What's Become of All the Extreme Abortion Bans From This Year?

By Amanda Arnold, The Cut

29 August 19

he first six months of the year saw relentless attacks on abortion rights on the state level. Five states passed bills banning the procedure after six weeks, before many women even realize they’re pregnant. And in May, Alabama governor Kay Ivey signed a near-full ban on the procedure. The same month, Missouri — a state with only one abortion clinic — passed an extreme eight-week ban that didn’t include any exceptions for instances of rape, incest, or human trafficking. In all, seven states have passed similarly stringent laws in 2019, and more are considering them.

But in recent months, judges in many of these states have started to issue preliminary injunctions, which allow patients to continue accessing important reproductive care while the court hears the case in full to determine whether or not the bill is constitutional. In short, these court orders — also known as temporary blocks — maintain the status quo, allowing abortion to remain legal. Most recently, on August 27, a federal judge temporarily blocked Missouri’s ban.

The fight doesn’t end here, though. Planned Parenthood director of state advocacy media Bonyen Lee-Gilmore says now is not the time to “rest easy,” as states are expected to appeal to circuit courts. Under Trump, these courts have become increasingly hostile to reproductive rights.

“Trump has appointed over 100 judges to the federal bench, and we’re seeing circuit courts become more and more anti-abortion,” Lee-Glimore told the Cut. “This is no coincidence. Trump is remaking the judicial branch in order to push these unconstitutional laws forward, and we’re seeing these judges stare Supreme Court precedent in the face and create new rules.”

Here’s what’s become of all the extreme bans this year so far.

Alabama 

Status: The American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood have filed a lawsuit.
On May 15, Alabama governor Kay Ivey signed into law a bill that was so restrictive, even Republicans were divided over it: a near-full ban on the procedure with no exceptions for rape or incest. It would also make performing the procedure a felony in most instances. (The bill does include exceptions in cases where the mother’s life is endangered.)

As promised, the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama and Planned Parenthood Federation of America swiftly filed a lawsuit to block the Alabama the law, which is scheduled to go into effect in November. While a judge hasn’t ruled on the case yet, attorneys for the state have indicated that they’d be willing put a temporary restraining order on the law until May 2020, while the state and the reproductive-rights organizations suing it resolve the lawsuit.

Georgia 

Status: The ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and the Center for Reproductive Rights have filed a lawsuit.
On June 28, the ACLU, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit challenging Georgia’s six-week abortion ban, which only contains a few narrow exceptions, including cases where the woman’s life is endangered, the pregnancy is considered “medically futile,” and in instances of rape or incest if the woman files a police report. While the law is scheduled to take effect in January 2020, Julie Rikelman, the litigation director at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told the Cut that the court has a preliminary injunction hearing scheduled for September 23 to decide whether to temporarily block the ban.

Kentucky 

Status: Temporarily blocked.
On March 15, Kentucky became one of the first states of the year to sign into law its six-week abortion ban, which was scheduled to go into effect immediately, per the New York Times. (The bill includes exceptions when the woman’s life is endangered, but not in cases of rape or incest.) That same day, though, ACLU filed an immediate challenge, and Judge David J. Hale of the Western District of Kentucky temporarily blocked the law on grounds that it was potentially unconstitutional.

Louisiana 

Status: Will only go into effect if Mississippi’s is upheld in a federal appeals court.
On May 30, Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards signed a law banning nearly all abortions, including in cases of rape or incest. (It’s worth noting that the bill was both sponsored and signed into law by Democrats.) However, the ban will only take effect if a federal appeals court upholds Mississippi’s similar ban.

Mississippi 

Status: Temporarily blocked; the attorney general has appealed.
On May 21, Mississippi governor Phil Bryant signed into law a six-week ban; just days later, Judge Carlton W. Reeves issued a preliminary injunction against it, writing in his ruling that the law “threatens immediate harm to women’s rights.”

“[The ban] prevents a woman’s free choice, which is central to personal dignity and autonomy,” he continued in his ruling, which he issued on May 24. “This injury outweighs any interest the state might have in banning abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat.”

On June 21, though, Mississippi attorney general Jim Hood appealed the federal judge’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, according to local outlets.

Missouri 

Status: Temporarily blocked.
On August 27, one day before Missouri’s restrictive ban was scheduled to take effect, U.S. District Court judge Howard Sachs temporarily blocked the ban, NBC News reports. In his order, he wrote that the law seemed “designed … as a protest against Supreme Court decisions.”

Had Missouri’s law gone into effect, it would’ve banned abortion after eight weeks with with no exceptions for instances of rape, incest, or human trafficking. (It would, however, allow for exceptions in cases of medical emergency). Furthermore, doctors who would’ve performed the procedure under the law would’ve faced up to 15 years in prison.

Ohio 

Status: Temporarily blocked.
On July 3, Judge Michael Barrett temporarily blocked the six-week ban that Governor Mike DeWine had signed into law in early April. “This court concludes that [the bill] places an ‘undue burden’ on a woman’s right to choose a pre-viability abortion,” Barrett wrote in his injunction order. “The law is well settled that women possess a fundamental constitutional right of access to abortion.”

Bernie Sanders Has a Plan - but He's Also Building a Movement

By Luke Savage, Jacobin

29 August 19

Bernie Sanders probably does have a plan for that. But he also has something more important: a willingness to name the enemy and mobilize a mass movement to get those plans through.

o voters favor wonkery or personality?

That’s the choice facing Democrats, according to a recent piece in the Washington Examiner by GOP consultant Liz Mair, which contrasts Elizabeth Warren’s policy-focused campaign with the Biden camp’s emphasis on personality. Unsurprisingly, the op-ed largely dismisses Bernie Sanders — leading the field nationally alongside Warren, according to a Monmouth poll released earlier this week — devoting only a single sentence to the claim: “[Warren’s] policies are almost indistinguishable from Sanders’s, yet [are] better spelled-out and more detailed.”

The conservative bona fides of its author notwithstanding, this framing of the race has also gained considerable traction among liberal pundits and talking heads who increasingly perceive the difference between Sanders and Warren as one of wonkish policymaking versus nonspecific political grandstanding. That was the narrative advanced by former Hillary Clinton staffer Zerlina Maxwell on MSNBC this week, where she claimed:

Bernie Sanders is excellent at explaining what the problem is .?.?.?at laying out all of the different things that are wrong structurally in this country .?.?.?and then he stops talking. And I’m always listening for solutions and specifics. Warren doesn’t stop talking.

It’s a puzzling narrative, to say the least, given the many proposals released by Sanders and his campaign — no less expansive and detailed than those floated by Warren.

In the past ten days alone, the Vermont senator has unveiled plans for a $16.3 trillion Green New Deal designed to transition the US economy to renewable energy by 2050, and a comprehensive Workplace Democracy initiative that aims to empower American workers and strengthen trade unions. Earlier this week, he used an op-ed in the Columbia Journalism Review to pitch a series of ideas and proposals designed to combat corporate media consolidation and foster a more independent press. Prior to these, his campaign had already tabled detailed plans for the creation of a universal Medicare-for-All system, sweeping reform of the criminal justice system, and the elimination of existing student debt, to name just a few.

Claims that Sanders eschews specifics or is vague on the details don’t hold up to even the most basic scrutiny, but they are fast-becoming the fulcrum of an emerging campaign narrative for many pundits and talking heads. The way some are keen to frame it, Sanders isn’t really big on “plans” at all — a perplexing take to have on a candidate that visibly has quite a few. As Commonweal’s Matt Sitman recently observed: “Bernie is dropping plan after plan and not getting much wonk love. Turns out ‘having a plan’ messaging is not about the plans.”

It’s an unfortunate, though admittedly predictable, development given the uncharitable treatment reserved for Sanders in the mainstream media. But it’s also a revealing one, in that it ignores what is arguably the most critical and innovative feature of his campaign: namely, an analysis of how embedded interests and powerful actors obstruct transformative change and a strategy for building the necessary popular pressure to defeat them.

The details or mechanics of various policy initiatives aside, what’s at stake in the 2020 election cannot ultimately be summed up in the form of “plans” or whose campaign has the most of them. Given the number of candidates in the running, the presidential field hardly wants for policy ideas as it is — there are plenty currently on the table, some of which are good and many of which are bad.

But, as the Obama presidency demonstrated, any Democrat entering the White House will face a host of obstacles even when they wield a legislative majority and bend over backward to find consensus and reassure corporate America of their moderate intent. No matter what the composition of the next Congress turns out to be, even the most lukewarm of plans will inevitably be opposed by oligarchs, business interests, and the innumerable lawmakers who receive bottomless donations from both. Given that reality, the only viable course for those seeking sweeping and necessary political change is direct confrontation with these interests and the mobilization of massive popular pressure as a counterweight against them.

Sanders understands this, which is why he identifies the actors opposed to his various plans — Wall Street, the Walton family, the fossil fuel industry — at every opportunity. It’s also why his campaign has gotten directly involved in frontline struggles like teachers’ strikes and even used its resources to direct supporters to pickets. When Sanders talks about building a movement, it’s not mere branding or political window dressing, but rather the strategy underlying all of his plans and policies made explicit. The specific nuts and bolts of policy ideas or the merits of different proposals aside, this theory of political change is what most distinguishes Sanders from the rest of the Democratic field.

As he himself put it at the end of the first televised debate in June:

I suspect people all over the country who are watching this debate are saying, these are good people, they have great ideas. But how come nothing really changes? How come for the last forty-five years wages have been stagnant for the middle class? How come we have the highest rate of childhood poverty? How come 45 million people still have student debt? How come three people own more wealth than the bottom half of America? .?.?.?Nothing will change unless we have the guts to take on Wall Street, the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the military-industrial complex, and the fossil fuel industry.

While mainstream pundits are keen to frame the primary contest as a policy arms race, no plan or series of plans, however progressive or well thought out, can become a reality in America today without an unprecedented popular movement behind them. That’s because the most pressing issues facing Americans are less puzzles to be solved than they are injustices to be overcome — not by way of plans alone, or by the election of any single candidate as president, but through large-scale popular organization and mass action from empowered citizens and workers.

Sanders, unique among those seeking the Democratic nomination, makes this explicit with his favorite campaign slogan: “Not me. Us.”