Cooper has vowed to veto the bill, but Republican legislators hold large majorities in both the General Assembly and state Senate and could override the veto.
“They ran through a bill in 48 hours with no public input, with no amendments, that drastically reduces access to reproductive freedom for women,” said Cooper of the Republican lawmakers.
North Carolina’s laws, until now at least, have made it something of an aberration in the South, where stricter abortion laws have gone into effect in the last year, since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. “The unborn will be recognized as having a fundamental right to be born, and mothers will get our unconditional support. It’s time to catch up with the science that affirms parenthood before birth,” said Rep. Sarah Stevens, a Republican member of the General Assembly of the new legislation.
Cooper characterized the measure as harmful to women’s health.
“North Carolina has become an access point in the Southeast,” he told Brennan. “And what this legislation is going to do is going to prevent many women from getting abortions at any time during their pregnancy, because of the obstructions that they had put here. Many of these clinics are working very hard to treat women, and now they’re going to have many new medically unnecessary requirements that I think many of them are going to have to close.”
Cooper said he was hopeful that at least one Republican would decide not to override his veto.
“We only need one Republican to keep a promise,” Cooper said. “At least four Republican legislators made promises to their constituents during this campaign that they were going to protect women’s reproductive freedom. They only have a supermajority by one vote in the Senate, and one vote in the House. And we’ve seen Republicans across the country step up. We saw them step up in South Carolina, we saw them step up in Nebraska, because they know that people don’t want abortion bans.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Monday directed the Medical Superintendent of LNJP Hospital to withhold the identity of the 14-year-old who is seeking to have her 11-week-old pregnancy terminated.
Additionally, Justice Prathiba M. Singh directed the SHO concerned of the Delhi Police to make sure that neither the identity of the minor nor that of her family be revealed while carrying out the investigation.
The court disposed of the plea for pregnancy termination made by the minor through her mother.
No licenced medical practitioner was willing to perform a pregnancy abortion while hiding her name, it was argued on behalf of the victim’s counsel.
The court granted relief to the minor and took note of its order from January 23 in which the Delhi government was directed to issue a circular directing that the identity of a minor girl who is seeking medical termination of her pregnancy and her family shall not be disclosed in the report prepared by registered medical practitioners to the police.
The apex court’s decision in X v. The Principal Secretary Health and Family Welfare Govt NCT of Delhi & Anr, which exempted registered medical practitioners from being required to report offences of “consensual sexual activity” under the POCSO Act, was cited by the court.
Given the young girl’s age and the gestational time, the court asked that she get in touch with the LNJP Hospital’s medical superintendent and directed that the pregnancy be terminated because the gestational period is within the MTP Act’s permitted range.
“In terms of the judgment, the report lodged by the concerned registered medical practitioner shall be filed without disclosing identity of the victim of her family. The SHO concerned shall maintain that the identity is not disclosed during the process of investigation. The petition is disposed of,” the court ordered.
Reelected Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel is applauded at the committee’s winter meeting in Dana Point, Calif., Jan. 27, 2023. | Jae C. Hong/AP Photo
The chair of the Republican National Committee said Sunday that Republicans must directly address abortion if they hope to succeed in 2024.
“Abortion was a big issue in key states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, and so the guidance we’re going to to give to our candidates is, you to have to address this head-on,” RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said during an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” referring to the outcome of the 2022 midterms.
“The Democrats spent 360 million on this, and many of our candidates across the board refused to talk about it, thinking, ‘Oh we can just talk about the economy and ignore this big issue,’ and they can’t.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Samuel Alito said the decision he wrote removing the federal right to abortion made him and other US supreme court justices “targets of assassination” but denied claims he was responsible for its leak in draft form.
“Those of us who were thought to be in the majority, thought to have approved my draft opinion, were really targets of assassination,” Alito told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Friday.
“It was rational for people to believe they might be able to stop the decision in Dobbsby killing one of us.”
Alito wrote the ruling in Dobbs v Jackson, the Mississippi case that overturned Roe v Wade, which established the right to abortion in 1973.
Alito’s draft ruling was leaked to Politico on 2 May last year, to uproar and protest nationwide. The final ruling was issued on 24 June.
On 8 June, an armed man was arrested outside the home of Brett Kavanaugh, with Alito one of six conservatives on the nine-justice court. Charged with attempted murder of a United States judge, the man pleaded not guilty.
The conservative chief justice, John Roberts, voted against overturning Roe, but the three rightwingers installed by Republicans under Donald Trump ensured it fell regardless.
Progressives charged that a conservative, perhaps the hardline Alito, might have orchestrated the leak in an attempt to lock in a majority for such a momentous decision.
Alito said: “That’s infuriating to me. Look, this made us targets of assassination. Would I do that to myself? Would the five of us have done that to ourselves? It’s quite implausible.”
The leak was investigated by the supreme court marshal, without establishing a perpetrator.
Saying the marshal “did a good job with the resources that were available”, Alito said he had “a pretty good idea who is responsible, but that’s different from the level of proof that is needed to name somebody”.
Alito said the leak “was a part of an effort to prevent the Dobbsdraft … from becoming the decision of the court. And that’s how it was used for those six weeks by people on the outside, as part of the campaign to try to intimidate the court.”
He also said the leak “created an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust”. The justices “worked through it”, he said, “and last year we got our work done … but it was damaging”.
Last November, after a bombshell New York Times report, Alito denied leaking information about a decision in a 2014 case about contraception and religious rights.
His Wall Street Journal interview seemed bound to further anger Democrats and progressives. Justices regularly claim not to be politically motivated, but even with a Democrat in the White House the court has made other momentous conservative rulings, notably including a loosening of gun-control laws.
Joe Biden’s administration has shied from calls for reform, including the idea justices should be added to establish balance or give liberals a majority, reflecting Democratic control of the White House and Senate.
Samuel Alito in March 2019. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP
Alito told the Journal he did not “feel physically unsafe, because we now have a lot of protection”. He also said he was “driven around in basically a tank, and I’m not really supposed to go anyplace by myself without the tank and my members of the police force”.
Complaining that criticism also stoked by corruption allegations against two more conservatives, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, were “new during my lifetime”, Alito said: “We are being hammered daily, and I think quite unfairly in a lot of instances.
“And nobody, practically nobody, is defending us. The idea has always been that judges are not supposed to respond to criticisms, but if the courts are being unfairly attacked, the organised bar will come to their defense.”
Alito said legal authorities had, “if anything … participated to some degree in these attacks”.
He declined to comment on reporting by ProPublica about Thomas’s friendship with Harlan Crow, a Republican mega-donor who has bestowed gifts and purchases which Thomas largely did not disclose.
But Alito did complain about how Kavanaugh was treated when allegations of sexual assault surfaced during his confirmation process.
“After Justice Kavanaugh was accused of being a rapist … he made an impassioned speech, made an impassioned scene, and he was criticised because it was supposedly not judicious, not the proper behavior for a judge to speak in those terms.
“I don’t know – if somebody calls you a rapist?”
Accusations against Kavanaugh included attempted rape while a high school student. On Friday, the Guardian reported that new information showed serious omissions in a Senate investigation of the allegations, mounted when Republicans controlled the chamber.
Polling shows that public trust in the supreme court has reached historic lows.
“We’re being bombarded,” Alito complained, “and then those who are attacking us say: ‘Look how unpopular they are. Look how low their approval rating has sunk.’
“Well, yeah, what do you expect when … day in and day out, ‘They’re illegitimate. They’re engaging in all sorts of unethical conduct. They’re doing this, they’re doing that’?”
Such attacks, he said, “undermine confidence in the government [as] it’s one thing to say the court is wrong; it’s another thing to say it’s an illegitimate institution”.
With some court-watchers, the interview landed heavily.
Robert Maguire, research director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an independent watchdog, said: “There is no depth to the pity [justices] – and Alito in particular – feel for themselves when they face public criticism.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Abortion rights campaigners won notable victories in Nebraska and South Carolina on Thursday, blocking a six-week ban in the first state and a near-total ban in the second.
In Lincoln, Nebraska, a vote to end debate so the bill could advance failed by one vote. Cheers erupted as opponents of the bill waved signs and chanted: “Whose house? Our house!”
Jo Giles, executive director of the Women’s Fund of Omaha, was brought to tears.
“Wow!” she said. “This was unexpected, but we’re so glad to have this win. We have fought so hard. This bill is not what the majority of women in this state wanted.”
In Columbia, South Carolina, senators rejected a bill that would have banned nearly all abortions in a state increasingly serving women across a region where Republicans have otherwise curtailed access.
Sandy Senn, a Republican senator, criticized the majority leader, Shane Massey, for repeatedly “taking us off a cliff on abortion”.
“The only thing that we can do when you all, you men in the chamber, metaphorically keep slapping women by raising abortion again and again and again, is for us to slap you back with our words,” Senn said.
The Nebraska bill would ban abortion around the sixth week of pregnancy. It is now unlikely to move forward this year. Since 2010, Nebraska has banned abortions after the 20th week. The new bill would have banned abortion once cardiac activity can be detected. It failed to get the crucial 33rd vote when state senator Merv Riepe abstained. He was a cosigner but expressed concern a six-week ban might not give women time to know they were pregnant.
A former hospital administrator, Riepe introduced an amendment that would have extended the ban to 12 weeks and add to the list of exceptions fetal anomalies deemed incompatible with life.
Riepe warned Republicans to heed signs that abortion will galvanize women to vote them out. He offered up his own election last year, noting that in the primary he was 27 points ahead but after the US supreme court’s Dobbs decision in June, striking down Roe, his margin of victory in the general election against the same challenger, a Democrat who made abortion rights central to her campaign, dropped to just under five points.
“We must embrace the future of reproductive rights,” Riepe said.
The failed bill included exceptions for cases of rape, incest and medical emergencies and made exceptions for ectopic pregnancies and IVF procedures. It allowed for the removal of a fetus that has died in the womb. It did not ascribe criminal penalties to women or doctors. It would have subjected doctors to professional discipline.
The bill’s author, Joni Albrecht, called it “the friendliest pro-life bill out there”. But she rejected a compromise that would exempt women and medical professionals from criminal penalties.
“This is simply not necessary,” Albrecht said. She also rejected Riepe’s amendment, saying her six-week proposal “was a big compromise” from a total ban she failed to pass last year.
Among those celebrating outside the legislature was Pat Neal, 72, of Lincoln, who has been fighting for abortion rights since she received an abortion in 1973, the year the Roe v Wade decision guaranteed the right.
“This gives me hope for the future,” Neal said. “It gives me hope that the direction we’ve been seeing – across the country – could turn around.”
In South Carolina, three near-total bans have now failed in the Republican-led chamber since the Dobbs decision. Six Republicans helped defeat the bill this year.
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The chamber’s five women filibustered the proposal in speeches highlighting the male majority they criticized for pushing abortion over other issues.
Penry Gustafson spent over 30 minutes on Wednesday detailing bodily changes throughout pregnancy. She said millions of women had not been heard. She emphasized her “pro-life” position but said the proposal left “no room for empathy, reality or graciousness”.
The bill would have banned abortion with exceptions for rape or incest through the first trimester, fatal fetal anomalies confirmed by two physicians, and to save the patient’s life or health.
Mia McLeod, an independent, criticized leaders who prioritized the ban over efforts to make South Carolina the 49th state to allow harsher punishments for violent hate crimes.
McLeod, who shared during debate that she had been raped, said it was unfortunate that women must reveal intimate experiences to “enlighten and engage” men.
“Just as rape is about power and control, so is this total ban,” McLeod said. “Those who continue to push legislation like this are raping us again with their indifference, violating us again with their righteous indignation, taunting us again with their insatiable need to play God while they continue to pass laws that are ungodly.”
Abortion remains legal through 22 weeks in South Carolina, a status that has drawn patients throughout the increasingly restrictive south-east.
The number of out-of-state patients has risen since the state supreme court struck down a 2021 law.
Opponents of the total ban said it would prevent safe access to the procedure and worsen alarmingly high maternal death rates and poorer outcomes for Black women.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
With the battle over the abortion pill in the headlines — the U.S. Supreme Court has maintained access to mifepristone, for now — Trudeau also took to the internet last week to remind the world where he stands.
“With attacks on reproductive rights around the world, it’s really important that we not take things for granted — that we continue to stand up unequivocally,” he said in a video on social media. “This government will never tell a woman what to do with her body, we are unequivocally and proudly pro-choice and always will be.”
Earlier in Ottawa, International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan announced a C$195 million investment over the next five years in support of women’s advocacy globally.
Trudeau caught the alley-oop in New York, telling the crowd of world leaders and activists “there is no place where we’re not seeing attacks on rights.”
When he was first elected in 2015, Trudeau introduced a gender-balanced Cabinet — a move U.S. President Joe Biden would go on to replicate. “I’m very proud that both of us have Cabinets that are 50 percent women for the first time in history,” Biden boasted in a speech during his visit to Ottawa in March.
In the wake of the SCOTUS leak and the decision to revoke federal abortion rights in the United States, Trudeau’s government declared Canada open to Americans who needed to travel north to access an abortion.
“No government, politician, or man should tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her body,” he said after the official ruling in June 2022.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned, there was speculation Americans would head north. “There’s no reason why we would turn anyone away to receive that procedure here,” Canada’s Families Minister Karina Gould said at the time.
But there has so far been no influx, says Joyce Arthur, executive director of Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. “It’s really an option that would only be available for higher income people living near the border,” she said.
The only border state that has banned abortion is Idaho, she added. “People who have to travel for a procedure are much more likely to travel to another state.”
The same observation was made by Planned Parenthood Toronto, the largest Planned Parenthood in the country.
“We haven’t seen an uptick,” said executive director Mohini Datta-Ray. “They would have potentially been non-insured patients but [because of the price tag] it’s not worth the journey.”
On stage in New York Thursday alongside Jacqueline O’Neill, Canada’s first women, peace and security ambassador, Trudeau insisted Canada has been unequivocal about advocating for women’s equality, at home and abroad.
The claim was met by a challenge from veteran journalist Lisa Laflamme who was moderating the discussion at the Global Citizen event.
A 2023 report from Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, a nonprofit known also as Planned Parenthood Canada, notes that in 2019 the Trudeau government said it would increase funding for women’s health services worldwide to C$1.4 billion by 2023. It also pledged to boost funds for sexual and reproductive health to C$700 million from C$400 million.
The report said that while C$489 million of the $700 million budget was spent in 2020-21, “only roughly C$104 million was allocated to programming in support of the neglected areas … far below what would be expected in the promise made by the government.”
When asked about it on stage, Trudeau responded there is “obviously more to do.”
“I don’t know the details behind those numbers,” he continued. “But I do know that we put a tremendous emphasis on ensuring that the provincial governments which deliver health care in our country are delivering the full range of reproductive health services in an inclusive way.”
The Trudeau Cabinet has been watching developments around the abortion pill.
In the U.S., some states and government organizations are moving to ban or restrict abortion. The Food and Drug Administration updated its guidelines on mifepristone in January so that it can only be sold with a prescription in certified pharmacies. Previously, the pill — which the FDA first approved in 2000 — could be obtained in person at clinics, hospitals and medical offices, as well as from some mail-order pharmacies.
Fifteen states that allow abortion require medication abortions be prescribed solely by a physician, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which says more than half the abortions in the U.S. in 2020 occurred because of the pill.
Last week, Minister Gould told CTV that if mifepristone were to be banned in the U.S., the Liberal government would “work to provide it for American women.”
She was vague when pressed in that interview for details about Canada’s supply. When POLITICO asked for details, her office said, “We have discussed what Canada’s support for American women in need might be, and those discussions are still ongoing.”
The idea that Canada would get involved with U.S. affairs doesn’t sit right with some American lawmakers, particularly ones from states like Texas with tight abortion pill restrictions already in place.
“Canada should reevaluate their claims that it would provide Americans with a drug that is not only dangerous for the mother but out of step,” said conservative hardliner Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas). “These do-it-yourself chemical abortions should be off the shelf in the United States and around the world.”
Americans may yet turn to Canada, though Arthur points out Canadians still have access problems of their own.
“We’re just a much smaller country demographically,” she said. “It would hurt Canadians’ access to abortion by allowing a whole lot of Americans to come up here.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Protesters gather outside the Supreme Court in the wake of the court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade. | Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
The number of adults living in states where abortion is banned or restricted who believe that access to abortion should be easier has grown since 2019, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.
In states that implemented bans on nearly all abortions after the Dobbs decision last year, 43 percent of adults said they believe it should be easier to get an abortion where they live, compared to 31 percent in 2019. In states that have seen new restrictions, either implemented or tied up in legal disputes, 38 percent believe access should be easier, up from 27 percent in 2019. The numbers are also up in states without any new abortion restrictions, now at 27 percent compared to 24 percent in 2019.
The report, released Wednesday, included data from 5,079 respondents with a margin of error of +/- 1.7 percentage points. The survey was conducted between March 27 and April 2.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
One area in which Haley was clear, however, was her expectation that nothing far-reaching would hit her desk, should she end up in the White House. “We have to face this reality. The pro-life laws that have passed in strongly Republican states will not be approved at the federal level,” Haley said. “That’s just a fact.”
Haley’s struggle to articulate a clear position on abortion in an address that was billed as a chance to do just that highlights how fraught the issue is for Republicans on the national campaign trail. GOP candidates have lost a number of races to Democrats who championed abortion rights in the post-Dobbs era, and, over the past few weeks, presidential aspirants have walked on eggshells when discussing the topic.
Haley is seeking to position herself as a candidate uniquely capable of tackling the debate. On Tuesday, she spoke from her own perspective as a woman and mother — identities unmatched among a slate of male Republican opponents. Haley said her husband’s adoption out of foster care as a young child and her own struggle with infertility made her opposed to abortion — “not because the Republican Party told me to be.” She discussed her friend’s rape and subsequent fear of becoming pregnant.
“I don’t judge someone who is pro-choice any more than I want them to judge me for being pro-life,” said Haley, who as governor of South Carolina, signed a law restricting abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Haley’s address Tuesday came hours before Vice President Kamala Harris was scheduled to join abortion rights groups in D.C. for a “rally for reproductive freedom,” an event celebrating a Supreme Court decision to temporarily block a lower court’s restriction of access to abortion pill mifepristone.
In an interview Monday, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, stressed the need for candidates to show “boldness in communicating” their positions on abortion laws. Dannenfelser has maintained that her organization will oppose Republican presidential candidates who don’t embrace, at minimum, a national 15-week limit on abortions. A week prior, the group had taken the extraordinary step of criticizing former president Donald Trump for saying that he believed abortion policy should be left to the states, essentially swearing off support for any federal legislation.
That had left an opening for Haley. But as Dannenfelser looked on during Haley’s speech Tuesday, the former governor and United Nations ambassador didn’t articulate the extent to which she believes the federal government should go in restricting abortion access. In fact, Haley downplayed the likelihood of any highly restrictive national law being passed, noting that the Senate lacks the votes. Haley instead noted policies that she believes most Americans can agree on, including opposing “abortion up to the point of birth” or jailing women who receive abortions.
Afterward, a spokesperson for Haley clarified that she has not called for a 15-week national restriction, even as SBA released a statement applauding Haley’s pledge to do so. An SBA spokesperson told POLITICO that Haley “has assured us that she will commit to 15 weeks.”
Later, a person familiar with the conversation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Haley privately told SBA officials “exactly what she said in her speech today,” and did not commit to a 15-week law, but rather only to “find a consensus to ban late-term abortion.”
“I think that potential Republican voters are getting to know each of the candidates, and they deserve to know exactly where they stand on this issue, which is at its peak of importance given the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” Dannenfelser said in the interview.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who hasn’t yet officially declared his candidacy but has launched an exploratory committee, spent days earlier this month publicly working through his answer to the abortion question, initially declining to provide any specifics before agreeing he would sign a national law limiting the procedure to 20 weeks, a measure he has supported in the Senate. Later, Scott said he would sign “the most conservative pro-life legislation” Congress would pass.
Former Vice President Mike Pence has been perhaps the clearest on his intentions to restrict the procedure if elected president, saying last month he would support a six-week federal limit. More recently, Pence has floated a 15-week restriction as something that should be “part and parcel of debate.”
Vivek Ramaswamy, another Republican seeking the nomination, in an interview Monday said he has been “unapologetically pro-life” since high school, as well as an “unapologetic defender of the Constitution.” And he said he believes abortion is a “form of murder,” but shouldn’t be regulated federally.
“Federal law does not govern murder. State laws do,” Ramaswamy said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, an as-of-yet-undeclared presidential hopeful, drew national headlines this month for signing into law an abortion prohibition after six weeks, though he has shied away from commenting on what kind of national abortion law he would support as president. DeSantis failed to tout his state’s new wide-reaching abortion restriction when he spoke the following day at Liberty University, the nation’s leading evangelical Christian college.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, another candidate, has said he would support a national ban on the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Jim McLaughlin, a Republican pollster whose clients include Trump, suggested there’s wisdom to Trump walking a fine line between touting his past accomplishments for anti-abortion activists, while leaving the door open to appeal to abortion-rights supporters going forward.
“I think President Trump, you know, he could take credit with the pro-life movement because it was his judges that have changed the laws, and they’ve been making progress,” McLaughlin said. “But I also think … pro-choice voters do not feel threatened with Donald Trump’s position on abortion. So I think he’s got the best of both worlds there.”
Adam Wren contributed to this story.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Ben is one of hundreds of volunteer pilots in the US flying people across state lines in their small private planes so they can obtain abortion healthcare. He’s part of an Illinois-based group called Elevated Access that connects pilots with patients. Since the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022 dismantled 50 years of legal protection around abortion access in the US, thousands of patients are now forced to travel to obtain the healthcare they need – which can be expensive, time consuming and risky
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
On Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he will “live with whatever decision” eventually emerges from the court, while also attacking abortion as a practice and citing his previous support for national legislation limiting it.
“It’s a human rights issue,” Graham said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “At 15 weeks you have a developed heart and lungs, and to dismember a child at 15 weeks is a painful experience. It’s barbaric [it’s] out of line with the rest of the civilized world.”
That’s the stance that any Republican who hopes to have a shot at the GOP presidential nomination in 2024 will have as well, Graham said.
“Anybody running for president who has a snowball’s chance in hell in the 2024 primary is going to be with me, the American people, and all of Europe, saying late-term abortions should be off the table,” Graham said.
But Republican Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) cautioned against going too far on anti-abortion legislation ahead of 2024.
“I want us to find some middle ground,” Mace said on ABC’s “This Week,” after voicing support for the court’s decision to protect mifepristone. “There are — in my home state of South Carolina, there was a … very small group of state legislatures that filed a bill that would execute women who have abortions and gave more rights to rapists than women who have been raped. That is the wrong message heading into ’24. We’re going to — we’re going to lose huge if we continue down this path of extremities.”
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu voiced the same concerns Sunday. “If we stay in our traditional lanes, we’re going to lose. There’s no doubt about it,” Sununu said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The Republican governor, a possible 2024 presidential candidate, referenced polls that he said show dwindling support for legislation banning abortion from younger generations of Republicans.
“Look, the next generation of Republicans, right, if you look at the polls from about [ages] 45 and under, when you look at their priorities, you know, banning abortion is not one of their priorities. It’s not,” he said.
Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson — a 2024 presidential contender — said that while he supports limits on abortions, Republicans have fought for decades to have states determine the rules, instead of the federal government. “I would prefer that this is an issue that is resolved by the states,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers applauded Friday’s ruling as being a legally and medically sound decision that lets women maintain control of their own health.
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) voiced support for the Supreme Court’s decision, and noted that the drug is used for medical conditions other than abortion.
“I’m certainly not in a position to know, I’m not a medical expert, nor are the Supreme Court justices,” Dingell said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We have agencies designed and set up to do the scientific process and that is where I think the responsibility belongs.”
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) also challenged the logic behind the initial decision that was built around a challenge to the FDA’s processes.
“I think it was crazy. The notion that you would take a drug that has been used safely for more than two decades and somehow then take that away from availability,” Warner said of the lower court decision.
“You know, I frankly think this is an issue that women’s healthcare choices ought to be made by women, and the idea of this judge so radically intervening with a safe procedure … undermines the very integrity of our FDA process,” he said on “This Week.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) also said the Supreme Court’s decision Friday was the correct one.
“The people of this country believe that the women of this country should be able to make their own decisions about their health care … and they don’t want Ted Cruz in the waiting room,” Klobuchar said on State of the Union, citing a Texas Republican senator who is an abortion foe.
During his interview, Graham pointed to the Comstock Act, a sweeping anti-obscenity measure passed by Congress in 1873 that District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk cited in his initial decision to block abortion medication from being sent by mail.
“I think it’s a law on the books and it was placed there for a reason,” Graham said when asked about applying the 19th century law to the case.
“But sending the abortion drug through the mail is a big change in how it is provided. In 2000 when it was first approved, you had to have four visits to the doctor. In 2021, the Biden administration said you don’t have to even consult a physician anymore and send it through the mail. Is that safe? … That’s what the court will decide,” Graham said.
But Klobuchar said that legislation is outdated.
“The Comstock Act that [was] literally passed, Dana, in 1873,” Klobuchar told CNN’s Dana Bash. “That is 10 years before the ‘Yellowstone’ prequel. … that is at a time when healthcare — when you were treated for pneumonia through bloodletting,” she said.
“The American people do not want to go backward. And what I heard today is that Republican leaders in Washington aren’t backing down on their opposition to reproductive freedom. They are doubling down,” she said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
