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It was a fairly predictable development, but dramatic nonetheless: a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel has issued an injunction against implementation of Arizona’s precedent-challenging “fetal pain” abortion ban, which was scheduled to take effect today. In the autumn, the 9th circuit will hear an appeal to the ruling issued earlier this week by district court judge James Teilborg upholding the law, which had the most draconian time restriction and also the fewest exceptions of any of the recent state-passed bans on second-trimester abortions.
Regardless of what happens in the 9th Circuit, it’s now reasonably clear that Arizona’s law will provide the long-awaited—and for many abortion rights advocates, long-feared—Supreme Court review of these restrictive new laws, perhaps as early as 2013. Then we’ll see if the Court decides to uphold the framework of Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, or instead widens the breach in the constitutional right to choose opened up by Justice Kennedy in the 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart decision upholding a federal ban on so-called “partial-birth” abortions. It’s even possible, of course, that final action could come after the winner of the November elections has had a chance to make a fateful appointment to a closely divided Court.
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Raskolnik on August 02, 2012 1:46 PM:
Abortion rights supporters should be grateful. Roe used legal reasoning ("penumbras" and so on) that is widely regarded as terrible, even and especially among abortion rights supporters.
c u n d gulag on August 02, 2012 2:09 PM:
Conservatives had better be careful of what they wish for.
Overturning Roe, and either outlawing abortion nationwide, or making is a state's rights issue, may very well backfire on them.
No one loves abortions. NO ONE!
But I think more and more people will realize what they lost when they have no "choice" in either their state, or the whole nation.
And that's men, as well as women - "Forced Labor" for reluctant mothers should mean, at the very least, "Forced Payment" for the men for 18-21 years.
It tougher to lose something that's been available for 40 years, than never having it at all.
And hopefully, people will see fit to throw a fit - and vote against every God-bothering asshole who wanted, or wants, to restrict a woman's right to choose what goes on inside her body, and what's going to affect her future.
The problem has been that for too long, Liberals have looked at "The Handmaid's Tale" as a cautionary novel about a dystopian future.
Conservatives have looked upon it as a "How To" manual.
left reach gal on August 02, 2012 3:29 PM:
Yeah, republicans sure don't like *big government* but they *certainly* want to control women, and women's lady parts, and women's uniquely personal reproductive futures.
That's some big, over-reaching, intrusive government!
Hypocrites, these constitution-lovin' republicans.
As a psychology type by trade, I say they are insanely obsessed.
c u n d gulag on August 02, 2012 4:55 PM:
left reach gal,
Hey, Doc, since you're here, maybe you can help me with a nightmare I've been having lately.
I dream I'm a bathroom stall in a women's bathroom at a gas station off of I-95 down South.
And all I see, is lines of rich Christian assholes, male and female, driving up in luxury cars, bearing toilet brushes to stick in my hole. Determined that I take their sh*t, and like it.
What does this mean in Freudian and Jungian terms?
Oh, and btw - I'm male.