Breaking... US Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade
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Exactly what national confidence is left in the court NTM
Insider trading with supreme court decisions.
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I note that the article covers itself with the minor disclaimer that "OK, actually, there was no conflict of interest, but it looks bad to us."
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"Though there may not be a direct conflict of interest, however, the fact that the justice has a personal financial interest in the oil and gas industry and its ability to make profits without threat of regulation raises concerns over how he may rule in fossil fuel-related cases."
Was the actual "quote"
Does this inspire national confidence? I for one cannot understand why someone who takes a Justice's oath to the constitution and has a lifetime, guaranteed tenure, are set for life, $274k/yr, the state all but wipes their ass for them, why they are still engaged in such enterprise at all, any enterprise for that matter. 9 Americans with that much sway over 342 million others and they don't even commit to it? How much net worth do the justices amass for themselves before we say this is getting out of hand? $100M? $100 Bn? $1T? That doesn't sound like the United States of America I read about in the Federalist Papers, but maybe it's been a while.
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And now, women are going to prison for seeking healthcare
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An absolute disgrace. And to think these are people who claim to be ‘pro-life’.
There is nothing ‘pro-life’ about any of this. Cruel, evil bastards, the GOP.
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Bit of obfuscation going on there to say women are going to prison for seeking healthcare, using that particular story as an example 😳
The mediaite article appears to be critical of the way the story is being reported in the New York Times, it’s a bit of a reach, because the NYT article does cover all the details, in the first few paragraphs?
A Nebraska teenager who used abortion pills to terminate her pregnancy was sentenced on Thursday to 90 days in jail after she pleaded guilty earlier this year to illegally concealing human remains.
The teenager, Celeste Burgess, 19, and her mother, Jessica Burgess, 42, were charged last year after the police obtained their private Facebook messages, which showed them discussing plans to end the pregnancy and “burn the evidence.”
Prosecutors said the mother had ordered abortion pills online and had given them to her daughter in April 2022, when Celeste Burgess was 17 and in the beginning of the third trimester of her pregnancy. The two then buried the fetal remains themselves, the police said.
Jessica Burgess pleaded guilty in July to violating Nebraska’s abortion law, furnishing false information to a law enforcement officer and removing or concealing human skeletal remains. She faces up to five years in prison at her sentencing on Sept. 22, according to Joseph Smith, the top prosecutor in Madison County, Neb.
There’s nothing particularly forewarned there, it’s based upon a misrepresentation of reality to attribute the rise in infant mortality to abortion bans. In it’s broader context, it’s well known that there are numerous contributing factors to the rising infant and maternal mortality rates in the US, not the least of which is the public healthcare system has been in decline for a number of years now:
The persistent problems with maternal and infant mortality point to a larger problem of often inadequate and fragmented public health in the U.S. Long before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, there were signs of structural inefficiencies and comparatively mediocre outcomes throughout the U.S. healthcare system. In the past decade, U.S. deaths have soared from a wide range of diseases and conditions, including diabetes, suicide, stroke, and unintentional injuries, such as drug and alcohol overdoses. With the exception of a very small (0.08%) increase in 2019, life expectancy in the U.S. has been falling since 2014; the only OECD nation to have a decrease between 2014 and 2019.
A 2020 Commonwealth Fund study concluded that the U.S. has the highest rate of avoidable deaths in the world. This was measured as “premature deaths from conditions that are considered preventable with timely access to effective and quality healthcare.”
The great unknown is whether comprehensive, universal access to quality healthcare will ever become a reality in the U.S. What is more probable in the short and medium term are piecemeal changes to the nation’s public health systems, such as the measure adopted in Illinois that shores up post-natal care for mothers for up to one year after giving birth.
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I mean proper access to healthcare would have likely prevented the first case entirely.
Most of those issues were already in effect in 2021 so that is still a dramatic increase in a single year on top of the issues you already mentioned. In any case if you can't provide proper treatment to pregnant women and newborns maybe banning abortions is not the smartest healthcare move ever as it puts more stress on a stressed system.
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Proper access to education is a far better predictor of outcomes than access to means to prevent pregnancy from ever occurring in the first place, let alone access to termination of the pregnancy after the fact, or attempting to bury the evidence after that fact. The public education system in the US is nothing to write home about either.
I don’t think it’s a particularly dramatic increase tbh, considering all factors as opposed to organisations with a vested interest in overturning abortion bans seeking to attribute the increase in infant mortality rates to a single factor which suits their narrative.
I think we can both acknowledge that the introduction of abortion bans had nothing to do with healthcare. Those who introduced them in particular don’t view abortion or birth control as healthcare. In the case mentioned above, there was no stress whatsoever put on an already stressed healthcare system - the pills were ordered online by her mother, and upon successful termination of her pregnancy, they sought to bury the evidence which, for no apparent reason, wouldn’t stay buried!
We’ve condemned organisations and individuals in this country for similarly trying to cover up evidence in the form of dead babies, and not made excuses for their behaviour by claiming if they’d only had access to proper healthcare it would have likely prevented the necessity to bury the evidence that they never sought access to healthcare in the first place.
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I agree that a lot of the abortion legislation is cruel especially 6 week ban which is pretty close to a flat-out ban as many ladies don't know their pregnant at that stage but this case is really complex sadly. She was charged for removing skeletal remains at 30 weeks pregnant something which would have been illegal before the much publicised Dobbs ruling. It's something which would be illegal in many places not just not deep red states.
I do agree with the gist of your post and yeah some of the stuff that we have seen such as criminalising women for travelling to get an abortion, the in-depth surveillance and as stated the barbaric 6 week ban is not acceptable in any civilised nation but this doesn't quite fall into those categories.
I don't think either lady should be going to jail and this is not a "win" for the draconian abortion bills we have seen recently, but not entirely sure I am willing to make a martyr of someone who burned and buried a fetus when 30 weeks pregnant either.
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While I’m not going to get into how a civilised nation should be quantified (we’ll disagree, trust me 😂), I disagree with the idea that neither lady should be going to jail.
It’s not unusual for 17 year olds to be thoughtless, selfish and ignorant of the broader consequences of their actions, so a three month custodial sentence with two years probation is appropriate for the offences the daughter, essentially a child, has been found guilty of committing.
Her mother, on the other hand, it’s not unreasonable to assume unless there were mitigating circumstances such as being equally developmentally stunted as her daughter, that she would know better, and have a greater understanding of the consequences of her actions - not only putting her daughters life at risk (though some in favour of Roe would argue that ingesting pills to induce an abortion in the third trimester of pregnancy is safe), but also the attempt to assist in covering up the fact that she ordered the pills online, she assisted in the abortion, and she assisted in the disposal of human remains. She faces up to five years in prison for doing so, which is an appropriate sentence for the offences in a civilised nation IMO:
Celeste Burgess, now 19, pleaded guilty to illegally concealing human remains after she had an abortion when around 28 weeks pregnant, beyond the 20-week limit then set by Nebraska law.
Her mother, Jessica Burgess, 42, faces up to five years in prison for helping her.
In May, Burgess pleaded guilty to a felony charge of removing or concealing human skeletal remains. Two other misdemeanour charges against her - concealing the death of another person and false reporting - were dropped. In addition to serving three months in jail, she faces two years of probation.
Her mother has pleaded guilty to providing an illegal abortion, making false statements to authorities and tampering with human skeletal remains. Her sentencing begins in September.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66271537.amp
No women are going to prison for seeking healthcare. Anyone, regardless of their sex, who violates States laws, it shouldn’t be regarded as unusual that in a civilised nation they should expect to see the inside of a prison cell.
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Genius, it’s not healthcare or abortions it’s ‘mishandling human skeletal remains’ now. Genius. The libs will never see through this obvious charade for prosecuting abortions by another name.
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You'd better tell us all about that 100% reliable contraception method 🙄
Fingal County Council are certainly not competent to be making decisions about the most important piece of infrastructure on the island. They need to stick to badly designed cycle lanes and deciding on whether Mrs Murphy can have her kitchen extension.
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Joanne Hayes had a stillbirth, buried it on the family farm and that was all perfectly legal in Ireland at the time. In fact no register existed where stillbirths could be registered until years later.
I think it's still voluntary to register a stillbirth.
Fingal County Council are certainly not competent to be making decisions about the most important piece of infrastructure on the island. They need to stick to badly designed cycle lanes and deciding on whether Mrs Murphy can have her kitchen extension.
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I mean I agree the US needs better education systems but since that isn't happening either...
I am not sure how an 11.5% is not a dramatic increase? It is 227 more deaths so it isn't a case of it being small numbers doing wonky things with percentages. The case mentioned above was not part of my reference of more stress on an already stressed system. That was just the abortion legislation in general and not every case will be relevant. It was part of the discussion in the increase in infant mortality in births. I would like to see the numbers for the mothers as well. The US and especially a lot of red states already had some of the worst outcomes for prospective mothers in the western world before all of this which is what a lot of your list was contributing to but your list is not really accounting for a recent increase which should be going down with better technology and drugs (and was going down). So for even more deaths to occur means something has changed. I don't care what anti choice people consider abortion to be, it effects healthcare. It effects healthcare decisions and therefore it is healthcare whether or not people want to deny reality.
The organisations involved were not acting on behalf of the mothers in question. In fact they were avoiding giving the women access to proper healthcare. Me choosing to go through a healthcare procedure is different from having it forced on me by an orginisation. They are wildly different situations.
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It’s not prosecuting abortions by another name, the charges still relate to abortion, insofar as disposal of the remains are concerned:
(2) Except as provided in subsection (3) of this section, a person commits the offense of removing, abandoning, or concealing human skeletal remains or burial goods if he or she: …
And it goes on to clarify some of the conditions.
https://codes.findlaw.com/ne/chapter-28-crimes-and-punishments/ne-rev-st-sect-28-1301.html
It’s classed as a Class 4 felony in Nebraska:
- Class IV felonies carry a maximum penalty of two years' imprisonment and one years' post-release supervision. Examples include misappropriation of funds, specified lottery offenses, stalking, abortion violations, and certain repeat theft offenses.
It’s not that libs won’t see through an obvious charade for prosecuting abortions by another name, it’s that it’s completely understandable they would ignore the circumstances which don’t suit their narrative and the offences the mother and her daughter are actually accused of committing:
The Burgess case illustrates how it’s often other people who kick off the pregnancy criminalization process. An If/When/How report from 2022 found that, in 61 cases where adults were investigated for pregnancy outcomes, 26 percentwere reported to police by friends or family, while 45 percent were reported by care professionals, including doctors, nurses, and social workers.
Elizabeth Ling, senior helpline counsel at If/When/How, told Jezebel in a statement she was “disturbed” and “appalled” that, despite self-managed abortion not being illegal in Nebraska, prosecutors chose to punish a young person by weaponizing other laws against them.
https://jezebel.com/nebraska-teen-sentenced-to-90-days-in-jail-for-self-man-1850656813
It’s not punishing a young person for an abortion, it’s punishing all parties involved for committing offences which are illegal under Nebraska State law. It’s certainly not punishing women for seeking healthcare, that doesn’t apply in this case. They would have been protected under Federal EMTALA if they had sought healthcare earlier in the pregnancy, though they wouldn’t have been provided with an abortion.
The mother decided to order abortion pills online, which explains the considerable delay in using them. Libs will call that telemedicine, as though Conservatives would never see through that charade of exploiting women in desperate circumstances, by another name:
The providers left their shoes at the door, took turns cooking meals and talked about how to get more abortion pills into women’s hands in red states. They knew that Aid Access was singularly willing to do so. Since the lifting of the F.D.A. requirement of an in-person visit for prescribing mifepristone — a change the Biden administration made permanent in late 2021 — several start-ups had entered the telemedicine abortion market. They included nonprofit ventures (Just the Pill, Carafem) and private companies, like Abortion on Demand, Choix and Hey Jane, which has raised more than $3 million in venture capital funding. Like Aid Access, the start-ups asked patients to fill out an intake form about their medical history and date of pregnancy, which a medical professional reviewed. But the start-ups offered more limited services. Most provided pills through the 10th week of pregnancy; Aid Access offers them through the 12th week, which studies have shown to be safe. Most notable, the start-ups didn’t write prescriptions for pills in states with bans.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/magazine/abortion-interstate-travel-post-roe.html
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Lawsuit against Texas forcing women to carry nonviable pregnancies to term. Lawsuit is asking Texas to clarify. My guess is it won't, rightwingers hate specificity.
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Pretty sure burning and burying a body would be illegal even in democratic states? I don't think this is about prosecuting abortions. Like, you can't just go around burning bodies and burying them where you want. What do you think a 29 week developed fetus looks like? It's pretty much a fully formed baby at that point and well past the point of viability that many states use to put time limits on abortions.
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If this was a still birth at home they would have reported it to the authorities. As they were doing something illegal under the abortion laws l they couldn't do that. Their actions had everything to do with the abortion laws.
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The majority of states, and even European countries have gestational term limits on abortions though. 29 weeks is well past this. This was still the case before the ruling on roe vs Wade and they arent specific to Nebraska or "red states". What they did would have been illegal regardless of that, and isn't related to any changes the law. Would have been illegal in most of Europe too
To add, I am pro choice. I just don't see this case as an attack on abortion rights but is more to do with their subsequent actions.
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It isn’t happening, and States rolling back on abortion laws isn’t going to make it happen any faster. They’re not a direct relationship. The point was that in order to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place, access to education should be the priority, as opposed to imagining access to abortion will change anything. It hasn’t done in the last 50 years since Roe.
12% even, isn’t a dramatic increase when all factors are considered, as opposed to an organisation hoping to overturn abortion bans, putting an increase in infant and maternal mortality rates down to abortion bans. That seems a rather obvious correlation, as opposed to determining the actual cause of the increase. Given what we know of the broader circumstances and the declining availability of healthcare and hospitals in rural areas, that would seem an altogether more reasonable explanation for the rise in infant and maternal mortality rates. I’m reluctant to throw the cat among the pigeons but I’d be remiss if I didn’t suggest one explanation for an increase is due to how the statistics are being gathered and presented - depending upon your sources, some researchers refer to pregnant women, some refer to… pregnant people. Obviously if you’re accounting for more than just pregnant women, it tends to inflate the figures.
The point I was making about the people who introduced abortion bans is that rather like yourself - they don’t particularly care what anyone thinks does or doesn’t constitute healthcare, they don’t view the provision of elective abortion services as healthcare. Neither your perception, nor your declarations, has any influence on that reality.
The comparison I was making was in terms of how they chose to dispose of human remains, by covering up the evidence, and they have been roundly criticised and condemned for doing so, yet in this particular case, there are some who would prefer to overlook that fact and pretend the State of Nebraska is trying to punish young women for having an abortion, as opposed to what the mother and daughter were actually charged with, related to how they chose to dispose of human remains in an attempt to cover up the evidence. That’s why pro-choice advocates in the US are trying to bend reality beyond all recognition in order to support their narrative. It actually doesn’t take a genius to figure out their motivations in doing so. That’s why I said this particular case is not a good example to be using to support their narrative.
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I really don't think the difference between pregnant people and pregnant women will be close to enough to describing a difference of 12%. The numbers of trans people is just not there. I mean you are looking at about half of about 1% of the population. Never mind that it skews younger as well due to a higher acceptance and so are less likely to have children. Plus pregnant people vs pregnant women may well just be counting them all and labeling them as women.
How much did hospital services drop in a single year, noting the death had been dropping in previous years? From the linked article "The spike in infant deaths caused by genetic and birth defects was even steeper than the rise in infant deaths as a whole: Between 2021 and 2022, such deaths increased by 21.6 percent." It seems pretty obvious if you are forcing people to carry pregnancies which have no hope of surviving you are going to increase infant deaths.
They don't view it as healthcare but all that can be done about that is to highlight cases their laws don't work for and show the general suffering their laws create.
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That 12% Christy refers to about 227 out of the 2,200 infants that died in 2022, in Texas alone. So we’re not even looking at 1% of the population, but a very specific set of the population, and while it definitely skews younger, that definitely doesn’t correlate to acceptance. One of the reasons for the higher rates of unintended pregnancies among LGBT youth is the lack of acceptance, and because of that lack of acceptance, there is a lack of access to all sorts of services, including but not limited to education, healthcare, housing, just generally poorer outcomes all round really -
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna27383
Now obviously if all you’re looking for is to overturn abortion bans, you’re inclined to propose access to abortion, or lack thereof, as the cause of, and solution to an issue where the research is purposefully written to be as vague as possible in order to inflate the numbers. My comment was more about the difficulty in untangling research conducted by advocacy groups proposing to overturn the overturning of Roe (and if you’re familiar with Roe, the original case, you’re familiar with the outcome for Jane Roe. Spoiler - it’s not good). They’re doing exactly what you’re suggesting in using the terms interchangeably, and then referring to them all as one homogeneous group of women. They’re not the worst offenders in attempting to inflate the figures though, that honour goes to the tangled mess which refers not to women, but to “black, brown bodies” as though it were a text written in Colonial times.
Hospital services and access to healthcare didn’t drop in a single year, it’s been in decline for years, which is why it would be silly to suggest that the rise in infant deaths in a single year was down to abortion bans when it was already predicted that there would be an increase in the number of infants born at the tail end of the pandemic, which there was. An increase of 10,000, which is not a lot in a single year when the average number of infants born is around 300,000 anyway. The increase in the number of infants who die shortly after birth corresponds to the increase in the numbers of infants born; an increase of 227 on 2,000, in that context, isn’t even approaching 1% -
What’s actually obvious is that if there is an increase in the number of infants are born, there will be an increase in the number of infants who die, when all factors are taken into consideration, rather than limiting explanations to just one factor which just so neatly happens to coincide with the explanation you prefer.
Naturally one is inclined to use cases which make their point, but it’s reaching to try and suggest cases where the laws were not relevant are at fault, especially when those laws permit exemptions in the cases one is trying to portray as being an outcome of the restrictions, which were in fact a consequence of a lack of medical intervention on the part of physicians who are willing to put women at risk in order to make a broader political point, or cases where young girls aren’t being penalised for seeking healthcare, they’re being penalised for attempting to hide the evidence that they purposely sought to avoid contact with healthcare professionals who under the law have a duty to report such cases.
It’s her mother is being penalised for providing an abortion, and there’s no evidence her mother is a healthcare professional - there would have been no record of events had things gone really sideways, other than their chat logs from social media detailing their intentions before they acted upon them. That’s why they’re not being punished unfairly, and abortion bans aren’t the issue, it goes back further than that, before a woman is ever pregnant in the first place.
Post edited by One eyed Jack on0 -
"What’s actually obvious is that if there is an increase in the number of infants are born, there will be an increase in the number of infants who die, when all factors are taken into consideration, rather than limiting explanations to just one factor which just so neatly happens to coincide with the explanation you prefer."
Actually, what's actually obvious from the link I posted earlier (unfortunately via phone so no chance to comment,) is women are being forced to carry unviable pregnancies until the child is born and quickly dies. So, more forced births, more baby deaths. Rescinding bans, or as in the case in question asks, getting the conditions clarified, is the only way to fix that. My feeling is nothing will come of the case because it's Texas, where the lone star is a review.
And, of course, more risky pregnancies forced to go through like ectopic, tubal, caesarean scar pregnancies, risks both women and children. But, that's o.k. with the forced birthers like yourself.
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It’s more unlikely anything will come of it simply because trying to get clarity like that will mean that physicians will be in an even worse position to be able to use their judgment to determine an appropriate course of action in those circumstances, and I don’t expect politicians or lawmakers to be in any position to be writing nuance like that into law.
Texas law doesn’t criminalise a woman for having an abortion, it places limitations on what physicians can do in any given circumstance. Personally, I’m not in favour of those laws which don’t allow for physicians to be able to use their best judgment in determining what is an appropriate course of action, but I’m even less concerned about the idea of forcing women to give birth, that’s impossible in any case without some form of incarceration. I’m more interested in preventing unintended pregnancies in the first place, but also preventing people from exploiting women seeking to end their pregnancy.
I’m more concerned about abortion pill providers exploiting women, because they won’t be prosecuted or held accountable for the consequences of their actions, their hands are clean as far as they’re concerned, and they can sit around sipping tea and discussing how to get abortion pills into the hands of women in Red States and tell themselves they’re doing it for the benefit of women. We’ve seen how that works out in the case in Nebraska, and we all know who won’t face prosecution either. They’ll happily accept payment for their services, but none of the responsibility for their actions.
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I’m more interested in preventing unintended pregnancies in the first place
Well that's shag-all use to anyone who finds themselves in a crisis pregnancy situation.
I’m more concerned about abortion pill providers exploiting women, because they won’t be prosecuted or held accountable for the consequences of their actions, their hands are clean as far as they’re concerned,
Their hands are clean. They are supplying drugs legally, if clients lie to them (just as I could lie to a doctor to get e.g. strong painkillers by saying I have bad pain when I don't) that's not their responsibility.
It was obvious 20+ years ago that abortion pills would make forced birth laws unenforceable, it was just a matter of time.
Fingal County Council are certainly not competent to be making decisions about the most important piece of infrastructure on the island. They need to stick to badly designed cycle lanes and deciding on whether Mrs Murphy can have her kitchen extension.
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All the women with nonviable pregnancies were intentionally pregnant. So, that's not interesting to you? You're OK with forcing them to give birth?
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Well that's shag-all use to anyone who finds themselves in a crisis pregnancy situation.
Innit crazy how the more well educated a woman is, the less likely she is ever to find herself in a crisis pregnancy situation? I don’t think that’s a coincidence. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, it’s just far, far less likely.
Their hands are clean. They are supplying drugs legally, if clients lie to them (just as I could lie to a doctor to get e.g. strong painkillers by saying I have bad pain when I don't) that's not their responsibility.
It was obvious 20+ years ago that abortion pills would make forced birth laws unenforceable, it was just a matter of time.
Your analogy doesn’t hold up because if anyone is attended to by a medical professional, the medical professional is required to provide them with a standard of care, and can be held liable for the consequences of their actions.
The availability of abortion pills didn’t, and doesn’t make abortion laws unenforceable, it’s why the doctor in your previous scenario may be reluctant to dispense medication or to prescribe medication knowing that they could be liable for anything which happens either to you, or to anyone you give the medication to.
What you’re attempting to argue is like suggesting that because people attempt to circumvent and violate existing laws, those laws are unenforceable. They’re not.
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I do find it tragic that some states are trying to ban legally approved time proven safe medicine in abortion pills but are happy to wing it when enacting the death penalty using lethal injection.
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