States Want to Ban Abortions Beyond Their Borders. Here's What Pro-Choice States Can Do.

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:Ronald Brownstein
@RonBrownstein
Another front in red state civil rights offensive: “Some states will go beyond banning #abortion w/in their borders. They will try to impose their preferences on other states, in an attempt to stop their citizens from getting abortions anywhere at all”

nytimes.com
Opinion | States Want to Ban Abortions Beyond Their Borders. Here’s What Pro-Choice States Can Do.
There’s a new tactic in the coming abortion wars: stopping citizens from getting abortions in other states.
7:59 AM · Mar 13, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/13/opinion/missouri-abortion-roe-v-wade.html

No paywall
https://archive.ph/RSEC7

A recently introduced Missouri provision would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a Missouri resident get an abortion in another state.

The provision is part of a wave of state anti-abortion legislation, some of it quite radical, that’s being considered in the months ahead of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — the case that’s expected to severely compromise, if not entirely jettison, the nationwide right to abortion under Roe v. Wade. The result of such an outcome would be that about half the states in the country would ban nearly all abortions.

What’s alarming about the Missouri bill, and others like it, is that it suggests a new tactic in the coming abortion wars: Some states will go beyond banning abortion within their borders. They will try to impose their policy preferences on other states, in an attempt to stop their citizens from getting abortions anywhere at all. (A bill proposed last year would have applied Missouri law to many out-of-state abortions — even when the patient’s only connection to the state was having sex that resulted in a pregnancy there.)

Given that the federal government has so far failed to act decisively on this issue, it will be up to abortion-supportive states to determine the future of abortion law and access. Some such states have protected the right to abortion in their statutes or constitutions, and more have announced their intention to do so. But as the Missouri bill shows, abortion-supportive states must go further than keeping abortion legal within their state lines.

A suite of bills introduced in California has begun to chart a path to protect abortion providers and patients. But consider these additional steps that states can take. States can pass laws and regulations that protect abortion providers who offer services to out-of-state patients. All states have statutes that require their civil and criminal courts to assist in another state’s depositions, subpoenas and legal processes. Abortion-supportive states could amend these laws; such states could prohibit their courts from cooperating with out-of-state civil and criminal cases that stem from abortions that took place legally within their borders.

*snip*

[SheltieLover]

1. K&R!

[TheBlackAdder]

19. Each kid born causes ME to pay taxes until they become emancipated? They're not MY kids.

.

More kids, more taxes?

Republicans will cry in 10 years when their state budgets explode.



.

[SheltieLover]

22. Yup!

[Hekate]

2. KnR

[Moostache]

3. I am on record as saying I will defy this "law" (fatwa in reality)

Anyone in Missouri seeking abortion services in Illinois may use my basement room as a way station or recovery room on their journey as long as I remain free. I will assist them with food and shelter and comfort. I will not judge their decisions and I will not impose my beliefs on them in any way.

If I am arrested, I intend to have the ACLU take up my case and challenge ALL abortion laws of similar overreach and religious hysteria. This push to return the dark ages is an afront to human decency and must be defeated and resoundingly tossed into the dustbin of history.

[Runningdawg]

4. Ditto for anyone in who crosses into OK for an abortion.

[CrispyQ]

6. You can use the 13th Amendment as your defense.

This guy argues that forcing someone to carry a pregnancy to term violates their 13th Amendment rights. I don't know why the pro-choice groups don't add this to their arsenal of arguments for choice.

Abortion and the 13th Amendment
2010
Forced Labor, Revisited: The Thirteenth Amendment and Abortion
Andrew Koppelman
Northwestern University School of Law, [e-mail]

https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1031&context=facultyworkingpapers

snip...

I. The basic argument The Thirteenth Amendment reads as follows:

1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

My claim is that the amendment is violated by laws that prohibit abortion. When women are compelled to carry and bear children, they are subjected to "involuntary servitude" in violation of the amendment. Abortion prohibitions violate the Amendment's guarantee of personal liberty, because forced pregnancy and childbirth, by compelling the woman to serve the fetus, creates "that control by which the personal service of one man [sic] is disposed of or coerced for another's benefit which is the essence of involuntary servitude."6

Such laws violate the amendment's guarantee of equality, because forcing women to be mothers makes them into a servant caste, a group which, by virtue of a status of birth, is held subject to a special duty to serve others and not themselves.

~more at link

Parents can't be compelled to donate their organs to their child, even to save the child's life. Why does a fetus have more claim on a woman's body?

[smirkymonkey]

17. +1000

[WhiskeyGrinder]

21. Rather than waiting for someone to use your basement room, you can donate to abortion funds right

now if you don't already.

[CrispyQ]

5. How are these states going to enforce these insane laws?

Is every resident woman going to have to take a pregnancy test before she's allowed to cross the border or get on a plane? What if you're just visiting the state. Will they require a PG test before you're allowed to return home, in case you got pregnant in their state? How will the state know if the woman had any kind of medical procedure unless they have access to women's medical records? Do these bills include the $10K snitch clause too, & that's what they're counting on? Can they prosecute on someone's word without medical records? Has anyone asked them these questions?

I hate these fucks. They are just mean, festering assholes, everyone.

[SharonClark]

10. They can't enforce it but it's a great tool

for beating women down and intimidating them

[SheltieLover]

23. Or trying to!

[XacerbatedDem]

30. And thus is life in Missouri... it's sickening.

[Raven123]

7. Abortion can't be a "states rights" issue if states oppress other states rights. This is illogical

[Nevilledog]

8. The "their" is always silent

Their states
Their bodies
Their religion
Their speech

[paleotn]

18. Logic has nothing to do with it.

as we saw through 4 years of Trump.

[wnylib]

27. Good point. Pro choice states have a right to

offer choices without their patients being penalized, regardless of where the patient comes from. To do so impinges on the rights of pro choice states to offer services to all who are within their borders when the services are provided.

[Raven123]

31. I await the day when a pregnant woman, whose life is endangered by her pregnancy...

… invokes a Stand Your Ground Law to demand an abortion.

[wnylib]

32. The Battle of the RW Laws.

[Solly Mack]

9. K&R

[Gaugamela]

11. Since when do states have jurisdiction over what happens in another state?

Seems like these laws would be blatantly unconstitutional, although with the current SCOTUS who knows?

[Mr.Bill]

12. If the republicans ever

take over the Senate, the House and the White House, they will immediately pass a federal law banning all abortions in the entire country. And the current Supreme Court will uphold it.

[paleotn]

16. Use to think the Republicans would never....

...actually give up one of their top 5 campaign themes. I'm with you, Bill. Right now I ain't so sure anymore.

[SheltieLover]

24. We better all work hard & smart to get out the vote!

[frogmarch]

13. So...in a manner of speaking,

they want to invade other states.

hmmm, sounds familiar.

[ancianita]

14. States' anti-abortion laws are unconstitutional. Period. Why the ACLU won't take this on is a

a mansplain enigma wrapped in a bullshit mystery.

Women are people. Self evident.

Women get full constitutional protections from the 1st, 13th and 14th Amendments, and pregnancy is not a compelling state interest.

[Initech]

15. They really are going full Nazi on this.

[spanone]

20. Medical Nazis

[SheltieLover]

25. This!👆

[Farmer-Rick]

26. This happened under the fugitive slave laws

There was a law, already in place that free states pretty much ignored until the 1850 law. That law put the federal government in charge of hunting down black people and return them to slavery. More than the Dred Scott decision, the Supremes ruling in favor of allowing these laws lead directly to the civil war.

"The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was enacted, which made the federal government responsible for tracking down and apprehending fugitive slaves in the North, and sending them back to the South. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, you might say, was the most powerful exercise of federal authority within the United States in the whole era before the Civil War.

And it's a very odd thing that a region, the South, which supposedly believed in states' rights and local autonomy, pressed for this law which allowed the federal government to completely override the legal processes in the North: to send marshals in, to avoid the local courts, and to just seize people."

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4i3094.html

I think this is what will happen with these forced incubation to birth laws. The federal government will have to actually put some teeth into enforcing women's rights to birth control. It cannot be allowed to be a decision for states. Because states will start encroaching on each other's laws and territories. Of course, the political Republican motivated Supreme Court may rule in favor of forced birthers. Then that will create a whole new can of worms.

[wnylib]

28. Something occurred to me that I don't know

if it would be a real possibility or just a futile hope.

What if pro choice states pass counter suing laws, so that anyone in a pro choice state can sue anyone in an anti choice state who bring suits against women who get abortions in the pro choice state?

So, if Jane Doe, a resident of Texas or Missouri, goes out of state for an abortion, and anti choice people in Missouri or Texas bring a suit against her, then residents of the state where she got her abortion can sue the people of Missouri or Texas who sue Jane Doe.

[jmowreader]

29. How did I guess?

Another Mary Elizabeth Coleman Special.

Here’s the worst part. This crap is prima facie unconstitutional because a state’s jurisdiction ends at the state line. When this is taken to court, the taxpayers will be on the hook for the legal fees.

[LogicFirst]

33. The target is Kansas. Nearly half of all abortions performed in Kansas are for

people from Missouri.