Opponents Attempt To Outlaw Abortion State-By-State
Also, ProPublica looks at how "personhood" movements could dismantle the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision upholding the legality of abortion.
Los Angeles Times: For Abortion Foes, A National Strategy Built At The State Level
The numbers have changed little over the decades: A majority of Americans support abortion. But across the country, the antiabortion movement has recorded major success in the last four years, part of a well-funded national strategy to legislate abortion out of existence state by state. Legislatures, many stocked with new Republican majorities, have passed laws that, if upheld, would drastically reduce access to abortion for millions of women (Semuels and La Ganga, 10/12).
ProPublica: This Alabama Judge Figured Out How To Dismantle Roe V. Wade
Tom Parker is a pivotal figure in the so-called personhood movement, which has its roots in a loophole in Roe v. Wade. While that 1973 ruling was creating a broad new right to abortion grounded in a constitutionally protected right to privacy, an often-overlooked passage left an opening for those who would seek its undoing. During oral arguments, the justices had asked Roe’s lawyer what would happen if a fetus were held to be a person under the Constitution. "I would have a very difficult case," she had replied. In his majority opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun noted that the Supreme Court could find no basis for such status, before adding, "If this suggestion of personhood is established, [Roe’s] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed." "What Justice Parker has done," said Lynn Paltrow, executive director of the nonprofit National Advocates for Pregnant Women, "is explicitly lay out the roadmap for overturning Roe v. Wade" (Martin, 10/10).
