June is coming.
The Court's got some big decisions coming down the pipeline.
At the Los Angeles Times, "Rape exceptions to abortion bans were once widely accepted. No more":
WASHINGTON — As conservative states enacted stringent abortion bans in recent decades, there was one threshold they were loath to cross: Abortion was nearly always allowed in cases of rape or incest. It was a veneer of acceptance embraced by every GOP president from Reagan to Trump, and even the strongest abortion foes, that a woman should not be required to carry a rapist’s child. Not anymore. Just as states may be on the verge of regaining expansive authority to outlaw abortion, eliminating rape and incest exceptions has moved from the fringe to the center of the antiabortion movement. In 2019, Alabama gained national attention by passing a state law banning all abortions with exceptions only for lethal abnormalities and serious health risks to the patient. There was a brief backlash to Alabama’s law, but over the last four years, 10 states have enacted abortion bans in early pregnancy without rape or incest exceptions: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas. All were blocked by the court, except Texas’ law, which is in effect. In recent weeks, several other legislatures have been racing to put abortion bans on the books. Arizona’s governor recently signed a 15-week abortion ban without rape or incest exceptions, although it is not yet in effect. Similar 15-week bans without these exceptions are awaiting the governor’s signature in Florida and Kentucky. Oklahoma’s Legislature this week approved an almost total ban on abortion except for medical emergencies. It has not yet been signed by the governor. The Supreme Court this summer will consider the constitutionality of one of those laws — Mississippi’s 15-week ban that excludes exceptions for rape and incest. In doing so, the court will decide whether to undo its 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. If Mississippi’s law is upheld and the court rewrites Roe, the lack of rape and incest exceptions could be replicated in many other conservative states. That carries grave physical and psychological implications for sexual abuse survivors who become pregnant, according to Michele Goodwin, a UC Irvine professor who studies law and health and is the founding director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy. “When there are no exceptions for a person who survived rape or incest, it means the state is coercing that person into a pregnancy they don’t want,” she said. Women and girls who have survived rape or incest have already been through one harm, “but here’s the state rubber-stamping a second harm.” Her concern is deeply personal. Goodwin says she became pregnant by her father when she was 12 years old after two years of abuse. Her father took her to a healthcare provider in New York, lied about her age, and got her an abortion. She didn’t need an exception. But as she watches states enact early abortion bans without exceptions, including Texas’ six-week abortion ban, she worries about girls who would have to somehow find abortion access in another state or carry a pregnancy if impregnated by an abuser. “I tried to put myself in the deepest corners of closets as a child,” she said, recounting one of the ways she tried to escape her abuse as a child. Now she says she is grateful she had the opportunity to get an abortion and pursue an education and career, rather than being forced to carry a child when she was still one herself. “One of the key steps of being a survivor is to be able to get your freedom back, to be able to get your autonomy back, to be able to get your decision-making back” Goodwin said. Abortion opponents describe eliminating long-standing rape and incest exceptions as driven by their faith-based belief that life begins at the moment an egg is fertilized by sperm. They say they oppose all abortion, regardless of the circumstances...
Still more.
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