40 years later, Roe v. Wade is still under siege. The pro-abortion-rights Americans who fought to win the landmarkdecision might not recognize today’s bruised-and-battered version of the law.
(Source: theweek.com)
If undecided voters tune into the Democratic convention and hear all about abortion, and tune into the Republican convention and hear all about the economy, Romney will win in a landslide.
John Hinderaker at Power Line.
Will Democrats regret making their convention an ‘anti-Akin affair’?
Tell McCaskill your standing with Todd Akin.
Rep. Todd Akin, struggling to revive his battered campaign, launched a page on his website asking supports to rally behind him. “I made a mistake,” he said, referring to his preposterous claim that victims of “legitimate rape” can’t get pregnant. “I used the wrong words in the wrong way.” Above the quote, the campaign asked fans to “tell McCaskill your standing with Todd Akin.” Giddy critics immediately spotted the error and tweeted their glee to the world, ribbing Akin for “using the wrong word” to “apologize for using the wrong words.” The campaign quickly corrected the error, or tried to, spelling it “your’re,” before trying a third time and getting it right.
“Most East Coast journalists and politicos I’ve spoken with cannot fathom how Todd Akin could possibly remain a candidate” in Missouri’s U.S. Senate race, says former Missouri lawmaker Jeffrey Smith at Salon. After all, every Republican official from presidential aspirant Mitt Romney on down has urged him to drop out following his infamous comments about the pregnancy-stifling powers of “legitimate rape.” The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and GOP super PAC Crossroads GPS have even said they’ll pull their millions in funding from the race if he remains the candidate.
But looking at the situation from Akin’s point of view, and knowing his history, his decision to defy his party and keep on challenging Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) makes more sense. Here, six reasons Akin is still in the race:
At a time when part of the Democratic message is that the GOP is conducting a ‘war on women,’ Akin has provided Democrats with a limitless supply of ammunition for use against GOP candidates.
— Charlie Mahtesian at Politico outlines one reason why the GOP desperately wants Todd Akin to drop out. “Akin has provided Democrats with an opportunity to drive the wedge deeper.”
Arizona’s severe new abortion law is set to go into effect this week, thanks to a federal judge who ruled it constitutional. The law, signed by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer earlier this year, forbids doctors from aborting fetuses with a gestational age of 20 weeks or older, which is before the 23- to 24-week milestone when a doctor can confirm that a pregnancy will likely not result in a miscarriage, a stillborn, or an infant who will die soon after being born. That means some women could have to give birth to stillborn babies.
The law has been assailed by abortion-rights advocates and civil-rights groups, who say it violates Supreme Court precedent and will cause wanton emotional damage to mothers.
Here, a guide to what has been described as the “most extreme” abortion ban in America
![A South Dakota appeals court ruled this week that doctors must tell women seeking abortions that they could be more prone to kill themselves if they have the procedure — even though the supposed link between abortion and suicide is based on arguably bogus evidence.
Anti-abortion groups cite two studies that found an increased suicide risk among women who had abortions. But the studies did not determine that abortion caused the increased risk. In fact, the American Psychological Association called the link “misleading,” stating that “the best scientific evidence indicates that the relative risk of mental health problems among adult women who have an unplanned pregnancy is no greater if they have an elective first-trimester abortion than if they deliver [the baby].”
So why are doctors being required to tell women otherwise?](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7tlv9Gsuy1qdjbb7o1_500.jpg)
A South Dakota appeals court ruled this week that doctors must tell women seeking abortions that they could be more prone to kill themselves if they have the procedure — even though the supposed link between abortion and suicide is based on arguably bogus evidence.
Anti-abortion groups cite two studies that found an increased suicide risk among women who had abortions. But the studies did not determine that abortion caused the increased risk. In fact, the American Psychological Association called the link “misleading,” stating that “the best scientific evidence indicates that the relative risk of mental health problems among adult women who have an unplanned pregnancy is no greater if they have an elective first-trimester abortion than if they deliver [the baby].”
A federal judge has temporarily blocked a law that would shut down Mississippi’s only remaining abortion clinic. But after that, it’s anyone’s guess what Judge Daniel P. Jordan will decide.
Is Mississippi about to make any woman who wants an abortion drive 200 miles to a different state, or to an unsafe back-alley type abortionist?
A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on Sunday that will block the enforcement of a Mississippi law that could close the state’s only abortion clinic. Under the law, an abortion provider must not only be an OB-GYN but also have privileges, which can be difficult to obtain, to admit patients to a local hospital. The state’s only abortion clinic, which often relies on doctors who travel in from other states, contends the law is designed to close it down. The judge has set a date for a hearing on July 11 to determine if the block should be more long term.
Genetic researchers have managed to sequence nearly the entire genome of an 18-week-old fetus, a remarkable feat in itself. But the real stunner is that they did it using only a sample of the mother’s blood and a swab of the father’s saliva. The research suggests a future in which parents can screen their in-utero offspring for more than 3,000 genetic mutations, plus other genetic traits such as athleticism.
That, of course, raises some pretty big ethical questions. Chief among them: “Who deserves to be born?”
A big sore point in the Catholic Church’s high-profile pushback against the Obama administration making most employers’ health insurance plans provide copay-free birth control is the idea that Catholic hospitals, universities, and charities will be forced to support (directly or indirectly) “abortifacients” or “abortion-inducing drugs” — which refers to the morning-after pill, primarily Plan B.
But anti-abortion advocates are wrong about what the morning-after pill does — as are abortion-rights proponents, the National Institutes of Health, the Mayo Clinic, and Plan B’s label — according to a new examination of the research by The New York Times.
So what, in fact, does the morning-after pill do? And can science neuter the controversy surrounding Plan B?
After her boyfriend left her in January 2011, Indiana resident Bei Bei Shuai — alone and 33 weeks pregnant — was so distraught that she tried to kill herself by swallowing rat poison. The 35-year-old, a Chinese immigrant, survived, but her baby, delivered by Caesarian section, did not.
Shuai, grief-stricken, was transferred to the Indiana hospital’s mental health wing and, two months later, was arrested on charges of attempted feticide and murder. After spending 435 days behind bars, she was finally released on bond in early May, but if convicted in a trial that begins in December, she could get 45 years to life.
Were her actions really a crime, or has she been unfairly caught up in the battle over abortion?
(Source: theweek.com)
Gallup has released its annual poll of Americans’ views on abortion rights, and the headline number made quite a stir: Half of respondents called themselves “pro-life,” just shy of the record 51 percent from May 2009, while a “record-low 41 percent” identified themselves as “pro-choice.” When Gallup first asked people to choose between those two labels in 1995, “pro-choice” was at its high-water mark of 56 percent and “pro-life” was at 33 percent. This isn’t the only new poll raising eyebrows, and the others don’t exactly paint the U.S. as increasingly socially conservative: In a Washington Post/ABC News poll, a record-high 53 percent of Americans say same-sex marriage should be legal, versus a record-low 39 percent who want it illegal; Gallup has also found that 89 percent of people think birth control is “morally acceptable” (including 82 percent of Catholics); and Rasmussen even found a new high of 56 percent of likely voters supporting legalizing and regulating the sale of marijuana.
So, what’s going on with America and abortion?
1. Support for abortion rights is dropping
Why not take the poll at face value? asks Ed Morrissey at Hot Air. ”We are seeing a societal shift in attitudes on abortion.” More and more Americans, especially independents and Democrats, are coming to see abortion as “barbaric.” That’s largely due to “sonograms, science, and real-life experience with abortion,” says W. James Antle III at The American Spectator, all of which make it “harder to reconcile choice with the reality of the act being chosen.” Yup, “we pro-lifers are clearly winning the battle,” says Donald McClarey at The American Catholic. With the media, Hollywood, and academia “stacked against us,” that’s a miracle, “but we are a cause that believes in miracles.”
2. This poll is probably just a fluke
Here’s what this poll means: “Probably nothing at all,” says Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly. The last time Gallup’s abortion findings got so much attention was in 2009, when “pro-life” hit 51 percent and “pro-choice” 42 percent. Other than that “strange finding in 2009,” and this “inexplicable” blip, the polling has been unusually stable for the past decade and a half, closer to the 2011 results: 49 percent “pro-choice,” 45 percent “pro-life.” That means this poll, like the 2009 numbers, “is likely an outlier.”
3. Conservatives are winning the branding war
The buzzwords matter, says Melissa McEwan at Shakesville. With their amazing knack for “demonizing language,” conservative strategists have “turned ‘pro-choice’ toxic in much the same way they did ‘liberal.’” Abortion-rights supporters have a lot of work to do. Actually, this shift is mostly about semantics, says Steve Benen at The Maddow Blog. When you look past the headline numbers, our views on the legality of abortion are pretty much unchanged: 25 percent say it should always be legal, 20 percent say it should never be legal, and 52 percent say it should be legal sometimes. Those “fundamental views matter more than vague buzzwords.”
4. Americans don’t think abortion rights are imperiled
In May 2009, the “pro-life” high point, “pro-choice Barack Obama” had just taken office, says Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog; in May 2011, when “pro-choice” was back on top, “the overwhelmingly anti-abortion GOP class of 2010” had started rolling back reproductive rights at the state level. The majority of Americans are somewhere in the middle on abortion, and their self-labeling shifts with the political tides. Lesson: People support abortion rights when those rights are threatened. So “what’s going on now?” According to polls, “Americans think Obama will be president for four more years, therefore abortion rights aren’t threatened.”
5. It’s a generational thing
There has been a slight shift “toward a more pro-life position in the last decade or so,” including in “the younger generation,” says Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Beast. People are becoming more attuned to the moral questions involved in abortion, while staying firm on the legal issues. For example, “I don’t want to criminalize abortion in the first trimester, but if I had to describe myself, I’d probably say ‘pro-life.’” Yes, there’s “an increasingly expansive view of what pro-life means,” especially among younger members of the pro-abortion-rights side, says Sarah Kliff at The Washington Post. “Pro-choice” dates back to the 1970s, and “a label developed 40 years ago might not speak to abortion-rights supporters in a way it did for previous generations.”
(Source: theweek.com)
