HB 818 simply underscores existing policy that already prohibits tax dollars from funding abortion. There’s no reason for the “small government” party to propose redundant legislation—except, of course, as cover for something else.

HB 818 doesn’t address tax dollars, which are indeed not allowed to be used to fund abortions (except in cases of rape, incest, and endangerment to the life of the mother) under the Hyde Amendment, Pennsylvania state law, and terms set within the ACA. What it will do is require businesses participating in the health-care exchange to offer sub-standard insurance plans to women—which, in turn, means the hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania women expected to purchase coverage through the exchange won’t be able to spend their own money to purchase industry-standard medical care through the exchange.

No Health Exceptions

Tinkering with the free market in order to bully insurance companies into economically hijacking working women’s constitutional right to abort an unwanted pregnancy is bad enough, but HB 818 goes even further, restricting physician-advised terminations of wanted pregnancies complicated by unexpected disease or accident.

Pennsylvania lawmakers explicitly rejected an amendment to add health of the woman as an exception to the narrow restrictions, which only allow abortion coverage “where necessary to avert the death of the woman” and in cases of incest and rape, providing the rape victim already reported the assault to the authorities. (The fact that many victims often don’t report aside, protocol of communication between police, insurers, doctors, and patients is unclear.)

When lawmakers voted against a medical emergency amendment offered by state Sen. Judy Schwank (D-Berks), they voted against insurers covering the expense of medically advised terminations in cases when a pregnant woman faces, for example, a cancer diagnosis, diabetes, a car accident, or discovers a severe fetal anomaly.

“Let’s say a woman was pregnant [and] her water broke prematurely and the baby would not survive. She would not be able to get an abortion,” Sen. Schwank told RH Reality Check. At least, not without paying out-of-pocket for the procedure, which could cost tens of thousands of dollars.

“These are already tragic situations,” said Schwank. “These are babies that are wanted, and to have to add this anguish on to the situation. … I can’t understand why we couldn’t get this through.”

“Certainly I understand that there are extenuating circumstances,” Oberlander said in a PCN interview defending the bill. “However, [a health exception is a] loophole wide enough you can ride a semi truck through. Women experience a lot of different issues and side effects from a pregnancy.”

Seemingly frustrated with questions about the bill, Oberlander added, “It’s not rocket science.” Well, it’s not medical science, either; it’s religion-based health care influenced by special interests. Specifically, the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, the public affairs arm of Pennsylvania’s Catholic bishops, and the Catholic dioceses of Pennsylvania lobbied hard for HB 818 and against the health amendment.

“I hear it in my colleagues,” state Sen. Vincent Hughes (D-Philadelphia/Montgomery), who has spoken out against the bill, told RH Reality Check, “the frustration that they continue to get [calls from the Catholic Conference], especially since the Affordable Care Act took care of everything in terms of public funding. No matter where it comes from, no public funding can be utilized for abortion.”

Two Democrats, state Sens. Tim Solobay of Canonsburg and Richard Kasunic of Fayette and Somerset, voted against the health amendment, which lost by two votes.

Rep. Oberlander also insists the bill is “consistent with the will of the people.” But 2011 polling conducted by Susquehanna Polling & Research reveals otherwise. When asked whether or not they support insurance companies participating in the exchange covering abortion “to protect the health of the woman,” 79 percent of respondents said yes.

What Abortion Riders?

Read the rest of this entry →

Written by Editor-in-Chief Jodi Jacobson for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Trent Franks & other men, gunning for abortion again.

Wednesday, an all-male panel of House Judiciary Committee members, led by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), passed a 20-week abortion ban. The bill, HR 1797, passed out of the Judiciary Committee by a vote of 20 to 12. The vote count fell along party lines, with the exception of Congressman Pedro Pierluisi (D-PR), the only Democrat who voted in favor.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has promised a floor vote on the bill next week.

This is a dangerous piece of legislation. It is based on false and completely disproven assertions about “evidence” of fetal pain; it makes legislators, rather than doctors, the arbiters of gestational age; and it would result in the trial and imprisonment of medical professionals who provide safe abortion care. Yet in what can only be called an irresponsible quest for what they call “balance,” many media outlets are assisting in the perpetuation of lies about a critical aspect of reproductive health care in support of policies that will deeply harm women and criminalize providers.

As currently written, Franks’ bill would create an absolute ban on abortions in the United States after 20 weeks post-fertilization, for any reason, under any circumstance, except the imminent risk of death of the pregnant person, which as the cases of Beatriz and Savita Halappanavar have shown is not exactly reassuring. Contrary to misreporting by the Washington Post and the Associated Press, it is not a “reaction” to the trial of Kermit Gosnell, but simply the newest iteration of a bill Franks has been pushing for years — and he is using the Gosnell case as an excuse to expand the bill from a focus “only” on the District of Columbia to a nationwide ban.

It is no secret that the GOP is out to ban all abortions in the United States, no matter the costs to women’s lives and health, nor the costs to families and society writ large. When they are not acting to ban abortions outright, legislatures controlled by the GOP and Tea Party are passing unnecessary and costly regulations intended to close clinics run by legitimate providers of safe abortion care, and creating hoops through which patients must jump to get safe abortion care intended to raise the costs of early abortion and to humiliate and shame women, plain and simple.

The GOP and anti-choice movement’s claims about “caring for women” are belied by the fact that passage of a bill that would create blanket restrictions on safe abortion care, would remove health-care decisions from the hands of doctors and the women who are their patients — and would guarantee that criminal actors such as Kermit Gosnell get plenty of business.

The ostensible premise of HR 1797 — and others like it at the state level — is that a fetus at or past 20 weeks post-fertilization “feels pain.” This is an assertion that has been rejected by every relevant major medical body in the United States and abroad.

In the findings section of the bill, for example, the text asserts the following (condensed here):

After 20 weeks, the unborn child reacts to stimuli that would be recognized as painful if applied to an adult human, for example, by recoiling…. In the unborn child, application of such painful stimuli is associated with significant increases in stress hormones known as the stress response…. Subjection to such painful stimuli is associated with long-term harmful neurodevelopmental effects, such as altered pain sensitivity and, possibly, emotional, behavioral, and learning disabilities later in life.

It further states (emphasis added):

The position, asserted by some medical experts, that the unborn child is incapable of experiencing pain until a point later in pregnancy than 20 weeks after fertilization predominately rests on the assumption that the ability to experience pain depends on the cerebral cortex and requires nerve connections between the thalamus and the cortex. However, recent medical research and analysis, especially since 2007, provides strong evidence for the conclusion that a functioning cortex is not necessary to experience pain.

The intention here is clearly to deceive.

Read the rest of this entry →

Written by Jessica Mason Pieklo for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

The Defense of Marriage Act

There are several different possible outcomes of upcoming Supreme Court decisions.

In 2007 Edie Windsor married Thea Spyer after already being together for 40 years. When Spyer died, in 2009, their home state of New York recognized marriage equality, but because of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal law that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman, the federal government did not. As a result, Windsor was faced with paying more than $363,000 in federal estate taxes because Spyer had left her estate to Windsor. Had the federal government recognized their marriage and given it the same status as opposite-sex married couples in the state, Windsor would not have to pay any estate taxes.

But it didn’t, and Windsor sued, arguing DOMA violates Equal Protection protections and seeking a refund in her estate tax bill. In October 2012 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled DOMA was unconstitutional. In that decision, the court for the first time held that when government passes laws that discriminate against gay and lesbian individuals those laws will be presumed unconstitutional and that the must have a compelling reason to justify that discrimination.

The Supreme Court now has to answer those two questions: Is Section 3 of DOMA (the part of the law that defines marriage) constitutional, and do gay and lesbian individuals qualify as a protected class for purposes constitutional protections? There are three ways the Court could answer those questions.

1. DOMA Is Unconstitutional

Equality advocates are hoping for a ruling from the Supreme Court that would broadly declare DOMA unconstitutional. Should the Supreme Court strike DOMA in its entirety, then same-sex couples who receive marriage licenses in the 12 states and District of Columbia that recognize same-sex marriages will enjoy the benefits of more than 1,000 federal laws, benefits, programs, and protections that currently favor opposite-sex marriages. A ruling declaring DOMA unconstitutional would likely have no impact on marriage equality bans though.

If the Court does rule DOMA unconstitutional, it could do so via several different analytical tracts. First, the Supreme Court could issue a sweeping ruling under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Historically the courts have applied the equal protection clause to protect against the government unfairly infringing on the rights of specific groups and to ensure that certain fundamental rights such as marriage receive heightened legal protection. Advocates have argued that DOMA violates the 14th Amendment both because it targets a specific group of people for unequal treatment and because it affects the fundamental right to marriage.

If the Supreme Court relies on the 14th Amendment to strike DOMA and rule that LGBTQ individuals make up a class that should receive heightened protections because their history of being discriminated against, then the ruling could reach beyond invalidating DOMA and would mean that any law — state or federal — that treats gay or lesbian individuals differently based on their status as gay or lesbian would likely be struck down. That kind of broad ruling is not very likely though, especially given the conservative majority on the Court. But that doesn’t mean hope is lost. The Court doesn’t have to decide the issue of gay and lesbian people as a protected class to strike down DOMA. The Court could rule that because DOMA does not serve legitimate governmental interests it is unconstitutional. Typically, evidence of animosity toward a particular group and the desire to impose a set of morals on the public are not considered by the courts legitimate reasons for the government to pass a law. If ever a law fit that example, it’s DOMA.

There is one other way the Court could find DOMA unconstitutional, and that is through some variation of a “states’ rights” or federalism argument. During oral arguments Justice Anthony Kennedy seemed very concerned with whether or not the federal government had any role in defining marriage to begin with. According to this reasoning, Congress never had the authority to pass DOMA in the first place since it is an attempt to regulate what is traditionally considered within the power and regulation of the states.

The states’ rights theory is not likely to get a majority of votes, but it could be a way for the conservatives on the court to strike DOMA without advancing LGTBQ equality beyond the issue of marriage like a broad 14th Amendment ruling would. But such a decision would be a short-term win, as conservatives have argued federalism concerns invalidate the majority of the social safety net programs. Should the Roberts Court give conservatives broad legal reasoning to support that theory then we can expect to see a host of new legal challenges to everything from Social Security benefits to Medicare and Title X programs.

2. DOMA Is Constitutional

As hard as it is to imagine, the Court could find Section 3 of DOMA constitutional. Should that happen, then those legally married same-sex couples in the 12 states and Washington, D.C., that recognize marriage equality will continue to face systematic discrimination and be denied equal protection under the law as well as access to federal benefits related to more than 1,000 federal laws and programs.

3. SCOTUS Punts on the Merits of the Case Read the rest of this entry →

Written by Jessica Mason Pieklo for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

How the fight for contraceptive freedom & LGBTQ rights sheds light on privacy protections.

Over the past three years, more than 60 lawsuits have been filed in federal court challenging the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage benefit. These legal challenges are based on a central theme of today’s conservative movement, which argues contraception is immoral, and that the Supreme Court decision preventing states from criminalizing birth control was wrongly decided. That’s where things stand on the 48th anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut.

Why now? Why is the right gunning so hard to take down Griswold and gut individuals’ rights to privacy that include keeping the government out of their most intimate decisions? And what has changed legally, to bring this issue to a boil now? As it turns out, the answer has very little to do with contraception and more to do with same-sex marriage. At its core, the legal foundation of personal privacy rights rests in the institution of marriage and family. As older definitions of “traditional families” give way to more expansive realities, including same-sex partnerships, single-parenting, co-parenting, and myriad family arrangements today, conservatives must face a stark legal reality: Without drastically changing the way the courts define issues that once were simply matters of privacy, they will have lost the culture wars. It’s now or never.

The Supreme Court first laid the foundation for an individual right to privacy early in the 20th century in Lochner v. New York, a case that has become synonymous with activist judges looking for any means to support and expand corporate, monied interests. In Lochner the majority relied on the reference to “liberty” in the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause to support striking down a New York state law that restricted the number of hours bakers could work each week. The 14th Amendment states that no person “shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” According to the court majority, the law was an unconstitutional violation of an individual’s privacy rights because the Due Process Clause implicitly guarantees citizens the “fundamental” right to enter into employment arrangements free from state intrusion in this “liberty” interest.

From Lochner, privacy rights more clearly became associated with the home and traditional, patriarchal constructions of family. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the court ruled that an Oregon law banning all private education violated the Due Process Clause because it directed how parents may educate their children, infringing upon parents’ fundamental right to rear their children as they see fit. The majority opinion in Pierce lists a series of other privacy rights guaranteed by the Due Process Clause, including “the right of the individual … to marry, establish a home and bring up children … and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

But it wasn’t until 40 years later, in Griswold, that the Supreme Court turned its attention to whether the Constitution implicitly contains fundamental privacy guarantees that are not dependent on the Due Process Clause. Writing for the majority, Justice William O. Douglas departed from the Lochner line of privacy reasoning and held that a right to privacy exists not because of a specific constitutional provision but rather because it flows from several provisions relating to privacy, to create “penumbras”, or shadows, in which “zones of privacy” exist. Within these zones, the court explained, are other rights, including the right of married couples to determine whether or not to have children.

Two years later the court would again reach the issue of privacy rights in Loving v. Virginia, the famous case that challenged a Virginia law banning interracial marriage. In a unanimous decision, the court ruled the Virginia law violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which guarantees all citizens equal protection under the law and thus prohibits the government from discriminating on the basis of race. The court could have stopped there with its analysis, but it didn’t. Instead, it pushed further, moving beyond the obvious issues of racial discrimination to hold that the right to marry is itself protected by the Constitution. By the end of the 1960s, and with the civil rights and anti-war movements smoldering in the background, the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence showed both a slow acceptance of racial equality and a preference for the traditional construction of marriage and family.

Griswold v. Connecticut may have recognized a right of married couples to use contraception, but it wasn’t until March of 1972 in Eisenstadt v. Baird that the Court recognized a corresponding privacy right to use contraception for individuals. “If the right of privacy means anything,” Justice William Brennan wrote, “it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.” The following year, the court famously extended these individual privacy rights even further when, in Roe v. Wade, it established a constitutional right to choose abortion grounded in an individual right to privacy and this legally recognized zone of intimacy that inherently surrounds issues of reproduction but that was no longer immediately anchored in the constructs of traditional marriage.

Read the rest of this entry →

Written by Jessica Mason Pieklo for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Judge: Plan B must be available without restrictions.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must immediately comply with an earlier order by U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman to make some forms of levonorgestrel-based emergency contraception available without a prescription and without point-of-sale or age restrictions.

The ruling came in response to the administration’s request for a stay while it appeals Korman’s order. The Second Circuit’s order, only two pages, is a partial win for women’s health advocates; while it lifts restrictions on two-pill variants of emergency contraception, it grants the Obama administration’s request to stay, or pause, Judge Korman’s order as it applies to one-pill products, such as Plan B One-Step, pending the outcome of the government’s appeal. That appeal will be placed on an expedited schedule as requested by the administration.

In a statement, Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said: “Today’s decision from the 2nd Circuit marks a historic day for women’s health. Finally, after more than a decade of politically motivated delays, women will no longer have to endure intrusive, onerous, and medically unnecessary restrictions to get emergency contraception.”

The Obama administration appealed Korman’s decision earlier this month, just one day after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Plan B One-Step to be sold over-the-counter to consumers ages 15 and up. But even that approval was limited, restricting sales to stores that have an on-site pharmacy and only to those with identification. The Plan B approval was in direct conflict with Judge Korman’s April order requiring all emergency contraception be made available over-the-counter and without point-of-sale restrictions.

“Medical experts, the FDA’s own scientists, and a federal court have all agreed: there are no medical grounds to keep emergency contraception behind the counter for any woman” Northrup said. “Expanding access to this safe and effective way of preventing pregnancy after failed birth control or unprotected sex is the among the very best decisions our federal government can make for women’s health.”

A schedule for the full-appeal is not yet available.
Read the rest of this entry →

Written by Annamarya Scaccia for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Why are some cities evicting domestic violence victims?

On June 23 of last year, Lakisha Briggs’ ex-boyfriend, Wilbert Bennett, went to find the 33-year-old mother of two at her house in Norristown, Pennsylvania, which she rented with a Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Section 8 voucher. Bennett, who was just released from prison, wanted to get back together, and he refused to take no for an answer.

“You are going to be with me or you are going to be with no one,” he allegedly threatened.

Even though Briggs was terrified Bennett would hurt her or her 3-year-old daughter if she forced him to leave, there was something she feared even worse: calling the police for help. If she did, she could be kicked out of her home, and that wasn’t a risk she could afford. Feeling defenseless, Briggs succumbed to his intrusion and demands, allowing him and the friends he invited over to stay.

As outlined in the federal lawsuit filed April 24 on behalf of Briggs by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Pennsylvania (ACLU-PA), and Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton LLP, Briggs had already been given three strikes under Norristown’s discretionary Rental License Ordinance. The ordinance gives the Montgomery County municipality the right to countermand a landlord’s rental license and provoke a tenant’s eviction if police respond to three “disorderly behavior” calls in four months, including domestic disturbances in which a mandatory arrest in not required.

The strikes Briggs received were the result of police calls made in April and May of last year — two of which were due to acts of domestic violence committed against her. In May, the borough began proceedings to revoke her landlord Darren Sudman’s rental license, but granted the property — and by extension Briggs — a 30-day probationary period after a late May hearing. Any violation during that period would have resulted in rescindment and eviction, claims the lawsuit.

Despite her reluctant surrender, on the evening of June 23 Bennett assaulted Briggs, according to the suit. Her lip was bitten and torn. A glass ashtray was shattered against the right side of her head, leaving a two-inch lesion. She was knocked down. Grabbing one of the large glass fragments, Bennett stabbed her in the neck. Briggs become unconscious as blood surged from the four-inch-deep wound.

Though the attack was brutal, Briggs didn’t call the police, because she feared provoking eviction. But a neighbor did, and soon Briggs was airlifted to the University of Pennsylvania Hospital for emergency medical care.

According to the lawsuit, David R. Forrest, Norristown’s municipal administrator at the time and one of the defendants named, considered the police response a violation of her probation. Three days after the incident, he told Sudman his rental license was rescinded and Briggs had ten days to vacate. She had just returned home from the hospital when Sudman broke the news.

“[Sudman] tried very hard to help her. He was very supportive of her and didn’t think it was fair that he should have to evict her,” Sara Rose, an ACLU-PA staff attorney and representative on the case, told RH Reality Check. “Ultimately, the borough gave him no choice.”

Although Magisterial District Justice Margaret Hunsicker overturned the eviction, allowing Briggs to remain in the unit, Norristown officials continued to pursue it, asserting they had an “independent right” to enforce the city’s ordinance. They ostensibly planned to remove Briggs from her home and condemn the property.

Legal Challenge

This is where the ACLU intervened. According to Rose, the group sent a letter to Norristown officials in September charting the ordinance’s First, Fourth, Fifth, and 14th Amendment infringements, as well as other legal issues identified under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and the Fair Housing Act (FHA), which prohibits housing discrimination based on a number of identifiers, including sex.

Read the rest of this entry →

Written by Editor in Chief Jodi Jacobson for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

See all our coverage of Beatriz here.

Yesterday in El Salvador, Beatriz (a pseudonym) had an abortion. The Catholic Church and the international anti-choice movement are desperate to deny this reality, so the anti-choice spin machine is in high gear, engaging in linguistic gymnastics to suggest otherwise.

And much of the media is taking the bait.

Beatriz had a hysterotomy, a form of abortion carried out through c-section, and a procedure of such high risk compared to other forms of abortion, and of such last resort, according to medical experts, it is practically never performed in the United States. What is known beyond a doubt is that having forced Beatriz into a situation of having a late abortion, the government of El Salvador, Catholic Bishops, and anti-choice groups in the country (and those supporting them from the outside) unquestionably privileged a non-viable fetus over the life and long-term health of the primary patient, a woman who wanted to — in fact begged to — live.

In parroting what anti-choicers and the government of El Salvador are saying, many media outlets are glossing over and ignoring what actually happened in El Salvador. As a result, otherwise highly regarded media sources such as the New York Times, Salon, the Associated Press, The Guardian, and Reuters are helping to perpetuate lies that defy both medical evidence and public health data and that support dangerous policies under women all over the world continue to lose their lives.

The New York Times, for instance stated that the “ill Salvadoran woman … delivered her 27-week-old fetus” and quoted El Salvador’s Minister of Health, María Isabel Rodríguez as saying, “At this point, the interruption of the pregnancy is no longer an abortion. It is an induced birth.” Rodríguez elaborated that it could be “either an abdominal or vaginal birth.” Meanwhile, Reuters uncritically reported that the c-section permitted El Salvador to avoid having to allow Beatriz an abortion.

Actually, the only thing El Salvador — and apparently the media — avoids by denying that a hysterotomy is an abortion is reality.

Beatriz’s pregnancy was complicated from the start. As Anibal Faundes, an OB-GYN and international leader on public health and human rights, wrote for RH Reality Check last week:

Beatriz is a 22-year-old woman from a poor, rural area of El Salvador who has the misfortune of suffering systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus), an autoimmune disease. Pregnancy often exacerbates lupus, with adverse effects on kidney function, potentially leading to accelerated progression to end-stage renal disease. In addition, pregnancies in women with lupus are at high risk for spontaneous abortion and premature delivery, intrauterine growth retardation, and a maternal complication called superimposed pre-eclampsia.

Beatriz’s doctors knew ten weeks into her pregnancy that she needed an abortion to save her life, and even in El Salvador, a country in which doctors go to jail for performing abortions, her physicians began petitioning the government for an exception to the law. Doctors also knew something else: Beatriz was carrying a fetus with no brain, and therefore it could not survive outside the womb under any circumstance. They also knew that the longer the delay in providing Beatriz with an abortion, the much higher the risks to Beatriz’s life and health.

While the Ministry of Health agreed the abortion was warranted (again, a profoundly unusual circumstance in El Salvador), the Catholic Bishops, anti-choice groups, and the attorney general would not budge, threatening to put both doctors and patient in jail. At one point, colleagues in El Salvador contended that the country’s bishops were quite willing to just let her die and put it down to “god’s will” so as to hold the hard line on their contention that “abortion is never necessary,” even to save a woman’s life.

The turning point came when an international campaign was launched, and every relevant court and human rights body was petitioned. Yet despite pressure from human rights bodies in the region and internationally, El Salvador’s Supreme Court refused to budge, and Beatriz was denied an uncomplicated early abortion and subsequently also a less complicated second trimester procedure. She was therefore pushed into the third trimester, with her health failing to “save” a fetus that could not be saved. Finally, in the face of mounting international opprobrium, she was given a hysterotomy, which anti-choicers are spinning as though it were a normal c-section.

Thankfully, Beatriz has survived the late abortion and is doing well, though according to colleagues in El Salvador, she lost substantial amounts of blood and as yet faces unknown health consequences from lack of an early abortion that complicated her lupus, compromised her kidneys, and racked up unnecessary medical bills. The key difference is that, at death’s door, Beatriz was an international cause célèbre. As a poor, rural woman who may now face lifelong health and medical complications gravely exacerbated by the delay in her treatment, she will almost certainly become a forgotten statistic, a woman who may need ongoing medical care she will almost certainly not be able to afford.

In what seems to be at best an afterthought of the media these days, I asked actual medical professionals about Beatriz’s condition. Dr. Faundes, as noted above, wrote about her condition extensively. But what about the decision to provide a “c-section”? Here is what doctors told me. In response to Beatriz’s case, Dr. Valencia Stephens, an OB-GYN and clinical consultant on safe abortion care, said that when she heard about the decision to give Beatriz a c-section, she was aghast. As she wrote via email:

Read the rest of this entry →

Written by Sarah Posner for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

A subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Thursday on a bill that would impose an unconstitutional nationwide ban on abortions after 20 weeks post-fertilization. Four witnesses sat at the table during that hearing, but there was really only one person who mattered for the Republican lawmakers—whose aim, ultimately, is to outlaw all abortions. That person was Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the Pennsylvania physician now serving a life sentence for murder and manslaughter.

US Capitol Building

According to Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, under whose jurisdiction the hearing was called, Gosnell is “not an anomaly in this gruesome Fortune 500 enterprise of killing unborn children.” The rogue doctor, who was roundly denounced by pro-choice activists as soon as the horrific conditions of his clinic came to light, is, for Franks, “the true face of abortion on demand in America.”

Using Gosnell as justification, Franks has retooled his proposed “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act”—previously introduced as a measure specific to Washington, D.C.—to apply to all 50 states. A D.C. 20-week ban has also been introduced in the Senate, although it is highly unlikely to come up for a vote.

If all abortion providers were like Gosnell, of course, they could be prosecuted under existing criminal laws, as Gosnell was. But they’re not—and that’s why House Republicans want to create a way to prosecute them. The Pain-Capable Act would subject doctors who perform abortions after 20 weeks to criminal prosecution, jail time, and monetary penalties. It would provide a cause of action for a woman who has an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy—or her husband, boyfriend, or one-night stand, as well as her family—to sue the doctor, including for punitive damages.

By pegging the gestational time-limit to disproven claims about fetal pain (which medical experts agree is not possible before the third trimester), the bill would lay the basis for limiting abortions even earlier in pregnancy, based on even more questionable science, as demonstrated at Franks’ hearing.

Maureen Condic, a University of Utah scientist who also opposes embryonic stem-cell research, testified that it is “uncontested that a fetus experiences pain as early as eight weeks.” By continually arguing that fetal pain is experienced far earlier than the established medical evidence, Condic did provide proof of something else: that Republicans’ ultimate goal is to outlaw abortion far earlier than 20 weeks.

The bill proposed by Franks contains no exceptions for the health of a woman who needs an abortion after 20 weeks, raising the specter of a woman (or the parents of a minor) suing a doctor who, in an emergency, saved her from horrific health consequences. It also provides no exceptions for rape or incest. The woman, the man by whom she is pregnant, or the woman’s family members could even seek a court order barring the doctor from performing abortions in the future.

Another of the Republicans’ three witnesses, anti-choice activist Jill Stanek, claimed that the Gosnell case is “evidence that the lines between illegal infanticide and legal feticide, both via abortion, have become blurred.”

By equating Gosnell’s criminal activity with all abortion, Franks and his supporters attempt to elide the fact that their bill is patently unconstitutional, as Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), noted. Just this week the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down a similar law out of Franks’ home state of Arizona.

Franks’ obvious aim is to test that conclusion, by forcing yet another legal challenge to Roe v. Wade. But he also seeks to enhance his position—at least in the court of public opinion—by attempting to persuade the public that if Gosnell, who performed illegal abortions and killed infants born alive, was found guilty of murder, all providers of abortion services must be similarly guilty.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the subcommittee’s ranking member, strongly voiced his opposition to Franks’ claims. “[W]hat Dr. Gosnell did had nothing to do with abortion; it was murder,” Nadler said.

Calling the hearings a “farce,” Nadler noted that the Democrats, as the minority in the House, were not permitted by Franks to call more than one witness, while the three witnesses called by Republicans presented what Nadler called “false and misleading” medical evidence.

The one witness Democrats were permitted was Christy Zink, who recounted the heart-rending story of how she and her husband were informed during her 21st week of pregnancy that the fetus she was carrying had a lethal abnormality, agenesis of the corpus callosum. Zink said that if brought to term, her baby would have been born missing a part of its brain.

Read the rest of this entry →

Written by Amanda Marcotte for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Will sexting laws hurt victimized young women?

While I suspect most teen sexting is relatively harmless, most of us are rightly concerned about incidents in which naked pictures of teenagers get forwarded and distributed without their consent. In most cases, a girl shares a nude photo of herself with a boy (or man, in some cases) whom she trusts will behave appropriately with this vulnerable image, only to have him show it off to others, post it online, or otherwise try to shame her for it. In a couple of sad cases, the humiliated girl has even committed suicide. It’s a problem that needs fixing. Unfortunately, West Virginia’s approach — to outlaw sexting and charge those found “possessing, distributing or producing sexually inappropriate photos, videos or other media” with delinquency — is exactly the wrong way to go about this.

This law may be well-intentioned, but it will almost certainly serve mainly or even entirely to punish victims who are already enduring a public humiliation. After all, the only way that a “sext” will come to the government’s attention is if it’s being disseminated, usually without the person in the photograph’s permission. Private text messages that are kept private will, for obvious reasons, not draw legal attention.

I can confidently predict how the enforcement of this law will turn out most of the time: A girl will send a nude picture to a boy. He will forward it, publish it, and share it generally. Once it becomes known that the picture is out there, the girl, who is already suffering from a public shaming, will be charged with delinquency. The boy who originally forwarded the message may get charged, but in many or most cases, probably not. After all, it’s easier to prove that she was engaged in sexting, because of the image, than to bother to figure out who forwarded it first. They can’t charge everyone who shared the image, right? So she, the victim of this hateful behavior, will be the one punished. It’s tailor made for victim-blaming and abuse.

How do I know that’s how it will go down? Well, common sense should be good enough, but we also have actual real-world evidence. High schools have already experimented with punishing students for sexting, and the punishments often fall more heavily on the girl whose only crime was trusting too much, and not the boys who violated her trust. Jezebel reported in April about a teenage girl who sent a topless photo of herself to her male friends, and sure enough, she was the one who got expelled while the boys weren’t punished.

The American Civil Liberties Union shared a similar story from 2010 in which the girls in the sexts were charged with child pornography, even though the photos didn’t show nudity:

Read the rest of this entry →