Roe v Wade has been overturned. How do you feel about that?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Trump is going on a rampage against Lindsey Graham because Graham criticized his abortion statement.

[N.E. Brigand]

I wonder if it hurts or helps Donald Trump that he's taking criticism from the right. As noted somewhere earlier in this thread, Lindsey Graham said around the time of Dobbs that abortion should be left to the states, but then he changed positions and called for a national ban.

Edited to mention that some observers think Trump and Graham are only pretending to feud about this.

- - - - - - - - - -
Meanwhile, here's President Biden's response to Trump's statement.

[N.E. Brigand]

I appreciated Rachel Maddow tonight chiding six different major news outlets for falling for Donald Trump's gimmick, and I also like her point that by ceding abortion decisions to the states, Trump is implicitly endorsing anti-abortion laws, like Florida's forthcoming six-week ban, that are stricter than anything he's explicitly supported in the past. More good criticism came from Jamison Foser, who pointed out that the New York Times coverage of Trump's statement quotes five Republicans but only one Democrat. The mainstream media, as usual, skews right.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I wonder if it hurts or helps Donald Trump that he's taking criticism from the right.

My tentative opinion is that it hurts him. He needs all of the fanatic believers to vote for him to win, and if they are not convinced that he is one of them, some might not. It is hard for me to imagine even moderate supporters of reproductive choice voting for Trump because he waffles on abortion.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Arizona Supreme Court rules that a near-total abortion ban from 1864 is enforceable



ETA:

[N.E. Brigand]

Kari Lake, the Arizona Republican who lost the race for governor in 2022 (I can't remember if she ever conceded that election)* and is now running for U.S. Senate, then described the 1864 anti-abortion statute upheld today by Arizona's Supreme Court a "great law" and said that she expected it to go into effect. Now she realizes how awful today's news will be for her campaign, so she's demanding that the person who defeated her two years ago, Governor Katie Hobbs, makes this problem go away.

*Edited to note that Lake never conceded, so someone should ask her why, as Governor, she doesn't do what she's calling on Hobbs to do.

[N.E. Brigand]

Matt Yglesias notes that it wasn't just Kari Lake who was pushing for today's decision: "Arizona Republicans passed a court-packing bill, packed the court with conservative judges, and are now claiming they had no idea that a solidly right-wing court would implement the Republican Party's platform commitments on abortion."

That was in 2016. The court-packing move was overseen by then-Governor Doug Ducey, who is now calling for today's court decision to be overturned by a fifteen-week ban. Ducey appointed five of the court's seven justices, four of them after this scheme was enacted. One of the leading Democrats who then objected to Gov. Ducey's move was Katie Hobbs, who is now the governor.

Today not only Ducey but other Arizona Republicans, terrified of the monster they've created, are denouncing the court decision they long dreamed of. An example would be state representative Matt Gress, but it was just a year ago that Gress sponsored a fetal personhood bill that passed the legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Hobbs.

Yglesias further observes that this isn't limited to Arizona Republicans, because when the national Republican Party last "bothered to write ... [a party] platform ... [it was] explicitly committed to Constitutional rights for embryos [and] Appointing federal judges who agree".

The Project 2025 group making plans to staff up a potential Trump administration explicitly asks all potential judges and DOJ, FDA, and HHS employees to affirm the statement that "Life has an right to legal protection from conception to natural death."

And Donald Trump refuses to answer questions about whether his administration would enforce the Comstock Act, which Republicans cite as a tool that could be used to prosecute people who send birth control pills through the mail.

We also can suppose from Trump's statement issued just yesterday that he supports today's decision, since he said that this will be decided in each state.

I support the codification of Roe: protection for abortion rights for any cause until viability (about 24 weeks) and after that for cases of rape, incest, or danger to the life or health of the expectant mother. Conservatives claiming to be moderate have pushed to reduce that to 15 weeks. But as Florida shows, that's just a feint: Ron DeSantis refused to say when campaigning for reelection in 2022 whether he would supporter restricting abortion before fifteen weeks -- the law then in place in Florida -- but in 2023, he signed a law outlawing abortion after six weeks (which the state's supreme court said last week could go into effect).

That is to say: as with the 2022 Dobbs decision, what happened today is exactly what conservatives have been trying to do for years, and what they intend to keep doing: put women in servitude. Does that sound like exaggeration? I don't think it is. Remember, when the 1864 law was passed -- long before Arizona was even a state! -- women couldn't vote. Common sense suggests that fact all by itself should render a law which only affects women (and today's ruling in support of that law) void.

But it won't! Accordingly, for months, activists have been gathering signatures for an initiative to put a pro-choice state constitutional amendment on the ballot this November.

[N.E. Brigand]

We also can suppose from Trump's statement issued just yesterday that he supports today's decision, since he said that this will be decided in each state.

It appears that we need not suppose:

[N.E. Brigand]

CNN and MSNBC each devoted at least two hours of coverage yesterday to the news from Arizona.

Fox News covered it for just twelve minutes.

Republican-appointed judges on a Republican-packed court delivering a huge Republican victory in accordance with the express wishes of multiple Republican politicians on an issue that Republicans regularly campaign on, and Republican-oriented Fox News doesn't think its newsworthy.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Wikipedia entry on William Jones, the guy who apparently wrote the 1864 abortion bill that Arizona's supreme court upheld yesterday, suggests he was a poor husband to this five wives, including the second wife whom he was alleged to have abducted at the age of twelve. (He was then the U.S. Attorney in Arizona, and he resigned from that post when a complaint was sent to President Buchanan asking that Jones be removed on those grounds.)

[N.E. Brigand]

The Arizona Republic reports that the state's Republicans today blocked legislation that would have overturned the 1864 law that was upheld yesterday by the state's supreme court and criminalizes almost all abortions.

- - - - - - - - - -
In 2018, then-President Trump asked Congress to pass a 20-week abortion ban for him to sign. Now he says he opposes a national ban.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump says Republicans don't need to push for a national ban on abortions because "we broke Roe v. Wade."

[N.E. Brigand]

Seems about right:

[N.E. Brigand]

"Texan Suing Ex’s BFFs Over Abortion Allegedly Promised to Drop Lawsuit for Sex. According to a new court filing, he also allegedly threatened to release intimate videos of his ex-wife unless she did his laundry." That's a new article in Rolling Stone about the law Texas enacted in 2021 allowing private citizens to sue those who perform or pay for abortions.

[N.E. Brigand]

Speaking in Tampa today, President Biden urged Floridians to vote for the abortion rights issue that will be on the ballot in November. It requires 60% to pass. After making a joke about the Bible that Trump is selling ("I almost wanted to buy one just to see what the hell is in it"), Biden reminded the audience how we got to this point: "It was a political deal to get rid of Roe, a political deal Donald Trump made with the evangelical base of the Republican Party to look past his moral and character flaws in exchange for his commitment to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe."

[RoseMorninStar]

(...) After making a joke about the Bible that Trump is selling ("I almost wanted to buy one just to see what the hell is in it"), (...)."

[N.E. Brigand]

The Arizona Republic reports that the state's Republicans today blocked legislation that would have overturned the 1864 law that was upheld yesterday by the state's supreme court and criminalizes almost all abortions.

Arizona's House of Representatives voted 32-28 today to repeal the 1864 law. Republicans hold a two-seat lead in that body, but three Republicans joined all Democrats on this vote. The state's Senate will vote on the repeal next week.