I believe Kate Cox had already left Texas when the Texas Supreme Court decided that she didn’t qualify as an “exception” under Texas law. There’s something about this decision that needs to be emphasized. In one part of the decision, the TSC defended Texas law by saying that the exceptions in the law provide adequate projection for women’s health. From the decision:
These laws reflect the policy choice that the Legislature has made, and the courts must respect that choice. Part of the Legislature’s choice is to permit a significant exception to the general prohibition against abortion. And it has delegated to the medical—rather than the legal—profession the decision about when a woman’s medical circumstances warrant this exception. … If a doctor, using her “reasonable medical judgment,” decides that a pregnant woman has such a condition, then the exception applies and Texas law does not prohibit the abortion.
Okay, but then the TSC turned around and said that Kate Cox’s doctor was wrong about her need for an abortion.
Though the statute affords physicians discretion, it requires more than a doctor’s mere subjective belief. By requiring the doctor to exercise “reasonable medical judgment,” the Legislature determined that the medical judgment involved must meet an objective standard. Dr. Karsan asserted that she has a “good faith belief” that Ms. Cox meets the exception’s requirements. Certainly, a doctor cannot exercise “reasonable medical judgment” if she does not hold her judgment in good faith. But the statute requires that judgment be a “reasonable medical” judgment, and Dr. Karsan has not asserted that her “good faith belief” about Ms. Cox’s condition meets that standard. Judges do not have the authority to expand the statutory exception to reach abortions that do not fall within its text under the guise of interpreting it.
In other words, the law gives doctors discretion as to what constitutes a genuine medical need for an abortion, but the state can still prosecute a doctor if the judges and politicians decide the doctor’s decision was wrong. See how that works?
Under Texas law the only exception is imminent death of the mother, apparently, but then the question is, what is “imminent”? How close to the brink does the mother have to be before an abortion qualifies as an “exception”? Already some women in Texas have been forced to wait until life-threatening conditions had set in before they could terminate a pregnancy.
Physicians in Texas have begged the legislature to make the law clearer. The legislature insists the law is fine as it is. Well, it’s fine for their purposes, which is to maintain control over women’s bodies. If doctors were given genuine discretion to make medical decisions, the state would lose that control.
Abortion rights advocates have been saying for years that the real motivation behind criminalizing abortion has nothing to do with “saving babies” but about controlling women. Some states — Tennessee, for example — have passed laws that don’t even allow clear exceptions for ectopic pregnancies. To anyone who isn’t an abortion criminalization zealot, what’s happening in Texas, and elsewhere, reveals this is true. Critiminalizing abortion is a great issue for misogynists, who can use the law to brutalize women while pretending to occupy a high moral ground while doing so. And the zealots are not going to stop until abortion is illegal everywhere in the U.S., without exception. For example,
As a physician practicing in Tennessee, I now must guess whether a prosecutor would charge me with a crime when I help women through those 5 percent situations, contending with the spectrum of risks and imperfect predictions. If a woman’s amniotic membranes rupture at 16 weeks, if she is febrile and bleeding, I think the risk of prosecution is low. If she is medically stable but at high risk for infection and hemorrhage, I am not sure.
I believe the state’s law was intended to be ambiguous and confusing, to make physicians scared to provide abortion care. We’re incentivized to pause, wait, reconsider — actions that can be life-threatening. Women with ectopic pregnancies have waited in emergency rooms for hospital lawyers to determine whether an abortion can proceed. We have denied abortion care to women with cancer and other complex medical problems who find out they are pregnant. Women with pregnancies affected by life-limiting fetal anomalies — anencephaly (no skull or brain), renal agenesis (no kidneys, no proper lung development) — have had to seek abortion care out of state. One patient I managed who was unable to receive abortion care ultimately required an emergency hysterectomy and delivered an extremely premature infant, 14 weeks early.
State Senator Richard Briggs, a Republican and a physician, is the Senate sponsor of a bill in Tennessee that would amend the law to provide true exceptions to perform abortions for ectopic pregnancies and lethal fetal anomalies and to prevent maternal death or serious bodily harm. It has been developed with tireless input from physicians and in coalition with other anti-abortion state legislators. But the powerful anti-abortion group Tennessee Right to Life, which crafted the original law, has mobilized against the reform, threatening lawmakers that voting for it will affect their “pro-life score.”
the ambiguity is the point.
How Texas law views women.
See also Chris Hay.es
The alliance between the GOP and evangelicals will become more strained, I think, particularly when/if Trump declares he knows the compromise position that will please everyone. (Extra points to the pundit who asks, "Missionary?")
The Evangelicals do not want a compromise, especially a compassionate one based on science. I predict Trump will go there exactly and the Evangelicals will freak. Trump has already made that claim – it's an indication that Trump knows women are fired-up and turning out. Trump previously did victory laps about crushing Roe.
IMO, Trump doesn't care about women's rights but he does care that they will vote against him. So he'll lie and try to blunt the issue, hoping some women will stay home on election day. The two Senators from TX had nothing to say about Cate Cox today which means they know they are screwed no matter WHAT they say.
We're a long ways from it being an issue yet, but if/when Trump debates Biden next year, this is certain to be an issue in the debate. I said "when" but "if" seems to be more likely. Trump is going to have baggage re Covid statistics, unemployment, abortion, nd Trump's criminal record by that time. None of which Trump can face Biden on.
I read that there may be around a dozen states with some form of women's reproductive rights initiatives on the '24 ballot. Watch how this develops and where but this may be crucial in a few swing states.
The WORST thing that could happen to Biden before November is if the GOP faces the issue of women's rights, rejects the absolutist evangelical position, and proposes a legislative installation of the standards defined in Roe. But they can't do it, so it's the big motivator in turnout.
The alliance between the GOP and evangelicals will become more strained, I think, particularly when/if Trump declares he knows the compromise position that will please everyone. (Extra points to the pundit who asks, "Missionary?"
I appreciate your analysis, it is always spot on. Here you've missed one key thing. You assume anything means something to any of these people. Evangeligals have no clue about anything, much less why they support Stump. Someone told them to get born again and poof! The reverse is true. The magats will support Stump no matter. And the evangelicals will always be magats. Nothing can change that, he's jesus now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_u_GyHgOW0
The GOP thinks they have a workaround for their abortion problem: immigration. It's why Trump baited his followers with "Dictator for a day": so he could close the borders, and drill, baby, drill. It's why Mike Johnson is holding the Ukraine hostage, over immigration. They may soften their stance toward abortion around the edges, but they don't think they have to capitulate.
I never got to grow up around hardly any women that were "real" Democrats. Around these parts you were a Democrat if you drank or tolerated drinking. Wet, as they called it, was a single issue for identifying as a Dem. Later, I ran in to working class people in Missouri, and my SO's mother said to me one day that women were considered as chattel in the state of Missouri. I was young and had two degrees. and the word chattel was not even close to being in my vocabulary. I just looked it up again just now, and they prompt me to look at the difference between a chattel and a slave. What more of a definition does one need. I guess God did not know how to properly craft a rib. I doubt a lot about God, but I don't doubt God messed that up. All the monotheists seem to have the same theology on that. How do they get to the place they are today? How can anyone point to the holy land and find a proper example for their child's behavior? Face it. Call it the evil land. No one seems to like the "do not kill" commandment and then spends their life in the "holy land" looking for loopholes. Have I digressed? No. What God would put a soul in an unviable fetus? (hint: God is all knowing). Only a twisted God is the abortion of the intellectual offspring of the wedding of politics and religion. No religion claims that God. None should. We did create God in our image. Now we look in the mirror in horror at what we created. If not, the TV will suffice.
"the question is, what is “imminent"
That's for Texas to know and you all to find out! The GOP defiantly has a women problem. Problem for us normals is all our media talks about is Stump. Stump's court dates, Stump's social media, Stump's property values or Hunter Biden's penis. Once again Stump always distracts from the real issue, it is his only super-power! He understands the drive by media.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjyg5ylSMO0
The GOP fucks everything up but all anyone talks about is Stump. All msnbc does is talk about Stump, it's at least 90%. All FAUX does is lie about Stump. MSNBC dillutes. Fox News Pollutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SE94HWE3ks
The "Medical Exemption" clause in all these laws was and is an Utter Sham and transparent but successful attempt to con the Normies into believing that Republicans aren't a gaggle of vicious monsters who ab-so-fvcking-lutely want some to suffer and die to keep the rest in line, while returning every women to the role of subservient housewife unable to control her body and unable to ever leave a marriage.
Thinking of the "get the hell out of Texas" (or any other GOP-dominated state) sentiment and sort of a general reflection on everything socio-political that's come to pass in the last 50+ years; I'm in my 70's and for a long time I have felt that the guys who ran off to Canada to escape the Vietnam era draft had pretty accurately figured out America.
Joy unspeakable!…….. Rudy Giuliani must pay nearly $150M to former election workers in Georgia trial – Raw Story