URL | https://Persagen.com/docs/anti-abortion_movements.html | |
Sources | Persagen.com | Wikipedia | other sources (cited in situ) | |
Source URL | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_movements | |
Date published | 2021-10-29 | |
Curation date | 2021-10-29 | |
Curator | Dr. Victoria A. Stuart, Ph.D. | |
Modified | ||
Editorial practice | Refer here | Date format: yyyy-mm-dd | |
Summary | Anti-abortion movements, also referred to as pro-life movements, are involved in the abortion debate advocating against the practice of abortion and its legality. Many anti-abortion movements began as countermovements in response to the legalization of elective abortions. | |
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Named entities | Show | |
Ontologies | Show |
Anti-abortion movements, also referred to as pro-life movements, are involved in the abortion debate advocating against the practice of abortion and its legality. Many anti-abortion movements began as countermovements in response to the legalization of elective abortions.
Abortion is the ending of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus.
A Conservative MP, Cathay Wagantall, introduced a bill in 2020 seeking to ban abortions for the purpose of choosing a child's sex. Abortion in Canada is legal at all stages of pregnancy and funded in part by the Canada Health Act. In 2013, the Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, barred the members of Parliament from discussing the matter in the Commons. Harper's move was linked to his repeated declarations that he wouldn't allow the abortion debate to be re-opened. Since the 1980s, at least forty-three private member bills that are against abortion have been sent to the House of Commons yet none of them have been passed. Canadian anti-abortion discourse increasingly "aims at changing cultural values more than legislation; is explicitly framed as 'pro-woman'; largely avoids appealing to religious grounds; and relies on a new 'abortion-harms-women' argument that has supplanted and transformed traditional fetal personhood arguments".
Since 1998, Catholics [Christian Right] and allies have held national anti-abortion >March for LifeParliament Hill. Two have gathered over 10,000 protesters. In addition to the national protests, anti-abortionists protest abortion clinics across the nation in attempts to stop abortions from continuing.
The United States anti-abortion movement formed as a response to the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton Supreme Court of the United States decisions, with many anti-abortion organizations having emerged since then. There is also a smaller consistent life ethic movement, favoring a philosophy which opposes all forms of killing, including abortion, war, euthanasia, and capital punishment.
The current movement is in part a continuation of previous debates on abortion that led to the practice being banned in all states in the late 19th century. The initial movement was led by physicians, but also included politicians and feminists. Among physicians, advances in medical knowledge played a significant role in influencing anti-abortion opinion. Quickening, which had previously been thought to be the point at which the soul entered a human was discovered to be a relatively unimportant step in fetal development, caused many medical professionals to rethink their positions on early term abortions. Ideologically, the Hippocratic Oath and the medical mentality of that age to defend the value of human life as an absolute also played a significant role in molding opinions about abortion.
Meanwhile, many 19th-century feminists tended to regard abortion as an undesirable necessity forced upon women by thoughtless men. The "free love" wing of the feminist movement refused to advocate abortion and treated the practice as an example of the hideous extremes to which modern marriage was driving women. Marital rape and the seduction of unmarried women were societal ills which feminists believed caused the need to abort, as men did not respect women's right to abstinence.
Evangelical organizations like Focus on the Family [see also: Focus on the Family Canada] are involved in anti-abortion movements.
[NPR.org, 2022-03-04] Abortions after 15 weeks are one signature away from being banned in Florida.
Abortions after 15 weeks would be banned in
The measure comes as
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[19thNews.org, 2022-03-03] Idaho's state Senate just voted to adopt a Texas-inspired abortion ban. The bill, which has to be voted on by Idaho's House of Representatives, could make Idaho the next state to effectively ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
The
While in Texas anyone can sue for damages. Idaho's anti-abortion bill allows only the individual or family to sue - meaning the person who received an abortion, their parents, their other children, their siblings or in-laws and whoever helped conceive the fetus. Under
In a letter to a state lawmaker, Idaho's chief deputy attorney general has suggested that the proposed law is
Even with a narrower roster of potential plaintiffs, the threat of a lawsuit remains powerful. A successful plaintiff would receive damages of at least $20,000 - double the minimum penalty established in the Texas law. The bill has exceptions for people who become pregnant through rape or incest, but the process is likely to deter many. To qualify for this exception, the pregnant person needs to have previously reported the rape or incest to law enforcement and show a police report to the doctor providing an abortion. "The vast majority of people don't even report their rape or incest to the police," Humes-Schulz said. "While it is an exception on paper, in reality people really aren't going to be able to access it." Texas offers a preview of the potential impact.
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The Anti-Abortion Movement Is Desperate to Protect the Filibuster. Anti-abortion forces can't win by democratic means, so they are campaigning to protect the filibuster and crush voting rights - and Democrats may be content to let them win.
[NPR.org, 2021-11-15] How the Texas ban on most abortions is harming survivors of rape and incest.
The SAFE Alliance in Austin helps survivors of child abuse, sexual assault and domestic violence. Back before Texas' new abortion law [Texas Heartbeat Act of 2021, enacted 2011-09-01] went into effect, the organization counseled a 12-year-old girl who had been repeatedly raped by her father.
Piper Stege Nelson, chief public strategies officer for the SAFE Alliance, says the father didn't let the young girl leave the house. "She got pregnant," Nelson says. "She had no idea about anything about her body. She certainly didn't know that she was pregnant." The girl was eventually able to get help, but if this had happened after Sept. 1, when the state law went into effect, her options would have been severely curtailed, Nelson says.
In Texas, abortions are now banned as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. The law, Senate Bill 8, is currently the most restrictive ban on the procedure in effect in the country. According to a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist national poll, Texas' law is unpopular across the political spectrum.
Notably, the law also makes no exceptions for people who are victims of rape or incest. Social workers in Texas say that's causing serious harm to sexual assault survivors in the state.
[OpenSecrets.org, 2021-11-05] Anti-abortion rights lobbying at high as Supreme Court hears challenges to Texas law.
The anti-abortion rights sector spent $300,000 on federal lobbying in the third quarter ahead of Monday [2021-11-01]'s Supreme Court hearing over the legality of the most recent Texas abortion law, S.B. 8, which bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. It is the sector's second highest third quarter lobbying spend on record, behind 2020 when it spent $326,000, according to OpenSecrets data.
The Texas Heartbeat Act of 2021, introduced as Senate Bill 8 (SB 8) and House Bill 1515 (HB 1515) on March 11, 2021, and was signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott on 2021-05-19. It is the first six-week abortion ban in the United States, and the first of its kind to rely on enforcement by private individuals through civil lawsuits, rather than by the government through criminal or civil enforcement. The Act establishes a system in which members of the public can sue anyone who performs or facilitates an illegal abortion for a minimum of $10,000 in statutory damages.
Oral arguments began Monday [2021-11-01] for Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson, a suit brought by abortion providers hoping to block S.B. 8, and United States v. Texas, a suit brought by President Joe Biden's administration to similarly block the law from going into effect. The Texas restrictions have prompted widespread condemnation among abortion-access advocates, who say women rarely know they are pregnant at six weeks.
The United States Department of Justice is arguing that S.B. 8 is unconstitutional under existing Supreme Court of the United States precedents like Roe v. Wade, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The law, however, aimed at getting around the precedents by not permitting any state official to enforce it. Rather, the statute can only be enforced through private civil actions, making it murky to figure out who can be sued to block the law.
The Supreme Court declined to block the law in September 2021, voting 5-4 against Texas abortion providers who filed an emergency application for relief against the law and triggering the lawsuit from the United States Department of Justice.
The anti-abortion rights sector has spent $790,000 so far on lobbying this year between two groups. Susan B. Anthony List, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that works to end abortion in the U.S. spent $630,000, the most in the sector in 2021. Trailing behind is Right to Life, the largest national grassroots anti-abortion organization, which spent $160,000 in 2021.
The pro-abortion rights sector spent $286,110 on federal lobbying this quarter, most of which came from Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood [<< Wikipedia entry] is the top spender in the pro-abortion rights industry so far in 2021. The group has spent $842,839 lobbying abortion rights this year - $146,110 of which it spent during the third quarter. The last month of the third financial quarter, September, was the only month the Texas law was in effect during the latest lobbying spend. It's the most money Planned Parenthood has spent in a third quarter since 2018, when it spent $448,680 preceding the midterm elections. The organization also has more lobbyists affiliated with it now than it has since 2013.
The Center for Reproductive Rights which spent the second most on lobbying in the pro-abortion rights sector, spent $80,000 in the third quarter this year. That's more than what the organization spent in the third quarters of 2019 and 2020 combined. It's spent $340,000 in favor of abortion rights so far this year.
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[theRealNews.com, 2021-11-03] Supreme Court's hearings on abortion bans are an ominous sign of what's coming. This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on two cases concerning the Constitutionality of Texas's infamous "heartbeat bill," and the proceedings have reproductive rights advocates worried. | It is increasingly clear to reproductive rights activists nationwide that Roe, as we know it, has a limited shelf life with this Court. | In addition to anti-abortion activists expanding their targets, their tactics - from loudspeakers and door blockades to targeted harassment and even physical violence outside of clinics - are also likely to be repurposed and redeployed on other battlefronts.
The Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in two cases this Monday [2021-11-01]: Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson, and United States v. Texas [2021, not United States v. Texas (2016)]. Both cases involve the constitutionality of the controversial Texas abortion law, SB 8. While the hearing left it unclear how the Court would eventually rule on SB 8, the comments of many justices were an ominous harbinger of what's to come. Said comments certainly suggest that when the court takes up the Mississippi case Dobbs v. Jackson's Women's Health Organization on 2021-12-01, the continuing Constitutionality of Roe v. Wade will clearly be at risk of being overturned - or at least dramatically altered.
SB 8, which was passed and signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott on 2021-05-18 and took effect in Texas on 2021-09-01, was the first of its kind (although Ohio legislators have proposed a similar bill this week). And it has had an unorthodox trip through the court system. As Mary Ziegler of SCOTUSblog notes, "The litigation surrounding SB 8, the Texas law that bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, has been many things, but never ordinary."
Unlike the upcoming Dobbs v. Jackson's Women's Health Organization case, which centers on Mississippi's ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, SB 8 used a much more novel approach to achieve much more draconian ends. What makes SB 8 unique is that, instead of just outlawing abortion, Texas effectively granted every citizen the right to sue anyone for up to $10,000 whom they suspect to have "facilitated" an abortion in the state of Texas after the cutoff point, which occurs roughly six weeks after conception (before most people know they're pregnant), when a "fetal heartbeat" [heartbeat bill], which is not actually a heartbeat, can be detected. By deputizing their citizens to enforce the law instead of doing it themselves, Texas lawmakers have argued that the state could not be sued for the law being unconstitutional. Texas abortion providers and the United States government both challenged this claim on the grounds that this regulatory scheme deliberately circumvents the usual safeguards for a constitutionally protected right, arguing that Texas judges and clerks should not allow suits to proceed under it.
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court initially refused to issue an injunction to freeze the ban until a full hearing on SB 8's constitutionality could take place, shocking many abortion rights advocates and leaving the six-week abortion ban in place. However, perhaps due to strong pushback regarding the uncertainty this refusal caused, or because of the implications of the legal approach that Texas took in passing this ban, the Supreme Court decided to push up the hearing on the constitutionality of this case to Monday [2021-11-01?].
The lawyers defending Texas's SB 8 often were flustered throughout their defense of this law, with even some of the more conservative justices seeming concerned during questioning that the regulatory scheme may limit the power of the federal courts to rule on the constitutionality of any of the rights the law puts into question. However, during the proceedings this week, Associate Justice Samuel Alito let slip a question to Solicitor General of Texas Judd E. Stone II [see also | local copy] that included the phrase, "if Roe or [Planned Parenthood v.] Casey is altered," setting off alarm bells for onlookers that Roe may indeed soon be altered. This question, which relied on the premise that a law outright banning abortion at six weeks may soon be found to be consitutional, sheds ominous light on how the Court may rule in Dobbs v. Jackson's Women's Health Organization.
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