RICHMOND — President Trump, Republican lawmakers in Virginia and conservatives across the country attacked Gov. Ralph Northam and other state Democrats on Wednesday after they defended a failed bill that sought to reduce restrictions on late-term abortions.
The furor escalated quickly after Republicans circulated a video of Del. Kathy Tran (D-
Fairfax) acknowledging that her bill, like current law, would allow abortions up to the point of delivery in cases when the mother’s life or health was at serious risk. Northam, a pediatric neurologist, was asked about the issue in a radio interview and gave an answer that was later used by Republicans to suggest he favored killing live babies.
“I’m surprised that he did that. I’ve met him a number of times,” Trump told the Daily Caller when asked about Northam’s remarks. He said he had not seen the governor’s words but had watched the video of Tran.
Northam, whose spokeswoman said his words were being taken out of context by Republicans, called the notion that he would approve of killing infants “disgusting.”
“I have devoted my life to caring for children, and any insinuation otherwise is shameful and disgusting,” he said.
The president’s remarks came after former U.S. senator Jim DeMint called the bill “vile” and said Northam should abandon it or resign. Fox News, Breitbart and other conservative news outlets posted stories suggesting that the Democrats embraced infanticide. Tran, the bill’s sponsor, suspended her social media accounts after being besieged with threatening messages.
And Virginia House Speaker Kirk Cox (R-Colonial Heights) made a dramatic floor speech citing Bible verses to vow to fight against abortion.
Republicans, clinging to a slim majority in an election year when the entire General Assembly is on the ballot, sought to exploit the moment as part of a campaign to paint Democrats as radicals out of step with the state. And the uproar played directly into the national partisan divide, fueling outrage at a time when Democrats are launching presidential campaigns on issues far removed from abortion, an intractable issue in American society.
[Northam faces fierce Republican backlash over abortion bill]
“What my Democratic colleagues are most concerned about is what this moment actually reveals,” said Del. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah), the House majority leader. “It was a moment of unbridled honesty about their agenda and their legislation and what it actually does.”
It was a surprising turn for legislation that had been introduced — and had failed — each of the past three years without any drama. A companion bill offered in the state Senate more than a week ago failed without comment.
The frontal political assault was also unusual for a chamber that often congratulates itself on the civil “Virginia way,” with GOP leaders joining Northam just last week to tout a bipartisan agreement to clean up coal ash.
[Coal ash cleanup bill wins bipartisan backing in Virginia]
In recent weeks, Republicans have sought to focus attention on several Democratic bills that they say would harm the state. Those include bills to enact a $15 minimum wage, move the state away from fossil fuels and provide tax relief to low-income families.
The strategy escalated with the abortion bill, which failed in a subcommittee Monday.
More than half of the bill’s 20 Democratic patrons were elected in 2017 during the surge that nearly erased the GOP majority in the House of Delegates. Among them was Tran, one of a record number of women elected that year and also the first Virginia legislator to nurse her infant on the House floor.
Late-term abortions are permitted in Virginia only when the mother’s life is at grave risk. Tran’s bill would have lifted some restrictions. Instead of requiring three doctors to sign off on the procedure, it would have required only one doctor. It also would have removed language requiring that the danger to the mother be “substantial and irremediable.”
On WTOP radio’s “Ask the Governor” program Wednesday, NBC4’s Julie Carey asked Northam whether he supported Tran’s bill.
Northam expressed support and spoke broadly about his belief that politicians should leave abortion decisions to women and their doctors.
But his comments about third-trimester abortions set off critics. The procedures, he said, are “done in cases where there may be severe deformities. There may be a fetus that’s not viable. So in this particular example, if a mother’s in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
After which, Twitter erupted.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) retweeted Northam’s comment and added, “I never thought I would see the day America had government officials who openly support legal infanticide.”
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel tweeted that “Dem Gov. Ralph Northam, a pediatrician himself, is defending born-alive abortions.”
And DeMint, the former senator from South Carolina who is chairman of the Conservative Partnership Institute, tweeted: “VA Gov Northam is no moderate, this is one of the most vile, radical pro-abortion positions ever put forward. This is evil. He should recant or resign.”
Northam’s office made clear the governor was talking about prognosis and medical treatment, not ending the life of a delivered baby. Ofirah Yheskel, a spokeswoman for Northam, said the Republicans were mischaracterizing his remarks.
“No woman seeks a third-
trimester abortion except in the case of tragic or difficult circumstances, such as a nonviable pregnancy or in the event of severe fetal abnormalities, and the governor’s comments were limited to the actions physicians would take in the event that a woman in those circumstances went into labor,” she said.
“Attempts to extrapolate these comments otherwise is in bad faith and underscores exactly why the governor believes physicians and women, not legislators, should make these difficult and deeply personal medical decisions,” Yheskel said.
Republicans on Tuesday night had begun circulating video of Tran discussing the bill in subcommittee the day before. By Wednesday morning, the Republican Party of Virginia had sent the clip out in a fundraising email.
The clip shows Tran before the subcommittee as Gilbert — who is off camera — grills her about whether the bill allows an abortion up to the moment a woman is about to give birth.
Tran paused at the question, and Gilbert added, “She’s dilating.”
With a grimace and another long pause, Tran said, “Mr. Chairman, that would be, you know, a decision that the doctor, the physician and the woman would make a decision at that point.”
“I understand that,” Gilbert said. “I’m asking if your bill allows that.”
“My bill would allow that, yes,” Tran replied.
Seeming to catch Democrats off guard, Cox took the extraordinary step Wednesday of leaving the dais to make a speech from the floor — something he said no other speaker has done in his 30 years in the legislature.
Invoking the biblical story of David and verses in the book of Hebrews about God being the builder of all things, Cox said he was horrified last week when the New York state legislature passed a law to make late-term abortions easier to get.
“Governor Northam vowed to enact [the same law] if Democrats take over the House and Senate in 2019,” he said.
[How a reshaped Virginia legislature learned to love Medicaid expansion]
“I will never stop fighting for the promise of life, as long as I hold a gavel, as long as I can speak in this microphone,” Cox said to thunderous applause from Republican delegates.
Del. Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax), the minority leader, stood to respond, upbraiding Republicans for their treatment of Tran and for what she said was misrepresenting the issue.
“It clearly was part of an orchestrated ambush,” she said. The public statements “were made to inflame passions throughout the social media echo chamber. And they succeeded. What was the result? Ongoing harassment, intimidation against the patron, several members of this body, their families and their children.”
The Democratic caucus slammed the Republicans for what it called “sensationalism and fearmongering [that] is more representative of Trump-style national politics rather than the Virginia Way” and pointed out that 91 percent of the member of the Republican caucus are men.
“House Republicans would do well to pay Virginia women — and their women colleagues — more respect,” Democratic spokeswoman Kathryn Gilley said.
Infanticide
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Infanticide (or infant homicide) is the intentional killing of infants.
Parental infanticide researchers have found that mothers are far more likely than fathers to be the perpetrators of neonaticide[1] and slightly more likely to commit infanticide in general.[2]
Anthropologist Laila Williamson notes that “Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunter gatherers to high civilizations, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule.”[3]:61
In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible.
Contents
History[
The practice of infanticide has taken many forms over time. Child sacrifice to supernatural figures or forces, such as that believed to have been practiced in ancient Carthage, may be only the most notorious example in the ancient world.
A frequent method of infanticide in ancient Europe and Asia was simply to abandon the infant, leaving it to die by exposure (i.e., hypothermia, hunger, thirst, or animal attack).[4][5]
On at least one island in Oceania, infanticide was carried out until the 20th century by suffocating the infant,[6] while in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and in the Inca Empire it was carried out by sacrifice (see below).
Paleolithic and Neolithic
Many Neolithic groups routinely resorted to infanticide in order to control their numbers so that their lands could support them. Joseph Birdsell believed that infanticide rates in prehistoric times were between 15% and 50% of the total number of births,[7] while Laila Williamson estimated a lower rate ranging from 15% to 20%.[3]:66 Both anthropologists believed that these high rates of infanticide persisted until the development of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution.[8]:19 Comparative anthropologists have calculated that 50% of female newborn babies were killed by their parents during the Paleolithic era.[9] From the infants hominid skulls (e.g., Taung child skull) that had been traumatized, has been proposed cannibalism by Raymond A. Dart.[10] The children were not necessarily actively killed, but neglect and intentional malnourishment may also have occurred, as proposed by Vicente Lull as an explanation for an apparent surplus of men and the below average height of women in prehistoric Menorca.[11]
In ancient history
In the New World
Archaeologists have uncovered physical evidence of child sacrifice at several locations.[8]:16–22 Some of the best attested examples are the diverse rites which were part of the religious practices in Mesoamerica and the Inca Empire.[12][13][14]
In the Old World
Three thousand bones of young children, with evidence of sacrificial rituals, have been found in Sardinia. Pelasgians offered a sacrifice of every tenth child during difficult times. Syrians sacrificed children to Jupiter and Juno. Many remains of children have been found in Gezer excavations with signs of sacrifice. Child skeletons with the marks of sacrifice have been found also in Egypt dating 950–720 BCE.[citation needed] In Carthage “[child] sacrifice in the ancient world reached its infamous zenith”.[attribution needed][8]:324 Besides the Carthaginians, other Phoenicians, and the Canaanites, Moabites and Sepharvites offered their first-born as a sacrifice to their gods.
Ancient Egypt
In Egyptian households, at all social levels, children of both sexes were valued and there is no evidence of infanticide.[15] The religion of the Ancient Egyptians forbade infanticide and during the Greco-Roman period they rescued abandoned babies from manure heaps, a common method of infanticide by Greeks or Romans, and were allowed to either adopt them as foundling or raise them as slaves, often giving them names such as “copro -” to memorialise their rescue.[16] Strabo considered it a peculiarity of the Egyptians that every child must be reared.[17] Diodorus indicates infanticide was a punishable offence.[18] Egypt was heavily dependent on the annual flooding of the Nile to irrigate the land and in years of low inundation severe famine could occur with breakdowns in social order resulting, notably between 930–1070 AD and 1180–1350 AD. Instances of cannibalism are recorded during these periods but it is unknown if this happened during the pharaonic era of Ancient Egypt.[19] Beatrix Midant-Reynes describes human sacrifice as having occurred at Abydos in the early dynastic period (c. 3150–2850 BCE),[20] while Jan Assmann asserts there is no clear evidence of human sacrifice ever happening in Ancient Egypt.[21]
Carthage
According to Shelby Brown, Carthaginians, descendants of the Phoenicians, sacrificed infants to their gods.[22] Charred bones of hundreds of infants have been found in Carthaginian archaeological sites. One such area harbored as many as 20,000 burial urns.[22]Skeptics suggest that the bodies of children found in Carthaginian and Phoenician cemeteries were merely the cremated remains of children that died naturally.[23]
Plutarch (c. 46–120 AD) mentions the practice, as do Tertullian, Orosius, Diodorus Siculus and Philo. The Hebrew Bible also mentions what appears to be child sacrifice practiced at a place called the Tophet (from the Hebrew taph or toph, to burn) by the Canaanites. Writing in the 3rd century BCE, Kleitarchos, one of the historians of Alexander the Great, described that the infants rolled into the flaming pit. Diodorus Siculus wrote that babies were roasted to death inside the burning pit of the god Baal Hamon, a bronze statue.[24][25]
Greece and Rome
The historical Greeks considered the practice of adult and child sacrifice barbarous,[26] however, the exposure of newborns was widely practiced in ancient Greece, it was even advocated by Aristotle in the case of congenital deformity — “As to the exposure of children, let there be a law that no deformed child shall live.”[27] In Greece, the decision to expose a child was typically the father’s, although in Sparta the decision was made by a group of elders.[28] Exposure was the preferred method of disposal, as that act in itself was not considered to be murder; moreover, the exposed child technically had a chance of being rescued by the gods or any passersby.[29] This very situation was a recurring motif in Greek mythology.[30] To notify the neighbors of a birth of a child, a woolen strip was hung over the front door to indicate a female baby and an olive branch to indicate a boy had been born. Families did not always keep their new child. After a woman had a baby, she would show it to her husband. If the husband accepted it, it would live, but if he refused it, it would die. Babies would often be rejected if they were illegitimate, unhealthy or deformed, the wrong sex, or too great a burden on the family. These babies would not be directly killed, but put in a clay pot or jar and deserted outside the front door or on the roadway. In ancient Greek religion, this practice took the responsibility away from the parents because the child would die of natural causes, for example hunger, asphyxiation or exposure to the elements.
The practice was prevalent in ancient Rome, as well. Philo was the first philosopher to speak out against it.[31] A letter from a Roman citizen to his sister, or a pregnant wife from her husband,[32] dating from 1 BC, demonstrates the casual nature with which infanticide was often viewed:
- “I am still in Alexandria. … I beg and plead with you to take care of our little child, and as soon as we receive wages, I will send them to you. In the meantime, if (good fortune to you!) you give birth, if it is a boy, let it live; if it is a girl, expose it.”,[33][34] “If you give birth to a boy, keep it. If it is a girl, expose it. Try not to worry. I’ll send the money as soon as we get paid.”[35]
In some periods of Roman history it was traditional for a newborn to be brought to the pater familias, the family patriarch, who would then decide whether the child was to be kept and raised, or left to die by exposure.[36] The Twelve Tables of Roman law obliged him to put to death a child that was visibly deformed. The concurrent practices of slavery and infanticide contributed to the “background noise” of the crises during the Republic.[36]
Infanticide became a capital offense in Roman law in 374 AD, but offenders were rarely if ever prosecuted.[37]
According to mythology, Romulus and Remus, twin infant sons of the war god Mars, survived near-infanticide after being tossed into the Tiber River. According to the myth, they were raised by wolves, and later founded the city of Rome.
Judaism
Judaism prohibits infanticide, and has for some time, dating back to at least early Common Era. Roman historians wrote about the ideas and customs of other peoples, which often diverged from their own. Tacitus recorded that the Jews “regard it as a crime to kill any late-born children”.[38] Josephus, whose works give an important insight into 1st-century Judaism, wrote that God “forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten, or to destroy it afterward”.[39]
Pagan European tribes
In his book Germania, Tacitus wrote in 98 AD that the ancient Germanic tribes enforced a similar prohibition. He found such mores remarkable and commented: “[The Germani] hold it shameful to kill any unwanted child.” It has become clear over the millennia, though, that Tacitus’ description was inaccurate; the consensus of modern scholarship significantly differs. John Boswell believed that in ancient Germanic tribes unwanted children were exposed, usually in the forest.[40]:218 “It was the custom of the [Teutonic] pagans, that if they wanted to kill a son or daughter, they would be killed before they had been given any food.”[40]:211 Usually children born out of wedlock were disposed that way.
In his highly influential Pre-historic Times, John Lubbock described burnt bones indicating the practice of child sacrifice in pagan Britain.[41]
The last canto, Marjatan poika (Son of Marjatta), of Finnish national epic Kalevala describes an assumed infanticide. Väinämöinen orders the infant bastard son of Marjatta to be drowned in marsh.
The Íslendingabók, a main source for the early history of Iceland, recounts that on the Conversion of Iceland to Christianity in 1000 it was provided – in order to make the transition more palatable to Pagans – that “the old laws allowing exposure of newborn children will remain in force”. However, this provision – like other concessions made at the time to the Pagans – was abolished some years later.
Christianity
Christianity rejects infanticide. The Teachings of the Apostles or Didache said “thou shalt not kill a child by abortion, neither shalt thou slay it when born”.[42] The Epistle of Barnabas stated an identical command, both thus conflating abortion and infanticide.[43] Apologists Tertullian, Athenagoras, Minucius Felix, Justin Martyr and Lactantius also maintained that exposing a baby to death was a wicked act.[4] In 318 AD, Constantine I considered infanticide a crime, and in 374 AD, Valentinian I mandated the rearing of all children (exposing babies, especially girls, was still common). The Council of Constantinople declared that infanticide was homicide, and in 589 AD, the Third Council of Toledo took measures against the custom of killing their own children.[37]
Middle Ages
Whereas theologians and clerics preached sparing their lives, newborn abandonment continued as registered in both the literature record and in legal documents.[5]:16 According to William L. Langer, exposure in the Middle Ages “was practiced on gigantic scale with absolute impunity, noticed by writers with most frigid indifference”.[44]:355–356 At the end of the 12th century, notes Richard Trexler, Roman women threw their newborns into the Tiber river in daylight.[45]
Unlike other European regions, in the Middle Ages the German mother had the right to expose the newborn.[46] In Gotland, Sweden, children were also sacrificed.[47]
In the High Middle Ages, abandoning unwanted children finally eclipsed infanticide.[citation needed] Unwanted children were left at the door of church or abbey, and the clergy was assumed to take care of their upbringing. This practice also gave rise to the first orphanages.
However, very high sex ratios were common in even late medieval Europe, which may indicate sex-selective infanticide.[48]
Arabia
Some Muslim sources allege that pre-Islamic Arabian society practiced infanticide as a form of “post-partum birth control”.[49] The word waʾd was used to describe the practice.[50] These sources state that infanticide was practiced either out of destitution (thus practiced on males and females alike), or as “disappointment and fear of social disgrace felt by a father upon the birth of a daughter”.[49]
Some authors believe that there is little evidence that infanticide was prevalent in pre-Islamic Arabia or early Muslim history, except for the case of the Tamim tribe, who practiced it during severe famine according to Islamic sources.[51] Others state that “female infanticide was common all over Arabia during this period of time” (pre-Islamic Arabia), especially by burying alive a female newborn.[8]:59[52] A tablet discovered in Yemen, forbidding the people of a certain town from engaging in the practice, is the only written reference to infanticide within the peninsula in pre-Islamic times.[53]
Islam
Infanticide is explicitly prohibited by the Qur’an.[54] “And do not kill your children for fear of poverty; We give them sustenance and yourselves too; surely to kill them is a great wrong.”[55] Together with polytheism and homicide, infanticide is regarded as a grave sin (see 6:151 and 60:12).[49] Infanticide is also implicitly denounced in the story of Pharaoh’s slaughter of the male children of Israelites (see 2:49; 7:127; 7:141; 14:6; 28:4; 40:25).[49]
Ukraine and Russia
Infanticide may have been practiced as human sacrifice, as part of the pagan cult of Perun. Ibn Fadlan describes sacrificial practices at the time of his trip to Kiev Rus (present day Ukraine) in 921–922, and describes an incident of a woman voluntarily sacrificing her life as part of a funeral rite for a prominent leader, but makes no mention of infanticide. The Primary Chronicle, one of the most important literary sources before the 12th century, indicates that human sacrifice to idols may have been introduced by Vladimir the Great in 980. The same Vladimir the Great formally converted Kiev Rus into Christianity just 8 years later, but pagan cults continued to be practiced clandestinely in remote areas as late as the 13th century.
In Kamchatka, babies were killed and thrown to the dogs.[56]:105 American explorer George Kennan noted that among the Koryaks, a Mongoloid people of north-eastern Siberia, infanticide was still common in the nineteenth century. One of a pair of twins was always sacrificed.[57]
Georgia
The Svans killed newborn females by filling their mouths with hot ashes.[56]:106
United Kingdom
Infanticide (as a crime) gained both popular and bureaucratic significance in Victorian Britain. By the mid 19th century, in the context of criminal lunacy and the insanity defence, killing one’s own child(ren) attracted ferocious debate, as the role of women in society was defined by motherhood, and it was thought that any woman who murdered her own child was by definition insane and could not be held responsible for her actions. Several cases were subsequently highlighted during the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment (1864-66), as a particular felony where an effective avoidance of the death penalty had informally begun.
The New Poor Law Act of 1834 ended parish relief for unmarried mothers and allowed fathers of illegitimate children to avoid paying for “child support”.[58] Unmarried mothers then received little assistance and the poor were left with the option either entering the workhouse, prostitution, infanticide or abortion. By the middle of the century infanticide was common for social reasons, such as illegitimacy, and the introduction of child life insurance additionally encouraged some women to kill their children for gain. Examples are Mary Ann Cotton, who murdered many of her 15 children as well as 3 husbands, Margaret Waters, the ‘Brixton Baby Farmer’, a professional baby-farmer who was found guilty of infanticide in 1870, Jessie King hanged in 1889, Amelia Dyer, the ‘Angel Maker’, who murdered over 400 babies in her care, and Ada Chard-Williams, a baby farmer who was later hanged at Newgate prison.
The Times reported that 67 infants were murdered in London in 1861 and 150 more recorded as “found dead”, many of which were found on the streets. Another 250 were suffocated, half of them not recorded as accidental deaths. The report noted that “infancy in London has to creep into life in the midst of foes.”[59]
Recording a birth as a still-birth was also another way of concealing infanticide because still-births did not need to be registered until 1926 and they did not need to be buried in public cemeteries.[60] In 1895 the Sun (London) published an article “Massacre of the Innocents” highlighting the dangers of baby-farming, in the recording of stillbirths and quoting Braxton-Hicks, the London Coroner, on lying-in houses: “I have not the slightest doubt that a large amount of crime is covered by the expression `still-birth’. There are a large number of cases of what are called newly-born children, which are found all over England, more especially in London and large towns, abandoned in streets, rivers, on commons, and so on.” He continued “a great deal of that crime is due to what are called lying-in houses, which are not registered, or under the supervision of that sort, where the people who act as midwives constantly, as soon as the child is born, either drop it into a pail of water or smother it with a damp cloth. It is a very common thing, also, to find that they bash their heads on the floor and break their skulls.”[61]
The last British woman to be executed for infanticide of her own child was Rebecca Smith, who was hanged in Wiltshire in 1849.
The Infant Life Protection Act of 1897 required local authorities to be notified within 48 hours of changes in custody or the death of children under seven years. Under the Children’s Act of 1908 “no infant could be kept in a home that was so unfit and so overcrowded as to endanger its health, and no infant could be kept by an unfit nurse who threatened, by neglect or abuse, its proper care and maintenance.”
Asia
China
Short of execution, the harshest penalties were imposed on practitioners of infanticide by the legal codes of the Qin dynasty and Han dynasty of ancient China.[63]
Marco Polo, the explorer, saw newborns exposed in Manzi.[64] China’s society practiced sex selective infanticide. Philosopher Han Fei Tzu, a member of the ruling aristocracy of the 3rd century BC, who developed a school of law, wrote: “As to children, a father and mother when they produce a boy congratulate one another, but when they produce a girl they put it to death.”[65] Among the Hakka people, and in Yunnan, Anhui, Sichuan, Jiangxi and Fujian a method of killing the baby was to put her into a bucket of cold water, which was called “baby water”.[66]
Infanticide was known in China as early as the 3rd century BC, and, by the time of the Song dynasty (960–1279 AD), it was widespread in some provinces. Buddhist belief in transmigration allowed poor residents of the country to kill their newborn children if they felt unable to care for them, hoping that they would be reborn in better circumstances. Furthermore, some Chinese did not consider newborn children fully “human”, and saw “life” beginning at some point after the sixth month after birth.[67]
Contemporary writers from the Song dynasty note that, in Hubei and Fujian provinces, residents would only keep three sons and two daughters (among poor farmers, two sons and one daughter), and kill all babies beyond that number at birth.[68] Initially the sex of the child was only one factor to consider. By the time of the Ming Dynasty, however (1368–1644), male infanticide was becoming increasingly uncommon. The prevalence of female infanticide remained high much longer. The magnitude of this practice is subject to some dispute; however, one commonly quoted estimate is that, by late Qing, between one fifth and one quarter of all newborn girls, across the entire social spectrum, were victims of infanticide. If one includes excess mortality among female children under 10 (ascribed to gender-differential neglect), the share of victims rises to one third.[69][70]
Scottish Physician John Dudgeon, who worked in Beijing, China, during the Qing Dynasty said that in China, “Infanticide does not prevail to the extent so generally believed among us, and in the north it does not exist at all.”[71]
Gender-selected abortion, abandonment, and infanticide are illegal in present-day China. Nevertheless, the US State Department,[72] and the human rights organization Amnesty International[73] have all declared that China’s family planning programs, called the one child policy, contribute to infanticide.[74][75][76] The sex gap between males and females aged 0–19 years old was estimated to be 25 million in 2010 by the United Nations Population Fund.[77]
Japan
Since feudal Japan the common slang for infanticide was “mabiki” (間引き) which means to pull plants from an overcrowded garden. A typical method in Japan was smothering through wet paper on the baby’s mouth and nose.[78] It became common as a method of population control. Farmers would often kill their second or third sons. Daughters were usually spared, as they could be married off, sold off as servants or prostitutes, or sent off to become geishas.[79] Mabiki persisted in the 19th century and early 20th century.[80] To bear twins was perceived as barbarous and unlucky and efforts were made to hide or kill one or both twins.[81]
India
Female infanticide of newborn girls was systematic in feudatory Rajputs in South Asia for illegitimate female children during the Middle Ages. According to Firishta, as soon as the illegitimate female child was born she was held “in one hand, and a knife in the other, that any person who wanted a wife might take her now, otherwise she was immediately put to death”.[84] The practice of female infanticide was also common among the Kutch, Kehtri, Nagar, Bengal, Miazed, Kalowries in India inhabitants, and also among the Sindh in British India.[85]
It was not uncommon that parents threw a child to the sharks in the Ganges River as a sacrificial offering. The British colonists were unable to outlaw the custom until the beginnings of the 19th century.[86]:78
According to social activists, female infanticide has remained a problem in India into the 21st century, with both NGOs and the government conducting awareness campaigns to combat it.[87] In India female infanticide is more common than the killing of male offspring, due to sex-selective infanticide.[88] In China for example, the sex gap between males and females aged 0–19 years old was estimated to be 25 million in 2010 by the United Nations Population Fund.[77]
Africa
In some African societies some neonates were killed because of beliefs in evil omens or because they were considered unlucky. Twins were usually put to death in Arebo; as well as by the Nama people of South West Africa; in the Lake Victoria Nyanza region; by the Tswana in Portuguese East Africa; in some parts of Igboland, Nigeria twins were sometimes abandoned in a forest at birth (as depicted in Things Fall Apart), oftentimes one twin was killed or hidden by midwives of wealthier mothers; and by the !Kung people of the Kalahari Desert.[8]:160–161 The Kikuyu, Kenya‘s most populous ethnic group, practiced ritual killing of twins.[89]
Infanticide is rooted in the old traditions and beliefs prevailing all over the country. A survey conducted by Disability Rights International found that 45% women interviewed by them in Kenya were pressured to kill their children born with disabilities. The pressure being much higher in the rural areas, with every second mother being forced out of three.[90]
Australia
Literature suggests infanticide may have occurred reasonably commonly among Indigenous Australians, in all areas of Australia prior to European settlement. Infanticide may have continued to occur quite often up until the 1960s. An 1866 issue of The Australian News for Home Readers informed readers that “the crime of infanticide is so prevalent amongst the natives that it is rare to see an infant”.[91]
Author Susanna de Vries in 2007 told a newspaper that her accounts of Aboriginal violence, including infanticide, were censored by publishers in the 1980s and 1990s. She told reporters that the censorship “stemmed from guilt over the stolen children question”.[92] Keith Windschuttle weighed in on the conversation, saying this type of censorship started in the 1970s.[92] In the same article Louis Nowra suggested that infanticide in customary Aboriginal law may have been because it was difficult to keep an abundant number of Aboriginal children alive; there were life-and-death decisions modern-day Australians no longer have to face.[92]
South Australia and Victoria
According to William D. Rubinstein, “Nineteenth-century European observers of Aboriginal life in South Australia and Victoria reported that about 30% of Aboriginal infants were killed at birth.”[93]
James Dawson wrote a passage about infanticide among Indigenous people in the western district of Victoria, which stated that “Twins are as common among them as among Europeans; but as food is occasionally very scarce, and a large family troublesome to move about, it is lawful and customary to destroy the weakest twin child, irrespective of sex. It is usual also to destroy those which are malformed.”[94]
He also wrote “When a woman has children too rapidly for the convenience and necessities of the parents, she makes up her mind to let one be killed, and consults with her husband which it is to be. As the strength of a tribe depends more on males than females, the girls are generally sacrificed. The child is put to death and buried, or burned without ceremony; not, however, by its father or mother, but by relatives. No one wears mourning for it. Sickly children are never killed on account of their bad health, and are allowed to die naturally.”[94]
Western Australia
In 1937, a reverend in the Kimberley offered a “baby bonus” to Aboriginal families as a deterrent against infanticide and to increase the birthrate of the local Indigenous population.[95]
Australian Capital Territory
A Canberran journalist in 1927 wrote of the “cheapness of life” to the Aboriginal people local to the Canberra area 100 years before. “If drought or bush fires had devastated the country and curtailed food supplies, babies got short shift. Ailing babies, too would not be kept” he wrote.[96]
New South Wales
A bishop wrote in 1928 that it was common for Aboriginal Australians to restrict the size of their tribal groups, including by infanticide, so that the food resources of the tribal area may be sufficient for them.[97]
Northern Territory
Annette Hamilton, a professor of anthropology at Macquarie University who carried out research in the Aboriginal community of Maningrida in Arnhem Land during the 1960s wrote that prior to that time part-European babies born to Aboriginal mothers had not been allowed to live, and that ‘mixed-unions are frowned on by men and women alike as a matter of principle’.[98]
North AmericaInuit
There is no agreement about the actual estimates of the frequency of newborn female infanticide in the Inuit population. Carmel Schrire mentions diverse studies ranging from 15–50% to 80%.[99]
Polar Inuit (Inughuit) killed the child by throwing him or her into the sea.[100] There is even a legend in Inuit mythology, “The Unwanted Child”, where a mother throws her child into the fjord.
The Yukon and the Mahlemuit tribes of Alaska exposed the female newborns by first stuffing their mouths with grass before leaving them to die.[101] In Arctic Canada the Inuit exposed their babies on the ice and left them to die.[44]:354
Female Inuit infanticide disappeared in the 1930s and 1940s after contact with the Western cultures from the South.[102]
Canada[
The Handbook of North American Indians reports infanticide among the Dene Natives and those of the Mackenzie Mountains.[103][104]
Native Americans
In the Eastern Shoshone there was a scarcity of Indian women as a result of female infanticide.[105] For the Maidu Native Americans twins were so dangerous that they not only killed them, but the mother as well.[106] In the region known today as southern Texas, the Mariame Indians practiced infanticide of females on a large scale. Wives had to be obtained from neighboring groups.[107]
Mexico
Bernal Díaz recounted that, after landing on the Veracruz coast, they came across a temple dedicated to Tezcatlipoca. “That day they had sacrificed two boys, cutting open their chests and offering their blood and hearts to that accursed idol”.[108] In The Conquest of New Spain Díaz describes more child sacrifices in the towns before the Spaniards reached the large Aztec city Tenochtitlan.
South America
Although academic data of infanticides among the indigenous people in South America is not as abundant as that of North America, the estimates seem to be similar.
Brazi
The Tapirapé indigenous people of Brazil allowed no more than three children per woman, and no more than two of the same sex. If the rule was broken infanticide was practiced.[109] The Bororo killed all the newborns that did not appear healthy enough. Infanticide is also documented in the case of the Korubo people in the Amazon.[110]
The Yanomami men killed children while raiding enemy villages.[111] Helena Valero, a Brazilian woman kidnapped by Yanomami warriors in the 1930s, witnessed a Karawetari raid on her tribe:
“They killed so many. I was weeping for fear and for pity but there was nothing I could do. They snatched the children from their mothers to kill them, while the others held the mothers tightly by the arms and wrists as they stood up in a line. All the women wept. … The men began to kill the children; little ones, bigger ones, they killed many of them.”.[111]
Peru, Paraguay and Bolivia
While qhapaq hucha was practiced in the Peruvian large cities, child sacrifice in the pre-Columbian tribes of the region is less documented. However, even today studies on the Aymara Indians reveal high incidences of mortality among the newborn, especially female deaths, suggesting infanticide.[112] The Abipones, a small tribe of Guaycuruan stock, of about 5,000 by the end of the 18th century in Paraguay, practiced systematic infanticide; with never more than two children being reared in one family. The Machigenga killed their disabled children. Infanticide among the Chaco in Paraguay was estimated as high as 50% of all newborns in that tribe, who were usually buried.[113] The infanticidal custom had such roots among the Ayoreo in Bolivia and Paraguay that it persisted until the late 20th century.[114]
Modern times
Infanticide has become less common in the Western world. The frequency has been estimated to be 1 in approximately 3000 to 5000 children of all ages[115] and 2.1 per 100,000 newborns per year.[116] It is thought that infanticide today continues at a much higher rate in areas of extremely high poverty and overpopulation, such as parts of China and India.[117] Female infants, then and even now, are particularly vulnerable, a factor in sex-selective infanticide. Recent estimates suggest that over 100 million girls and women are ‘missing’ in Asia.[118]
Benin[edit]
In spite of the fact that it is illegal, in Benin, West Africa, parents secretly continue with infanticidal customs.[119]
North Korea
According to “The Hidden Gulag” published by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, the People’s Republic of China returns all illegal immigrants from North Korea which usually imprisons them in a short term facility. Women who are suspected of being impregnated by Chinese fathers are subjected to forced abortions; babies born alive are killed, sometimes by exposure or being buried alive.[120]
China
There have been some accusations that infanticide occurs in the People’s Republic of China due to the one-child policy.[121] In the 1990s, a certain stretch of the Yangtze River was known to be a common site of infanticide by drowning, until government projects made access to it more difficult. Recent studies suggest that over 40 million girls and women are ‘missing’ in China (Klasen and Wink 2003).[122]
India
The practice has continued in some rural areas of India.[123][124] Infanticide is illegal in India.[125]
According to a recent report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) up to 50 million girls and women are missing in India‘s population as a result of systematic sex discrimination and sex selective abortions.[126]
Pakistan
Killings of newborn babies have been on the rise in Pakistan, corresponding to an increase in poverty across the country.[127] More than 1,000 infants, mostly girls, were killed or abandoned to die in Pakistan in 2009 according to a Pakistani charity organization.[128]
The Edhi Foundation found 1,210 dead babies in 2010. Many more are abandoned and left at the doorsteps of mosques. As a result, Edhi centers feature signs “Do not murder, lay them here.” Though female infanticide is punishable by life in prison, such crimes are rarely prosecuted.[127]
Oceania
In November 2008 it was reported that in Agibu and Amosa villages of Gimi region of Eastern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea where tribal fighting in the region of Gimi has been going on since 1986 (many of the clashes arising over claims of sorcery) women had agreed that if they stopped producing males, allowing only female babies to survive, their tribe’s stock of boys would go down and there would be no men in the future to fight. They agreed to have all newborn male babies killed. It is not known how many male babies were killed by being smothered, but it had reportedly happened to all males over a 10-year period and probably was still happening.
England and Wales
In England and Wales there were typically 30 to 50 homicides per million children less than 1 year old between 1982 and 1996.[129] The younger the infant, the higher the risk.[129] The rate for children 1 to 5 years was around 10 per million children.[129] The homicide rate of infants less than 1 year is significantly higher than for the general population.[129]
In English law infanticide is established as a distinct offence by the Infanticide Acts. Defined as the killing of a child under 12 months of age by their mother, the effect of the Acts are to establish a partial defence to charges of murder.[130]
United States
In 1983, the United States ranked eleventh for infants under 1 year killed, and fourth for those killed from 1 through 14 years (the latter case not necessarily involving filicide).[131] In the U.S. over six hundred children were killed by their parents in 1983.[132]
In the United States the infanticide rate during the first hour of life outside the womb dropped from 1.41 per 100,000 during 1963 to 1972 to 0.44 per 100,000 for 1974 to 1983; the rates during the first month after birth also declined, whereas those for older infants rose during this time.[133] The legalization of abortion, which was completed in 1973, was the most important factor in the decline in neonatal mortality during the period from 1964 to 1977, according to a study by economists associated with the National Bureau of Economic Research.[133][134]
Canada
In Canada 114 cases of infanticide by a parent were reported during 1964–1968.[135] There is ongoing debate in the Canadian legal and political fields about whether section 237 of the Criminal Code, which creates the specific offence and partial defence of infanticide in Canadian law, should be amended or abolished altogether.[136]
Spain
From 2013 to March 2018, 28 infanticides cases done by 22 mothers and three stepmothers were reported in Spain.[137][138] The most famous case was the murder of Bernardo González Parra in 1910 perpetrated by Francisco Leona Romero, Julio Hernández Rodríguez, Francisco Ortega el Moruno and Agustina Rodríguez.[139][140]
Modern proposals
In a 2012 article in the Journal of Medical Ethics, a philosopher and a bioethicist jointly proposed that infanticide be legalized, calling it “after-birth abortion”, and claiming that both “the fetus and the newborn are potential persons”. Many replies were published to this article.[141]
Child euthanasia
Euthanasia applied to children that are gravely ill or that suffer from significant birth defects is legal in the Netherlands under rigidly controlled conditions, but controversial.[142] Some critics have compared child euthanasia to infanticide.
Explanations for the practice
There are various reasons for infanticide. Neonaticide typically has different patterns and causes than for killing of older infants. Traditional neonaticide is often related to economic necessity – inability to provide for the infant.
In the United Kingdom and the United States, older infants are typically killed for reasons related to child abuse, domestic violence or mental illness.[129] For infants older than one day, younger infants are more at risk, and boys are more at risk than girls.[129] Risk factors for the parent include: Family history of violence, violence in current relationship, history of abuse or neglect of children, and personality disorder and/or depression.[129]
Religious
In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, “loopholes” were invented by those who wanted to avoid the damnation that was promised by most Christian doctrine as a penalty of suicide. One famous example of someone who wished to end their life but avoid the eternity in hell was Christina Johansdotter (died 1740). She was a Swedish murderer who killed a child in Stockholm with the sole purpose of being executed. She is an example of those who seek suicide through execution by committing a murder. It was a common act, frequently targeting young children or infants as they were believed to be free from sin, thus going straight to heaven.[143]
In 1888, Lieut. F. Elton reported that Ugi beach people in the Solomon Islands killed their infants at birth by burying them, and women were also said to practice abortion. They reported that it was too much trouble to raise a child, and instead preferred to buy one from the bush people.[144]
Economic
Many historians believe the reason to be primarily economic, with more children born than the family is prepared to support. In societies that are patrilineal and patrilocal, the family may choose to allow more sons to live and kill some daughters, as the former will support their birth family until they die, whereas the latter will leave economically and geographically to join their husband’s family, possibly only after the payment of a burdensome dowry price. Thus the decision to bring up a boy is more economically rewarding to the parents.[8]:362–368 However, this does not explain why infanticide would occur equally among rich and poor, nor why it would be as frequent during decadent periods of the Roman Empire as during earlier, less affluent, periods.[8]:28–34, 187–192
Before the appearance of effective contraception, infanticide was a common occurrence in ancient brothels. Unlike usual infanticide – where historically girls have been more likely to be killed – prostitutes in certain areas preferred to kill their male offspring.[145]
UK 18th and 19th century
Instances of infanticide in Britain in 18th and 19th centuries is often attributed to the economic position of the women, with juries committing “pious perjury” in many subsequent murder cases. The knowledge of the difficulties faced in the 18th century by those women who attempted to keep their children can be seen as reason for juries to show compassion. If the woman chose to keep the child, society was not set up to ease the pressure placed upon the woman, legally, socially or economically.[146]
In mid-18th century Britain there was assistance available for women who were not able to raise their children. The Foundling Hospital opened in 1756 and was able to take in some of the illegitimate children. However, the conditions within the hospital caused Parliamentto withdraw funding and the governors to live off of their own incomes.[147] This resulted in a stringent entrance policy, with the committee requiring that the hospital:
- Will not receive a child that is more than a year old, nor the child of a domestic servant, nor any child whose father can be compelled to maintain it.[148]
Once a mother had admitted her child to the hospital, the hospital did all it could to ensure that the parent and child were not re-united.[148]
MacFarlane argues in Illegitimacy and Illegitimates in Britain (1980) that English society greatly concerned itself with the burden that a bastard child places upon its communities and had gone to some lengths to ensure that the father of the child is identified in order to maintain its well-being.[149] Assistance could be gained through maintenance payments from the father, however, this was capped “at a miserable 2 s and 6 d a week”.[150] If the father fell behind with the payments he could only be asked “to pay a maximum of 13 weeks arrears”.[150]
Despite the accusations of some that women were getting a free hand-out there is evidence that many women were far from receiving adequate assistance from their parish. “Within Leeds in 1822 … relief was limited to 1 s per week”.[151] Sheffield required women to enter the workhouse, whereas Halifax gave no relief to the women who required it. The prospect of entering the workhouse was certainly something to be avoided. Lionel Rose quotes Dr Joseph Rogers in Massacre of the Innocents … (1986). Rogers, who was employed by a London workhouse in 1856 stated that conditions in the nursery were ‘wretchedly damp and miserable … [and] … overcrowded with young mothers and their infants’.[152]
The loss of social standing for a servant girl was a particular problem in respect of producing a bastard child as they relied upon a good character reference in order to maintain their job and more importantly, to get a new or better job. In a large number of trials for the crime of infanticide, it is the servant girl that stood accused.[153] The disadvantage of being a servant girl is that they had to live to the social standards of their superiors or risk dismissal and no references. Whereas within other professions, such as in the factory, the relationship between employer and employee was much more anonymous and the mother would be better able to make other provisions, such as employing a minder.[154] The result of the lack of basic social care in Britain in the 18th and 19th century is the numerous accounts in court records of women, particularly servant girls, standing trial for the murder of their child.[155]
There may have been no specific offence of infanticide in England before about 1623 because infanticide was a matter for the by ecclesiastical courts, possibly because infant mortality from natural causes was high (about 15% or one in six).[156]
Thereafter the accusation of the suppression of bastard children by lewd mothers was a crime incurring the presumption of guilt.[157]
The Infanticide Acts are several laws. That of 1922 made the killing of an infant child by its mother during the early months of life as a lesser crime than murder. The acts of 1938 and 1939 abolished the earlier act, but introduced the idea that postpartum depression was legally to be regarded as a form of diminished responsibility.
Population control
Marvin Harris estimated that among Paleolithic hunters 23–50% of newborn children were killed. He argued that the goal was to preserve the 0.001% population growth of that time.[158]:15 He also wrote that female infanticide may be a form of population control.[158]:5Population control is achieved not only by limiting the number of potential mothers; increased fighting among men for access to relatively scarce wives would also lead to a decline in population. For example, on the Melanesian island of Tikopia infanticide was used to keep a stable population in line with its resource base.[6] Research by Marvin Harris and William Divale supports this argument, it has been cited as an example of environmental determinism.[159]
Psychological
Evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology has proposed several theories for different forms of infanticide. Infanticide by stepfathers, as well as child abuse in general by stepfathers, has been explained by spending resources on not genetically related children reducing reproductive success (See the Cinderella effect and Infanticide (zoology)). Infanticide is one of the few forms of violence more often done by women than men. Cross-cultural research has found that this is more likely to occur when the child has deformities or illnesses as well as when there are lacking resources due to factors such as poverty, other children requiring resources, and no male support. Such a child may have a low chance of reproductive success in which case it would decrease the mother’s inclusive fitness, in particular since women generally have a greater parental investment than men, to spend resources on the child.[160]
“Early infanticidal childrearing”
A minority of academics subscribe to an alternate school of thought, considering the practice as “early infanticidal childrearing“.[161]:246–247 They attribute parental infanticidal wishes to massive projection or displacement of the parents’ unconscious onto the child, because of intergenerational, ancestral abuse by their own parents.[162] Clearly, an infanticidal parent may have multiple motivations, conflicts, emotions, and thoughts about their baby and their relationship with their baby, which are often colored both by their individual psychology, current relational context and attachment history, and, perhaps most saliently, their psychopathology[163] (See also Psychiatric section below) Almeida, Merminod, and Schechter suggest that parents with fantasies, projections, and delusions involving infanticide need to be taken seriously and assessed carefully, whenever possible, by an interdisciplinary team that includes infant mental health specialists or mental health practitioners who have experience in working with parents, children, and families.
Wider effects
In addition to debates over the morality of infanticide itself, there is some debate over the effects of infanticide on surviving children, and the effects of childrearing in societies that also sanction infanticide. Some argue that the practice of infanticide in any widespread form causes enormous psychological damage in children.[161]:261–262 Conversely, studying societies that practice infanticide Géza Róheim reported that even infanticidal mothers in New Guinea, who ate a child, did not affect the personality development of the surviving children; that “these are good mothers who eat their own children”.[164] Harris and Divale’s work on the relationship between female infanticide and warfare suggests that there are, however, extensive negative effects.
Psychiatric
Postpartum psychosis is also a causative factor of infanticide. Stuart S. Asch, MD, a Professor of Psychiatry at Cornell University established the connections between some cases of infanticide and post-partum depression.[165],[166] The books, From Cradle to Grave,[167]and The Death of Innocents,[168] describe selected cases of maternal infanticide and the investigative research of Professor Asch working in concert with the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office. Stanley Hopwood wrote that childbirth and lactation entail severe stress on the female sex, and that under certain circumstances attempts at infanticide and suicide are common.[169] A study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry revealed that 44% of filicidal fathers had a diagnosis of psychosis.[170] In addition to postpartum psychosis, dissociative psychopathology and sociopathy have also been found to be associated with neonaticide in some cases[171]
In addition, severe postpartum depression can lead to infanticide.[172]
Sex selection
Sex selection may be one of the contributing factors of infanticide. In the absence of sex-selective abortion, sex-selective infanticide[dead link] can be deduced from very skewed birth statistics. The biologically normal sex ratio for humans at birth is approximately 105 males per 100 females; normal ratios hardly ranging beyond 102–108.[173] When a society has an infant male to female ratio which is significantly higher or lower than the biological norm, and biased data can be ruled out, sex selection can usually be inferred.[174]
Current law
Australia
In New South Wales, infanticide is defined in Section 22A(1) of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) as follows:[175]
Where a woman by any willful act or omission causes the death of her child, being a child under the age of twelve months, but at the time of the act or omission the balance of her mind was disturbed by reason of her not having fully recovered from the effect of giving birth to the child or by reason of the effect of lactation consequent upon the birth of the child, then, notwithstanding that the circumstances were such that but for this section the offence would have amounted to murder, she shall be guilty of infanticide, and may for such offence be dealt with and punished as if she had been guilty of the offence of manslaughter of such child.
Because Infanticide is punishable as manslaughter, as per s24,[176] the maximum penalty for this offence is therefore 25 years imprisonment.
Canada
In Canada, a mother commits infanticide, a lesser offence than homicide, if she killed her child while “not fully recovered from the effects of giving birth to the child and by reason thereof or of the effect of lactation consequent on the birth of the child her mind is then disturbed”.[177]
England and Wales
In England and Wales, the Infanticide Act 1938 describes the offence of infanticide as one which would otherwise amount to murder (by his/her mother) if the victim was older than 12 months and the mother was not suffering from an imbalance of mind due to the effects of childbirth or lactation. Where a mother who has killed such an infant has been charged with murder rather than infanticide s.1(3) of the Act confirms that a jury has the power to find alternative verdicts of Manslaughter in English law or guilty but insane.
Romania
Article 200 of the Penal Code of Romania stipulates that the killing of a newborn during the first 24 hours, by the mother who is in a state of mental distress, shall be punished with imprisonment of one to five years.[178] The previous Romanian Penal Code also defined infanticide (pruncucidere) as a distinct criminal offence, providing for a punishment of two to seven years imprisonment,[179] recognizing the fact that a mother’s judgment may be impaired immediately after birth, but did not define the term “infant”, and this had led to debates regarding the precise moment when infanticide becomes homicide. This issue was resolved by the new Penal Code, which came into force in 2014.
United States
In 2009, Texas state representative Jessica Farrar proposed legislation that would define infanticide as a distinct and lesser crime than homicide.[180] Under the terms of the proposed legislation, if jurors concluded that a mother’s “judgment was impaired as a result of the effects of giving birth or the effects of lactation following the birth”, they would be allowed to convict her of the crime of infanticide, rather than murder.[181] The maximum penalty for infanticide would be two years in prison.[181] Farrar’s introduction of this bill prompted liberal bioethics scholar Jacob M. Appel to call her “the bravest politician in America”.[181]
Prevention
Since infanticide, especially neonaticide, is often a response to an unwanted birth,[129] preventing unwanted pregnancies through improved sex education and increased contraceptive access are advocated as ways of preventing infanticide.[182] Increased use of contraceptives and access to safe legal abortions[8][133]:122–123 have greatly reduced neonaticide in many developed nations. Some say that where abortion is illegal, as in Pakistan, infanticide would decline if safer legal abortions were available.[127]
Screening for psychiatric disorders or risk factors, and providing treatment or assistance to those at risk may help prevent infanticide.[183] However, in developed world significant proportions of neonaticides that are detected occur in young women who deny their pregnancy, and avoid outside contacts, so they may have limited contact with health care services.[129]
In some areas baby hatches or safe surrender sites, safe places for a mother to anonymously leave an infant, are offered, in part to reduce the rate of infanticide. In other places, like the United States, safe-haven laws allow mothers to anonymously give infants to designated officials; they are frequently located at hospitals and police and fire stations. Additionally, some countries in Europe have the laws of anonymous birth and confidential birth that allow mothers to give up an infant after birth. In anonymous birth, the mother does not attach her name to the birth certificate. In confidential birth the mother registers her name and information, but the document containing her name is sealed until the child comes to age. Typically such babies are put up for adoption, or cared for in orphanages. [184]
Granting women employment raises their status and autonomy. Having a gainful employment can raise the perceived worth of females. This can lead to an increase in the number of women getting an education and a decrease in the number of female infanticide. As a result, the infant mortality rate will decrease and economic development will increase.[185]
In animals
Although human infanticide has been widely studied, the practice has been observed in many other species of the animal kingdom since it was first seriously studied by Yukimaru Sugiyama.[186] These include from microscopic rotifers and insects, to fish, amphibians, birds and mammals, including primates such as chacma baboons.[187] Infanticide can be practiced by both males and females.
According to studies carried out by Kyoto University in non-human primates, including certain types of gorillas and chimpanzees, several conditions favor the tendency to infanticide in some species (to be performed only by males), among them are: Nocturnal live, the absence of nest construction, the marked sexual dimorphism in which the male is much larger than the female, the mating in a specific season and the high period of lactation without resumption of the estrus state in the female.
See also
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Infanticide. |
- Abortion
- A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift
- Baby-farming
- Child sacrifice
- The Cruel Mother
- Female perversion
- Filicide
- Margaret Garner
- Infant exposure
- Infant mortality
- Jenůfa (opera by Leoš Janáček)
- List of countries by infant mortality rate
- La Llorona (Mexican legend)
- Medea (Euripides‘ play)
- Miyuki Ishikawa
- Overlaying, child smothering during carer’s sleep
- Sex-selective abortion
- Sudden infant death syndrome
References …
Progressivism
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Progressivism |
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Progressivism is the support for or advocacy of improvement of society by reform.[1] As a philosophy, it is based on the idea of progress, which asserts that advancements in science, technology, economic development and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition.
The meanings of progressivism have varied over time and from different perspectives. Progressivism became highly significant during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, out of the belief that Europe was demonstrating that societies could progress in civility from uncivilized conditions to civilization through strengthening the basis of empirical knowledge as the foundation of society.[2] Figures of the Enlightenment believed that progress had universal application to all societies and that these ideas would spread across the world from Europe.[2]
The contemporary common political conception of progressivism in the culture of the Western world emerged from the vast social changes brought about by industrialization in the Western world in the late-19th century. Progressives in the early-20th century took the view that progress was being stifled by vast economic inequality between the rich and the poor; minimally regulated laissez-faire capitalism with monopolistic corporations; and intense and often violent conflict between workers and capitalists, thus claiming that measures were needed to address these problems.[3] Early-20th century progressivism was also tied to eugenics[4][5][6] and the temperance movement.[7][8] Contemporary progressives promote public policies that they believe will lead to positive social change.
Progressivism in philosophy and politics
From the Enlightenment to the Industrial Revolution
Immanuel Kant identified progress as being a movement away from barbarism towards civilization. 18th-century philosopher and political scientist Marquis de Condorcet predicted that political progress would involve the disappearance of slavery, the rise of literacy, the lessening of inequalities between the sexes, reforms of harsh prisons and the decline of poverty.[9] “Modernity” or “modernization” was a key form of the idea of progress as promoted by classical liberals in the 19th and 20th centuries who called for the rapid modernization of the economy and society to remove the traditional hindrances to free markets and free movements of people.[10] German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was influential in promoting the idea of progress in European philosophy by emphasizing a linear-progressive conception of history and rejecting a cyclical conception of history. Karl Marx applied to his writings the Hegelian conception of linear-progressive history, the modernization of the economy through industrialization and criticisms of the social class structure of industrial capitalist societies. As industrialization grew, concerns over its effects grew beyond Marxists and other radical critiques and became mainstream.
Contemporary mainstream political conception
In the late 19th century, a political view rose in popularity in the Western world that progress was being stifled by vast economic inequality between the rich and the poor, minimally regulated laissez-faire capitalism with out-of-control monopolistic corporations, intense and often violent conflict between workers and capitalists and a need for measures to address these problems.[11] Progressivism has influenced various political movements. Modern liberalism was influenced by liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill‘s conception of people being “progressive beings”.[12] British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli developed progressive conservatism under “one-nation” Toryism.[13][14] In France, the space between social revolution and the socially-conservative laissez-faire centre-right was filled with the emergence of Radicalism, which thought that social progress required humanism, republicanism and anticlericalism, and which was until the mid twentieth-century the dominant influence on the centre left in many French- and Romance-speaking countries. Similarly in Imperial Germany, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck enacted various progressive social welfare measures out of conservative motivations to distance workers from the socialist movement of the time and as humane ways to assist in maintaining the Industrial Revolution.[15]Proponents of social democracy have identified themselves as promoting the progressive cause.[16] The Roman Catholic Church encyclical Rerum novarum issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 condemned the exploitation of labour and urged support for labour unions and government regulation of businesses in the interests of social justice while upholding the rights of private property and criticizing socialism.[17] A Protestant progressive outlook called the Social Gospel emerged in North America that focused on challenging economic exploitation and poverty and by the mid-1890s was common in many Protestant theological seminaries in the United States.[18]
In the United States, progressivism began as a social movement in the 1890s and grew into a political movement in what was known as the Progressive Era. While the term “American progressives” represent a range of diverse political pressure groups (not always united), some American progressives rejected social Darwinism, believing that the problems society faced (poverty, violence, greed, racism and class warfare) could best be addressed by providing good education, a safe environment, and an efficient workplace. Progressives lived mainly in the cities, were college educated and believed that government could be a tool for change.[19] American President Theodore Roosevelt of the Republican Party and later the Progressive Party declared that he “always believed that wise progressivism and wise conservatism go hand in hand”.[20] President Woodrow Wilson was also a member of the American progressive movement within the Democratic Party.
Progressive stances have evolved over time. Imperialism was a controversial issue within progressivism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in the United States where some progressives supported American imperialism while others opposed it.[21]
In response to World War I, progressive President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points established the concept of national self-determination and criticized imperialist competition and colonial injustices; these views were supported by anti-imperialists in areas of the world that were resisting imperial rule.[22] During the period of acceptance of economic Keynesianism (1930s to 1970s), there was widespread acceptance in many nations of a large role for state intervention in the economy. With the rise of neoliberalism and challenges to state interventionist policies in the 1970s and 1980s, centre-left progressive movements responded by creating the Third Way that emphasized a major role for the market economy.[23] There have been social democrats who have called for the social democratic movement to move past Third Way.[24] Prominent progressive conservative elements in the British Conservative Party have criticized neoliberalism.[25]
See also
- Social and political philosophy portal
- Progressive Era
- Progressivism in the United States
- Progressive conservatism
- Socialism
- Democracy
- Transhumanism
- Transhumanist politics
References …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism
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President Trump said Thursday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is “playing games” with his demand for a border wall and he doesn’t expect the congressional negotiations to reach a deal on a barrier for the southern border.
“She’s playing games,” the president told reporters at the White House. “If there’s no wall, it doesn’t work.”
Minutes earlier, Mrs. Pelosi vowed at the Capitol that Democrats won’t approve money for a wall as part of negotiations on border security.
She suggested there might be money available for a so-called “Normandy” fence along the southern border, which would stop vehicles but not people on foot.
Upon hearing that, the president said he doesn’t expect a 17-member bipartisan committee to reach a deal on border security that’s acceptable to him.
“I don’t think they’re going to make a deal,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t expect much coming out of this committee.”
The Pronk Pops Show 1258, May 15, 2019, Story 1: Let The People of Each State Decide Whether To Protect Babies In The Womb or Allow Doctors and Women The Choice of Killing Their Babies — Babies In The Womb Have A Moral Right To Life and Due Process — Alabama Bans Abortions — Videos —
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Story 1: Let The People of Each State Decide Whether To Protect Babies In The Womb or Allow Doctors and Women The Choice of Killing Their Babies — Babies In The Womb Have A Moral Right To Life and Due Process — Alabama Bans Abortions — Videos —
He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.
~Saint Augustine
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
~Edmund Burke
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
~Henry David Thoreau
The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
~Thomas Hardy
The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.
~Stephen Ambrose
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
~Hannah Arendt
Abortion
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
Alabama governor signs near-total abortion ban into law
The Most Important Question About Abortion
Ben Shapiro Destroys The Abortion Argument
The Silent Scream (Full Length)
What Is Roe V. Wade? | Velshi & Ruhle | MSNBC
Roe v. Wade Summary | quimbee.com
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Why Supreme Court got Roe v. Wade wrong
Justice Antonin Scalia talks about Roe v. Wade
Justice Scalia On Life Part 2
Clarke Forsythe on Fox News “Special Report” talking about “UNSAFE” Report
Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wade
Based on 20 years of research, including an examination of the papers of eight of the nine Justices who voted in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, Abuse of Discretion is a critical review of the behind-the-scenes deliberations that went into the Supreme Court’s abortion decisions and how the mistakes made by the Justices in 1971-1973 have led to the turmoil we see today in legislation, politics, and public health. Why do the abortion decisions remain so controversial after almost 40 years, despite more than 50,000,000 abortions, numerous presidential elections, and a complete turnover in the Justices? Why did such a sweeping decision — with such important consequences for public health, producing such prolonged political turmoil — come from the Supreme Court in 1973?
Abuse of Discretion – Book Launch
Tucker: Voters in Alabama decided for their state
“Heartbeat bill” in Georgia would ban abortions after heartbeat detected
Hollywood protest of Georgia’s ‘heartbeat’ law fizzles
Life in the womb (9 months in 4 minutes) HD – Presented to You from PSNX
Pro-choice or pro-life? 39% of Americans don’t pick a side
Is There Ever A Right Time To Have A Baby? | The Seven Ages of Pregnancy (Full Documentary)
Is There A Right Method To Parenting? | Cherry’s Parenting Dilemmas (Full Documentary)
Life Before Birth – In the Womb
7 Amazing Things Unborn Babies Can Do in the Womb
What Actually Happens When You Have An Abortion?
Can we expect a Supreme Court showdown over Alabama’s abortion ban?
The battle over abortion: Alabama ban opens new chapter in bitter fight
Pro and anti-abortion rights activists on future of Alabama abortion bill
Alabama passes strictest abortion ban in the US
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey Signs U.S.’s Strictest Abortion Ban Into Law
Alabama BANS Abortion
Abortions after about 6 weeks will now be illegal in Georgia
More states are passing laws to make abortion illegal if Roe v. Wade is overturned
Access Restricted: Abortion in Texas – Fault Lines
Abortion frontline of America: life and death in Texas
Pro-Choice and Anti-Abortion: Both Sides of the ‘Heartbeat’ Bill
What Happens If The U.S. Outlaws Abortion? | AJ+
NY Bishop Calls Out Cuomo Over State’s New Abortion Law: ‘It Goes Way Beyond Roe vs. Wade’
What So-Called Pro-Choicers Cannot Watch From Start To Finish
The Silent Scream (Full Length)
FULL FOOTAGE: Planned Parenthood Uses Partial-Birth Abortions to Sell Baby Parts
Abby Johnson Exposes The Lie of Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards’ Attempt To Dismiss Viral Video Backfires!
Caught on Camera: Planned Parenthood Harvesting Babies Organs
Die Wannseekonferenz (1984)
A real time recreation of the 1942 Wannsee Conference, in which leading SS and Nazi Party officials led by SS-General Reinhard Heydrich gathered to discuss the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”.
MAAFA 21 THE BLACK HOLOCAUST
Abortion Inc: Promoting Black Genocide in US?
A Dangerous Idea: The History of Eugenics in America
Fit vs. UnFit, Eugenics, Planned Parenthood & Psychology, Mind Control Report
Sex Control Police State, Eugenics, Galton, Kantsaywhere, Mind Control Report
Mind Control Hate Propaganda, Hate Speech & Crime, Black PR
Mind Control, Psychology of Brainwashing, Sex & Hypnosis
Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood’s Racist Founder
Margaret Sanger: Eugenicist (1/3)
Margaret Sanger: Eugenicist (2/3)
Margaret Sanger: Eugenicist (3/3)
Eugenics Glenn Beck w/ Edwin Black author of “War Against the Weak” talk Al Gore & Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood’s Racist Founder
Justice Antonin Scalia talks about Roe v. Wade
Auschwitz The Nazis and the Final Solution complete
Auschwitz: The Nazi and the Final Solution (1/5)
AUSHWITZ:THE FINAL SOLUTION CLIP 2/5
Auschwitz: The Nazi and the Final Solution (3/5)
Auschwitz: The Nazi and the Final Solution (4/5)
Auschwitz: The Nazi and the Final Solution (5/5)
Science and the Swastika: The Deadly Experiment
Sterilizing Undesirables: Did The USA Inspire The Nazis?
Keeping Dems Honest: CNN’s Anderson Cooper Puts Truth First and Challenges DNC Abortion Lies
Glenn Beck : Agenda 21 is not a fiction, it’s implemented right now in US and all over the World !
Glenn Beck – Ted Cruz Discusses the Evils of Agenda 21
Bill Whittle What We Believe Full Version
Brenda Lee – I’m Sorry (Live from Canada 1980)
Alabama governor signs bill authorizing near total ban on abortions in the state in a bid to challenge Roe v Wade in Trump’s conservative Supreme Court
By DAVID MARTOSKO, U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and KEITH GRIFFITH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and WIRES
PUBLISHED: 13:06 EDT, 15 May 2019 | UPDATED: 23:47 EDT, 15 May 2019
Alabama’s governor has signed the most stringent abortion ban in the nation.
Republican Governor Kay Ivey signed the measure on Wednesday. The law will make performing an abortion at any stage of pregnancy a felony punishable by 10 to 99 years or life in prison.
The law contains an exception for when the pregnancy creates a serious health risk for the woman, but not an exception for rape or incest.
There would be no punishment for the woman receiving the abortion, only for the abortion provider.
‘To the bill’s many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God,’ she continued.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey discusses the bill while visiting a car factory at Montgomery, Alabama on Wednesday shortly before signing it into law
Gov. Ivey’s full statement on HB314
‘Today, I signed into law the Alabama Human Life Protection Act, a bill that was approved by overwhelming majorities in both chambers of the Legislature. To the bill’s many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.
‘To all Alabamians, I assure you that we will continue to follow the rule of law.
‘In all meaningful respects, this bill closely resembles an abortion ban that has been a part of Alabama law for well over 100 years. As today’s bill itself recognizes, that longstanding abortion law has been rendered ‘unenforceable as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.’
‘No matter one’s personal view on abortion, we can all recognize that, at least for the short term, this bill may similarly be unenforceable. As citizens of this great country, we must always respect the authority of the U.S. Supreme Court even when we disagree with their decisions. Many Americans, myself included, disagreed when Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973. The sponsors of this bill believe that it is time, once again, for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit this important matter, and they believe this act may bring about the best opportunity for this to occur.
‘I want to commend the bill sponsors, Rep. Terri Collins and Sen. Clyde Chambliss, for their strong leadership on this important issue.
‘For the remainder of this session, I now urge all members of the Alabama Legislature to continue seeking the best ways possible to foster a better Alabama in all regards, from education to public safety. We must give every person the best chance for a quality life and a promising future.’
The bill passed the state senate 25-6, after being approved by the state’s lower house 75-3.
The new law will not go into effect for six months, and in the interim abortions will remain legal in Alabama, which has three abortion clinics.
The law will likely to be challenged immediately in court, potentially setting up a case which could allow anti-abortion groups to force a Supreme Court hearing in which they would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Democrats accused Alabama Republicans of leading a charge to overturn Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court.
A series of the 2020 presidential candidates warned that Republican-controlled legislatures around the country may follow suit, emboldened by President Donald Trump’s two conservative justices and a warning from one of the liberal justices that abortion rights were now in play.
Democrats say that abortion opponents are hoping that the 5-4 conservative majority on the court – put in place by Trump installing Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh – will rule in their favor, and tear up the 1973 ruling which makes abortion a federal right.
Conservative court: Chief Justice John Robert now presides over a court with five justices – himself included – seen as anti-abortion, two of them Trump’s picks: Brett Kavanaugh (top right), and Neil Gorsuch (top left)
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is warning what the bill’s authors have readily admitted, that the legislation is meant to be a mechanism to get abortion before the Supreme Court again
Under the Alabama law, the only legal abortions would be those performed to protect a woman’s life.
Doctors could face 10 years in prison for attempting an abortion in any other circumstance, and 99 years for actually carrying out the procedure.
Other Republican-controlled states, including Ohio, have passed less restrictive ‘heartbeat bills’ which effectively ban abortion after six weeks. Roe v. Wade established it was legal in the first and second trimesters.
THE ‘HEARTBEAT BILL’ MOVEMENT: WHICH STATES ARE BRINGING THE MEASURES
STATES THAT NOW HAVE ‘FETAL HEARTBEAT’ LAWS
STATES WHOSE BILLS HAVE BEEN BLOCKED BY COURTS
STATES THAT ARE CONSIDERING IT
Many pro-life groups have acknowledged they are looking for a case which would allow them to directly challenge Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court.
Anti-abortion activists hope the high court will be willing to reconsider Roe.
‘It is clearer than ever that Roe is far from being settled law in the eyes and hearts of the American people, and this is increasingly reflected in state legislatures,’ said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List. ‘The American people want a fresh debate and a new direction.’
The Supreme Court affirmed women’s constitutional right to abortion in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. President Donald Trump has added two conservative members to the court, changing its dynamic in a way that could end the case’s authority.
Legal fights are likely ahead over the Alabama measure if Ivey signs it into law.
Similar abortion restrictions are under consideration or already enacted in other conservative-leaning states.
Republican state Senator Clyde Chambliss, arguing in favor of the Alabama bill, said the point was ‘so that we can go directly to the Supreme Court to challenge Roe v. Wade.’
Republican lawmaker Terri Collins, who sponsored the legislation, said: ‘Our bill says that baby in the womb is a person.’
Courts this year have blocked restrictive abortion laws in Kentucky and Iowa. But supporters of the Alabama ban said the right to life for the unborn child transcends other rights, an idea they would like tested.
In the case of Alabama, if passed, the law is certain to be challenged in federal court in the state and almost surely will be blocked because it plainly conflicts with Supreme Court precedent.
Review by the federal appeals court in Atlanta would come next, and only then would the Supreme Court be asked to weigh in. Emergency appeals by either side could put the issue before the justices sooner, but that would not be a full-blown review of the law.
Abortion-rights activists say they have no alternative but to file lawsuits challenging every tough abortion ban passed.
‘Were we not to challenge them, they would go into effect,’ said Jennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project. ‘There’s no strategy of ‘Maybe we leave this one and challenge that one.”
The ACLU and its allies expect lower-level federal courts to honor Roe by blocking the abortion bans. The ultimate question, Dalven said, is whether the Supreme Court will decide to revisit Roe by agreeing to hear an appeal from one or more of the states whose ban was blocked.
‘It would be an extraordinary thing for the Supreme Court to take away an individual constitutional right,’ she said.
WHERE SUPREME COURT JUSTICES STAND ON ABORTION
Swing vote
Chief Justice John Roberts
George W. Bush appointee. Voted in favor of abortion restrictions until Justice Anthony Kennedy left the bench. In only abortion case since then, voted to provisionally block new restrictions in Louisiana. As swing justice, seen as wanting to avoid the Supreme Court being associated with entrenched political positions. Could do his best to avoid a Roe v. Wade challenge coming to the court. Position if one did is now unclear
Liberal wing
Stephen Breyer
Clinton appointee. Warned in May that that the conservative majority could overturn a 1992 decision upholding Roe v. Wade. Has consistently voted pro-choice
Elena Kagan
Obama appointee. Has consistently voted pro-choice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Clinton appointee. Has consistently voted pro-choice
Sonia Sotomayor
Obama appointee. Has consistently voted pro-choice
Conservative wing
Clarence Thomas
George H.W. Bush appointee. Said this year that Roe v. Wade was ‘notoriously incorrect’ and compared it to Dred Scott, the case which upheld slavery before the Civil War. Has consistently voted for anti-abortion positions
Samuel Alito
George W. Bush appointee. As a federal appeal judge, he voted to uphold a Pennsylvania law which required women to tell their husbands they planned to have an abortion. As Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, his ruling was overturned in the Supreme Court the next year, in a ruling Stephen Breyer says could be overturned itself. Has consistently voted for anti-abortion positions
Neil Gorsuch
Trump appointee. Only vote on abortion-related case was in February, on whether to block restrictions on clinics in Louisiana pending a full appeal. Gorsuch voted for them to go into place but the block was kept in place by Roberts voting with the liberal wing. Federal court career has no abortion votes. Seen as likely to vote for anti-abortion positions
Brett Kavanaugh
Trump appointee. Like Gorsuch, only vote on abortion-related case was in February, on whether to block restrictions on clinics in Louisiana pending a full appeal, when he joined Gorsuch in losing minority. As federal appeal court judge had one significant abortion vote, against allowing a 17-year-old illegal immigrant in detention to seek a termination without delay. Seen as likely to vote for anti-abortion positions
Justice Stephen Breyer offered the latest recognition of the difficulty his liberal side of the court faces in a dissent in a case unrelated to abortion that the court decided Monday, one in which the five conservatives voted to overturn a 1979 decision.
Breyer, joined by liberal colleagues Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, cited the 1992 abortion decision in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey in a dissent that concluded: ‘Today’s decision can only cause one to wonder which cases the court will overrule next.’
Justice Clarence Thomas is the only member on record as supporting overruling the court’s abortion precedents. In his most recent comments on the topic in February, also in a case unrelated to abortion, Thomas likened Roe to the court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, which said African Americans weren’t citizens. Both, he wrote, were ‘notoriously incorrect.’
But Chief Justice John Roberts also has a track record of preferring smaller bites before making significant changes in constitutional law.
‘You do see consistently in the chief justice’s career a willingness to go incrementally and only decide what the court needs to resolve in the case before it,’ said Michael Moreland, a Villanova University law professor.
Roberts also is aware of the questions the court would face if a conservative majority of justices, all appointed by Republican presidents, were to reverse the abortion decisions, Moreland said.
Still, Roberts has, with one exception, favored abortion restrictions. His provisional vote to block the Louisiana clinic law was the only time he voted in support of abortions rights in more than 13 years on the court.
The Alabama vote set off outrage among Democrats.
‘This is wrong. This is unconstitutional,’ Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar tweeted.
Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke wrote on Twitter: ‘We will fight these dangerous efforts with everything we’ve got in legislatures across the country.’
Former vice president Joe Biden, the early Democratic front-runner, touted his anti-abortion credentials, tweeting on Wednesday: ‘Republicans in AL, FL, GA, and OH are ushering in laws that clearly violate Roe v Wade and they should be declared unconstitutional. Roe v Wade is settled law and should not be overturned. This choice should remain between a woman and her doctor.’
South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg criticized Alabama lawmakers for ‘ignoring science, criminalizing abortion, and punishing women.’
‘Instead, the government’s role should be to make sure all women have access to comprehensive affordable care, and that includes safe and legal abortion,’ he wrote.
New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand told CNN on Tuesday: ‘It’s certainly the intention of President Trump and the Republican Party to overturn Roe v. Wade.’
Gillibrand observed on Twitter that that Alabama bill includes ‘[n]o exceptions for rape or incest. Doctors could face 99 years in prison for providing abortions.’
‘This is a war on women, and it is time to fight like hell,’ she added.
Gillibrand also claimed in an MSNBC interview on Wednesday that the public won’t stand for any interference with legal abortion rights.
‘This is not something the American people support. Seventy percent of Americans want safe, legal abortion to be available to women when they need it,’ she claimed.
‘This ban is dangerous and exceptionally cruel – and the bill’s authors want to use it to overturn Roe v. Wade,’ Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote Tuesday night.
‘I’ve lived in that America and let me tell you: We are not going back – not now, not ever. We will fight this. And we will win.’
‘I say to Gov. Ivey: Veto this cruel bill,’ tweeted Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. ‘Stop the attack on women’s rights.’
Alabama Democratic state Senator Linda Coleman-Madison called the Republicans hypocritical for advocating small government that ought to stay out of private matters but ‘now you want in my womb; I want you out.’13
Anti-abortion protesters are hopefully awaiting a day when Roe v. Wade can be reopened in light of 46 years of shifting public sentiments on abortion rights
Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke wrote on Twitter: ‘We will fight these dangerous efforts with everything we’ve got in legislatures across the country’
Anti-abortion protesters demonstrated this week in front of the Alabama State House in Montgomery
Pregnant 11-year-old rape victim in Ohio would have no right to an abortion under new state law
An 11-year-old in Ohio who allegedly became pregnant after being raped by a 26-year-old would have no right to an abortion under new state legislation signed into law last month.
Ohio passed a bill banning abortion after a heartbeat is detected in the fetus, at around five or six weeks into a pregnancy, in April.
As the bill will not come into effect until July, the victim, who cannot be named, will be allowed to have abortion if she chooses, but thousands of other victims will soon be denied the same right.
The legislature also means many women will only discover they are pregnant after the time period for a legal abortion has passed.
The case has raised serious questions about the so-called ‘heartbeat bill’, which four other states have passed so far.
Attorney General Dave Yost defended the law after being quizzed about this specific case by CBS News.
He told the broadcaster: ‘Sometimes, the evolution of the law requires bold steps.
‘In the last 46 years, the practice of medicine has changed. Science has changed. Even the point of viability has changed. Only the law has lagged behind.’
Ohio already bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and the girl will need to gain parental consent or her case to a judge for permission.
Although the bill passed the House of Representatives 74-3, some GOP state senators have expressed discomfort that the bill doesn’t include an exception for rape.
‘Overwhelmingly, the people out on the street I’m talking to, they are hesitant to put into law no exceptions,’ Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh said.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7032873/Democratic-2020-candidates-lash-Alabama-bill-making-abortion-felony.html
Alabama house votes to BAN abortion with doctors facing up to 99 years in jail if they carry out the procedure in the state including cases of rape or incest
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: 01:08 EDT, 30 April 2019 | UPDATED: 22:58 EDT, 30 April 2019
The Alabama House voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to outlaw almost all abortions in the state as conservatives took aim at the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
The Republican-dominated House of Representatives voted 74-3 for legislation that would make it a felony to perform an abortion at any stage in a woman’s pregnancy.
The proposal passed after Democrats walked out of the chamber after sometimes emotional debate with opponents and supporters crowding the gallery. The bill now moves to the Alabama Senate.
Supporters said the bill is intentionally designed to conflict with the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationally, hoping to spark court cases that might prompt the justices to revisit Roe.
The bill contains an exemption for situations in which there is a serious risk to the mother’s health, but not for rape and incest.
+11
Bianca Cameron-Schwiesow, from left,Kari Crowe and Margeaux Hardline, dressed as handmaids, take part in a protest against HB314, the abortion ban bill, at Alabama State House
Abortion rights protesters painted the window in the House Gallery during debate on the abortion ban bill at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery on Tuesday
Women’s heath clinic escorts, from left Mia Raven, Margeaux Hartline and Kari Crowe walk into the gallery to watch debate on the abortion ban bill at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery,
Travis Jackson holds signs during a protest against, the abortion ban bill
Speaker of the House Mac McCutcheon gavels in the session at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery
‘The heart of this bill is to confront a decision that was made by the courts in 1973 that said the baby in a womb is not a person,’ said Republican Rep. Terri Collins of Decatur.
Republicans in the chamber applauded after the bill was approved after more than two hours of sometimes emotional debate.
Collins acknowledged that such a ban would likely be struck down by lower courts, but she said the aim is eventually to get to the Supreme Court.
Without the numbers to stop the bill, Democrats walked off the House floor ahead of the vote, calling the proposal both extreme and fiscally irresponsible.
They said the ban would cost the state money for a potentially expensive legal fight that could be spent on other needs.
Rep. Louise Alexander, a Democrat, said the choice to give birth to a child should be left up to a woman, and the decision should not be made on the floor of the Alabama Legislature.
A protest is held against the abortion ban bill, at the Alabama State House in Montgomery
Rep. Terri Collins answers questions during debate on the abortion ban bill at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama
Rep. Merika Coleman, center, and members of the Democratic caucus walk out of the debate on the abortion ban bill to hold a press conference explaining their opposition to the bill
‘You don’t know why I may want to have an abortion. It may be because of my health. It may be because of many reasons.
Until all of you in this room walk in a woman’s shoes, y’all don’t know,’ Alexander said.
Emboldened by new conservatives on the Supreme Court, abortion opponents in several states are seeking to incite new legal fights in the hopes of challenging Roe v. Wade.
The Alabama bill comes on the heels of several states considering or approving bans on abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which occurs in about the sixth week of pregnancy.
The Alabama bill attempts to go farther by banning abortion at any stage of pregnancy.
House Republicans voted down Democrats’ attempt to amend the bill to add an exemption for rape and incest. Representatives voted 72-26 to table the proposed amendment.
Rep. Terri Collins talks on the house floor. The bill contains an exemption for the mother’s health but not for rape or incest. Collins is the sponsor of the abortion ban bill
Rep. Terri Collins, R-Alabama, gets a standing ovation after her near total ban on abortion bill
‘They would not even allow an exception for rape and incest. … What does that say to the women in this state,’ House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels.
Collins argued that adding exemptions would weaken the intent of the bill as a vehicle to challenge Roe. She said if states regain the ability to decide abortion access, Alabama lawmakers could come back and decide what exemptions to allow.
The bill drew a crowd of opponents and supporters to the House gallery. A group of abortion clinic escorts wore their rainbow-colored vests in the House gallery.
A demonstrator was arrested on disorderly conduct charges after shouting ‘dumb,’ attempting to write on the glass window overlooking to the House chamber and throwing paint at legislative security officers, House spokesman Clay Redden said.
Bianca Cameron-Schwiesow, dressed as a handmaid, takes part in a protest against the bill
Rep. Rolanda Hollis, a Birmingham Democrat, read a poem that criticized Republicans’ embrace of gun rights but not abortion rights, and later referred to the state as ‘Ala-Backwards.’
The text of the Alabama bill likens legalized abortion to history’s greatest atrocities, including the Holocaust.
Tuscaloosa Republican Rep. Rich Wingo, a supporter of the bill, likened abortion to murder and read statistics that estimate that there have been 60 million abortions since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision.
‘I believe this chamber, this body, will never make a greater decision than today… protecting the life of an unborn child,’ Wingo said.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6974893/Alabama-House-ready-debate-near-total-abortion-ban.html
Alabama law moves abortion to the center of 2020 campaign
WASHINGTON (AP) — Alabama’s new law restricting abortion in nearly every circumstance has moved one of the most polarizing issues in American politics to the center of the 2020 presidential campaign.
The state’s legislation — the toughest of several anti-abortion measures that have passed recently, with the only exception being a serious risk to the woman’s health — prompted an outcry from Democratic presidential candidates, who warned that conservatives were laying the groundwork to undermine the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. The White House, meanwhile, didn’t comment on the Alabama bill, signed into law Wednesday by Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, as President Donald Trump tries to balance his conservative base against the potential of antagonizing women who are already skeptical of his presidency.
“I respect every woman’s right to make a decision about what’s in the best interest of herself and her family,” Harris said.
Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio and Georgia have approved abortion bans once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can occur in about the sixth week of pregnancy. None of these laws are yet in force, either because of later effective dates or legal challenges that have blocked them. But supporters have openly predicted that the laws could spark court fights that will eventually lead the Supreme Court to revisit its Roe decision.
Gillibrand plans to fly to Atlanta on Thursday to meet with women protesting Georgia’s state law.
Sen. Cory Booker told The Associated Press that backers of the Alabama measure are “saying that they designed this bill with certain provisions — like not having any exceptions for rape or incest — specifically designed so that they can lead a fight to the Supreme Court” to “undermine other freedoms and liberties of women to control their own bodies.”
Booker said it’s not enough to hope that Roe will be upheld, adding: “We cannot wait to see if this gets worse.”
Several Democratic presidential candidates sought to use their high-profile positions to boost organizing against the state-level abortion laws. Harris emailed her campaign supporters offering to “split a donation” to four advocacy groups working to defend abortion rights. Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, directed his supporters by email to the abortion-rights group NARAL.
Among the other Democratic candidates who took to Twitter to blast Alabama’s law and other state-level restrictions were Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, as well as former Vice President Joe Biden and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke.
Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL, lauded the Democrats for their support. But she urged them to go further than pro-abortion-rights rhetoric, calling instead for “articulated plans about how we’re going to address and get out of this crisis.”
The Democratic pushback comes as Trump makes his selection of conservative judges a centerpiece of his political stump speech, part of a long-running courtship of social conservatives whose support he needs to win reelection next year. Republicans have long believed that the politics of abortion have shifted somewhat in their favor in recent years. But the near-absolutist nature of the most recent bills has sparked some concern among the president’s team that it could energize Trump critics and female voters, with whom the president has long struggled.
Polling suggests that the issue of abortion has the potential to stoke political engagement among both parties. The General Social Survey released last year found 64% of Democrats, but just 35% of Republicans, saying a woman should be able to have an abortion for any reason.
Other surveys have found majority support for legalized abortion in “all or most cases.” A Pew Research Center survey in September 2018 found 58% of Americans saying abortion should be legal in at least most cases, compared with 37% who said it should be illegal in all or most cases.
Trump won the White House in 2016 in part because of strong support from socially conservative Republicans who wanted to ensure that a conservative justice got named to the Supreme Court seat that had been occupied by Antonin Scalia — a seat held open by the GOP’s refusal to confirm President Barack Obama’s pick for the lifetime post. Since his first campaign began, Trump has supported a ban on abortions at the point that a fetus is believed to feel pain and publicly released a list of conservative judges from which he would select a nominee for the nation’s highest court.
The president’s selection of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court has emboldened conservative allies of the White House who believe the time is ripe for a court case to challenge Roe v. Wade. Kavanaugh assured senators before his confirmation last year that he viewed Roe as precedent, but Democratic senators pointed to a 2003 memo he wrote that suggested it wasn’t necessary to call the landmark abortion-rights ruling “settled law” because the “Court can always overrule its precedent.”
The Trump campaign deferred to the White House on whether Trump supported the Alabama measure or other restrictive bills passed by other states. White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere touted Trump’s record on abortion, noting that he “is protecting our most innocent and vulnerable, defending the dignity of life, and called on Congress to prohibit late-term abortions.”
___
Associated Press writers Hunter Woodall in Nashua, N.H., and Hannah Fingerhut in Washington contributed to this report.
https://apnews.com/1ef6c45ac16e4468a1f6ae2f52f0a419
Why America’s strict new anti-abortion laws could backfire
The anti-abortion laws passed in recent days by legislatures in Alabama and Georgia seem designed for one purpose: to get the Supreme Court to overturn its landmark 1973 Roe v. Waderuling that guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion. The Court — more solidly conservative now than ever thanks to the recent addition of Justice Brett Kavanaugh — may well uphold those new laws.
Will voters do the same?
Maybe not. There is plenty of evidence that citizens of conservative states are, to some extent, actually protective of abortion rights. It may not be something they proclaim in their offices, at church, or to pollsters — but their secret beliefs can become quite evident once they enter the voting booth. This should make the legislators who passed the new bills very nervous.
My home state of Kansas has been a hotbed of abortion-related activism for more than a generation. Most memorable, perhaps, were the 1991 “Summer of Mercy” protests in Wichita, where thousands of protesters flooded the city to blockade an abortion clinic operated by Dr. George Tiller; over the course of six weeks and more than 2,600 people were arrested. Anti-abortion protests in Kansas have, on occasion, congealed into violence: Tiller’s clinic was firebombed in 1986; he was shot and injured by an abortion opponent in 1993; he was shot and killed by another abortion opponent in 2009.
But the state’s record on abortion is more mixed than Tiller’s story might suggest. Take, for example, the story of Phill Kline, someone you’ve likely never heard of but whose rise and fall could be a warning sign for anti-abortion legislators in Kansas and other red states today. Kline spent a decade as a culture warrior in the Kansas legislature before being elected the state’s attorney general in 2002. He used the perch to go on an anti-abortion crusade, ultimately bringing more than 30 misdemeanor charges against Tiller in 2006. A judge threw out those charges; Tiller was acquitted in a follow-up case the following year.
But voters in the famously red state of Kansas had enough: Kline lost his re-election campaign, badly, with just 41 percent of the vote. He managed to get himself appointed as district attorney in Johnson County, home to prosperous Kansas City suburbs, only to lose a primary election two years after that. These days, he’s on the faculty at Liberty University in Virginia, having lost his law license for misconduct during the abortion investigations.
Kansas is hardly a progressive state, but voters here often tire quickly of extremists. The same is probably true in other conservative states. While America’s abortion politics are polarized, many citizens are closer to the mushy middle on abortion — morally squeamish about it, but sometimes willing to suspend those qualms when faced with difficult decisions for themselves or their family members.
Across the nation as a whole, just 17 percent of Americans say Roe should be overturned entirely, and this reality is reflected at the state level: In 2008, voters in the solidly-Republican state of South Dakota overwhelmingly rejected a statewide ban on abortion — and repeated the feat two years later, even after exceptions for incest and rape were added to the proposed law. In 2011, Mississippi voters rejected a similar referendum by an even larger margin. Back in my home state of Kansas, the state Supreme Court last month ruled — shockingly — that the state constitution protects the right to an abortion.
“There’s a lot of public pressure to be anti-abortion,” Marvin Buehner, a South Dakota OB-GYN said at the time of the 2008 proposal. “People are more likely to answer the poll that they’ll support [a ban]. Then they get into the ballot booth and decide they just can’t vote for something like that.”
These sweeping new laws do very little to assuage the concerns of such voters. Alabama’s bill, for example, makes no exception for incest or rape. Georgia’s law would grant personhood protections to fetuses just six weeks after conception. Even if the Supreme Court upholds the laws, the examples from Kansas, Mississippi, and South Dakota suggest that legislators who passed these new bills could find themselves suddenly vulnerable.
Of course, that won’t satisfy pro-choice women and men who believe the right to abortion is just that — a right, to be defended by government, not compromised by it. “Today’s women can only thrive in a state that protects their most basic rights — the right to choose when and whether to start a family,” Andrea Young, executive director of Georgia’s ACLU, said last week, pledging to challenge the state’s new law.
Despite the high stakes of the coming court battles over the new anti-abortion laws, the Supreme Court is not the end of the line. In politics, few battles are ever completely won or lost. Nearly 50 years after Roe v. Wade, the fight may just be beginning anew.
https://theweek.com/articles/841763/why-americas-strict-new-antiabortion-laws-could-backfire
Roe v. Wade
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Supreme Court of the United States
Reargued October 11, 1972
Decided January 22, 1973
Potter Stewart · Byron White
Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun
Lewis F. Powell Jr. · William Rehnquist
Tex. Code Crim. Proc. arts. 1191–94, 1196
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973),[1] was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides a fundamental “right to privacy” that protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose whether or not to have an abortion. It also ruled that this “right to privacy” is not absolute and must be balanced against the government’s interests in protecting women’s health and protecting prenatal life.[2][3] The Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the three trimesters of pregnancy: the Court ruled that during the first trimester, governments could not prohibit abortions at all; during the second trimester, governments could require reasonable health regulations; during the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when abortion was necessary to save the life of the mother.[4] Because the Court classified the right to choose to have an abortion as “fundamental”, the decision required courts to evaluate challenged abortion laws under the “strict scrutiny” standard, the highest level of judicial review in the United States.[5]
In disallowing many state and federal restrictions on abortion in the United States,[6][7] Roe v. Wade prompted a national debate that continues today about issues including whether, and to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, what methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication, and what the role should be of religious and moral views in the political sphere. Roe v. Wadereshaped national politics, dividing much of the United States into pro-life and pro-choice camps, while activating grassroots movements on both sides.
Roe was criticized by some in the legal community,[8] with the decision being seen as a form of judicial activism.[9] In a 1973 article in the Yale Law Journal,[8][9] the American legal scholar John Hart Ely criticized Roe as a decision that “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.”[10] Ely added: “What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure.” Professor Laurence Tribe had similar thoughts: “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.”[11]
In 1992, the Supreme Court modified the legal principles in Roe in the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey.[12] In Casey, the Court reaffirmed Roe‘s holding that a woman’s right to abort a nonviable fetus is constitutionally protected, but abandoned Roe‘s trimester framework in favor of a standard based on fetal viability, and overruled Roe‘s requirement that government regulations on abortion be subjected to the strict scrutiny standard.[2][13]The Roe decision defined “viable” as “potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb, albeit with artificial aid.”[14] Justices in Casey acknowledged that viability may occur at 23 or 24 weeks, or sometimes even earlier, in light of medical advances.[15]
Contents
Background
History of abortion laws in the United States
According to the Court, “the restrictive criminal abortion laws in effect in a majority of States today are of relatively recent vintage.” Providing a historical analysis on abortion, Justice Harry Blackmun noted that abortion was “resorted to without scruple” in Greek and Roman times.[16] Blackmun also addressed the permissive and restrictive abortion attitudes and laws throughout history, noting the disagreements among leaders (of all different professions) in those eras and the formative laws and cases.[17] In the United States, in 1821, Connecticut passed the first state statute criminalizing abortion. Every state had abortion legislation by 1900.[18] In the United States, abortion was sometimes considered a common law crime,[19] though Justice Blackmun would conclude that the criminalization of abortion did not have “roots in the English common-law tradition.”[20] Rather than arresting the women having the abortions, legal officials were more likely to interrogate these women to obtain evidence against the abortion provider in order to close down that provider’s business.[21][22]
In 1971, Shirley Wheeler was charged with manslaughter after Florida hospital staff reported her illegal abortion to the police. She received a sentence of two years’ probation and, under her probation, had to move back into her parents’ house in North Carolina.[21] The Boston Women’s Abortion Coalition held a rally for Wheeler in Boston to raise money and awareness of her charges as well as had staff members from the Women’s National Abortion Action Coalition (WONAAC) speak at the rally.[23] Wheeler was possibly the first woman to be held criminally responsible for submitting to an abortion.[24] Her conviction was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court.[21]
History of the case
In June 1969, 21-year-old Norma McCorvey discovered she was pregnant with her third child. She returned to Dallas, Texas, where friends advised her to assert falsely that she had been raped in order to obtain a legal abortion (with the incorrect assumption that Texas law allowed abortion in cases of rape and incest). This scheme would also fail because there was no police report documenting the alleged rape. In any case, the Texas statute allowed abortion only ”for the purpose of saving the life of the mother”. She attempted to obtain an Illegal abortion, but found that the unauthorized facility had been closed down by the police. Eventually, she was referred to attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington.[25][26] (McCorvey would end up giving birth before the case was decided, and the child was put up for adoption.)[27]
In 1970, Coffee and Weddington filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas on behalf of McCorvey (under the alias Jane Roe). The defendant in the case was Dallas County District AttorneyHenry Wade, who represented the State of Texas. McCorvey was no longer claiming her pregnancy was a result of rape, and later acknowledged that she had lied about having been raped.[28][29] “Rape” is not mentioned in the judicial opinions in the case.[30]
On June 17, 1970, a three-judge panel of the District Court, consisting of Northern District of Texas Judges Sarah T. Hughes, William McLaughlin Taylor Jr. and Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Irving Loeb Goldberg, unanimously[30] declared the Texas law unconstitutional, finding that it violated the right to privacy found in the Ninth Amendment. In addition, the court relied on Justice Arthur Goldberg‘s 1965 concurrence in Griswold v. Connecticut. The court, however, declined to grant an injunction against enforcement of the law.[31]
Issues before the Supreme Court
Roe v. Wade reached the Supreme Court on appeal in 1970. The justices delayed taking action on Roe and a closely related case, Doe v. Bolton, until they had decided Younger v. Harris (because they felt the appeals raised difficult questions on judicial jurisdiction) and United States v. Vuitch (in which they considered the constitutionality of a District of Columbia statute that criminalized abortion except where the mother’s life or health was endangered). In Vuitch, the Court narrowly upheld the statute, though in doing so, it treated abortion as a medical procedure and stated that physicians must be given room to determine what constitutes a danger to (physical or mental) health. The day after they announced their decision in Vuitch, they voted to hear both Roe and Doe.[32]
Arguments were scheduled by the full Court for December 13, 1971. Before the Court could hear the oral arguments, Justices Hugo Black and John Marshall Harlan II retired. Chief Justice Warren Burger asked Justice Potter Stewart and Justice Blackmun to determine whether Roe and Doe, among others, should be heard as scheduled. According to Blackmun, Stewart felt that the cases were a straightforward application of Younger v. Harris, and they recommended that the Court move forward as scheduled.[33]
In his opening argument in defense of the abortion restrictions, attorney Jay Floyd made what was later described as the “worst joke in legal history.”[34] Appearing against two female lawyers, Floyd began, “Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the Court. It’s an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they are going to have the last word.” His remark was met with cold silence; one observer thought that Chief Justice Burger “was going to come right off the bench at him. He glared him down.”[35][36]
After a first round of arguments, all seven justices tentatively agreed that the Texas law should be struck down, but on varying grounds.[37] Burger assigned the role of writing the Court’s opinion in Roe (as well as Doe) to Blackmun, who began drafting a preliminary opinion that emphasized what he saw as the Texas law’s vagueness.[38] (At this point, Black and Harlan had been replaced by Justices William Rehnquist and Lewis F. Powell Jr., but they arrived too late to hear the first round of arguments.) But Blackmun felt that his opinion did not adequately reflect his liberal colleagues’ views.[39] In May 1972, he proposed that the case be reargued. Justice William O. Douglas threatened to write a dissent from the reargument order (he and the other liberal justices were suspicious that Rehnquist and Powell would vote to uphold the statute), but was coaxed out of the action by his colleagues, and his dissent was merely mentioned in the reargument order without further statement or opinion.[40][41] The case was reargued on October 11, 1972. Weddington continued to represent Roe, and Texas Assistant Attorney General Robert C. Flowers replaced Jay Floyd for Texas.[citation needed]
Blackmun continued to work on his opinions in both cases over the summer recess, even though there was no guarantee that he would be assigned to write them again. Over the recess, he spent a week researching the history of abortion at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where he had worked in the 1950s. After the Court heard the second round of arguments, Powell said he would agree with Blackmun’s conclusion but pushed for Roe to be the lead of the two abortion cases being considered. Powell also suggested that the Court strike down the Texas law on privacy grounds. Justice Byron White was unwilling to sign on to Blackmun’s opinion, and Rehnquist had already decided to dissent.[42]
Prior to the decision, the justices discussed the trimester framework at great length. Justice Powell had suggested that the point where the state could intervene be placed at viability, which Justice Thurgood Marshall supported as well.[43] In an internal memo to the other justices before the majority decision was published, Justice Blackmun wrote: “You will observe that I have concluded that the end of the first trimester is critical. This is arbitrary, but perhaps any other selected point, such as quickening or viability, is equally arbitrary.”[44]Roe supporters are quick to point out, however, that the memo only reflects Blackmun’s uncertainty about the timing of the trimester framework, not the framework or the holding itself.[45] In his opinion, Blackmun also clearly explained how he had reached the trimester framework – scrutinizing history, common law, the Hippocratic Oath, medical knowledge, and the positions of medical organizations.[46] Justice Blackmun’s trimester framework was later rejected by the O’Connor–Souter–Kennedy plurality in Casey, in favor of the “undue burden” analysis still employed by the Court.[47] Contrary to Blackmun, Justice Douglas preferred the first-trimester line.[48] Justice Stewart said the lines were “legislative” and wanted more flexibility and consideration paid to state legislatures, though he joined Blackmun’s decision.[49] Justice William J. Brennan Jr. proposed abandoning frameworks based on the age of the fetus and instead allowing states to regulate the procedure based on its safety for the mother.[48]
Supreme Court decision
On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision in favor of Roe that struck down Texas’s abortion ban as unconstitutional. In addition to the majority opinion, Justices Burger, Douglas, and Stewart each filed concurring opinions, and Justice White filed a dissenting opinion in which Justice Rehnquist joined. Burger’s, Douglas’s, and White’s opinions were issued along with the Court’s opinion in Doe v. Bolton (announced on the same day as Roe v. Wade).
Opinion of the Court
Justice Harry Blackmun, the author of the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade.
Seven justices formed the majority and joined an opinion written by Justice Harry Blackmun. The Court began by exhaustively reviewing the legality of abortion throughout the history of Roman law and the Anglo-American common law up until the 20th century.[50] It also reviewed the developments of medical procedures and technology to perform abortions safely.[50]
Right to privacy
With its historical survey as background, the Court centered its opinion around the notion of a constitutional “right to privacy” that was intimated in earlier cases involving family relationships and reproductive autonomy.[50] After reviewing these cases, the Court proceeded, “with virtually no further explanation of the privacy value”,[5] to rule that regardless of exactly which provisions were involved, the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of liberty covered a right to privacy that generally protected a pregnant woman’s decision whether or not to abort a pregnancy.[3]
The Court reasoned that outlawing abortions would infringe a pregnant woman’s right to privacy for several reasons: having unwanted children “may force upon the woman a distressful life and future”; it may bring imminent psychological harm; caring for the child may tax the mother’s physical and mental health; and because there may be “distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child.”[52] However, the Court rejected the notion that a pregnant woman’s right to abort her pregnancy was absolute, and held that the right must be balanced against other considerations such as the state’s interest in protecting “prenatal life.”[53]
The Court acknowledged that states had two interests that were sufficiently “compelling” to permit some limitations on the right to choose to have an abortion: their interests in protecting the mother’s health and protecting the life of the fetus. The Court had rejected Roe’s argument that a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion should be absolute, and it also rejected Texas’s argument that total bans on abortion were justifiable because “life” begins at the moment of conception.[5] The Court found that there was no indication that the Constitution’s uses of the word “person” were meant to include fetuses, and so it rejected Texas’s argument that a fetus should be considered a “person” with a legal and constitutional right to life.[54] It noted that there was still great disagreement over when an unborn fetus becomes a “person”.[54]
The Court settled on the three trimesters of pregnancy as the framework to resolve the problem. During the first trimester, when it was believed that the procedure was safer than childbirth, the Court ruled that the government could place no restriction on a woman’s ability to choose to abort a pregnancy other than minimal medical safeguards such as requiring a licensed physician to perform the procedure.[5] After the first trimester, the Court ruled that evidence of increasing risks to the mother’s health gave the state a compelling interest, and that it could enact medical regulations on the procedure so long as they were reasonable and “narrowly tailored” to protecting mothers’ health.[5] At the level of medical science available in the early 1970s, the beginning of the third trimester was normally considered to be the point at which a fetus became viable. Therefore, the Court ruled that, from the beginning of the third trimester on through the rest of a pregnancy, the state had a compelling interest in protecting prenatal life, and could legally prohibit all abortions except where necessary to protect the mother’s life or health.[5]
Justiciability
An aspect of the decision that attracted comparatively little attention was the Court’s disposition of the issues of standing and mootness. Under the traditional interpretation of these rules, Jane Roe’s appeal was “moot” because she had already given birth to her child and thus would not be affected by the ruling; she also lacked “standing” to assert the rights of other pregnant women.[56] As she did not present an “actual case or controversy” (a grievance and a demand for relief), any opinion issued by the Supreme Court would constitute an advisory opinion.
The Court concluded that the case came within an established exception to the rule: one that allowed consideration of an issue that was “capable of repetition, yet evading review.”[57] This phrase had been coined in 1911 by Justice Joseph McKenna in Southern Pacific Terminal Co. v. ICC.[58] Blackmun’s opinion quoted McKenna and noted that pregnancy would normally conclude more quickly than an appellate process: “If that termination makes a case moot, pregnancy litigation seldom will survive much beyond the trial stage, and appellate review will be effectively denied.”[59]
Concurrences
Several other members of the Supreme Court filed concurring opinions in the case. Justice Potter Stewart wrote a concurring opinion in which he stated that even though the Constitution makes no mention of the right to choose to have an abortion without interference, he thought the Court’s decision was a permissible interpretation of the doctrine of substantive due process, which says that the Due Process Clause‘s protection of liberty extends beyond simple procedures and protects certain fundamental rights.[54] Justice William O. Douglas wrote a concurring opinion in which he described how he believed that while the Court was correct to find that the right to choose to have an abortion was a fundamental right, it would be better to derive it from the Ninth Amendment – which states that the fact that a right is not specifically enumerated in the Constitution shall not be construed to mean that American people do not possess it – rather than through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.[54]
Dissents
Byron White was the senior dissenting justice.
Only two justices dissented from the Court’s decision, but their dissents touched on the points that would lead to later criticism of the Roe decision.[5]
Justice Byron White wrote a dissenting opinion in which he stated his belief that the Court had no basis for deciding between the competing values of pregnant women and unborn children. He wrote:
White asserted that the Court “values the convenience of the pregnant mother more than the continued existence and development of the life or potential life that she carries.” Though he suggested that he “might agree” with the Court’s values and priorities, he wrote that he saw “no constitutional warrant for imposing such an order of priorities on the people and legislatures of the States.” White criticized the Court for involving itself in the issue of abortion by creating “a constitutional barrier to state efforts to protect human life and by investing mothers and doctors with the constitutionally protected right to exterminate it.” He would have left this issue, for the most part, “with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs.”
Justice William Rehnquist also dissented from the Court’s decision. In his dissenting opinion, he compared the majority’s use of substantive due process to the Court’s repudiated use of the doctrine in the 1905 case Lochner v. New York.[5] He elaborated on several of White’s points, asserting that the Court’s historical analysis was flawed:
From this historical record, Rehnquist concluded, “There apparently was no question concerning the validity of this provision or of any of the other state statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted.” Therefore, in his view, “the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter.”
Reception
Political
A statistical evaluation of the relationship of political affiliation to pro-choice and anti-abortion issues shows that public opinion is much more nuanced about when abortion is acceptable than is commonly assumed.[63] The most prominent organized groups that mobilized in response to Roe are the National Abortion Rights Action League and the National Right to Life Committee.
Support
Advocates of Roe describe it as vital to the preservation of women’s rights, personal freedom, bodily integrity, and privacy. Advocates have also reasoned that access to safe abortion and reproductive freedom generally are fundamental rights. Some scholars (not including any member of the Supreme Court) have equated the denial of abortion rights to compulsory motherhood, and have argued that abortion bans therefore violate the Thirteenth Amendment:
Supporters of Roe contend that the decision has a valid constitutional foundation in the Fourteenth Amendment, or that the fundamental right to abortion is found elsewhere in the Constitution but not in the articles referenced in the decision.[64][65]
Opposition
Every year, on the anniversary of the decision, opponents of abortion march up Constitution Avenue to the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., in the March for Life.[66] Around 250,000 people attended the march until 2010.[67][68] Estimates put the 2011 and 2012 attendances at 400,000 each,[69] and the 2013 March for Life drew an estimated 650,000 people.[70]
Opponents of Roe assert that the decision lacks a valid constitutional foundation.[71] Like the dissenters in Roe, they maintain that the Constitution is silent on the issue, and that proper solutions to the question would best be found via state legislatures and the legislative process, rather than through an all-encompassing ruling from the Supreme Court.[72]
A prominent argument against the Roe decision is that, in the absence of consensus about when meaningful life begins, it is best to avoid the risk of doing harm.[73]
In response to Roe v. Wade, most states enacted or attempted to enact laws limiting or regulating abortion, such as laws requiring parental consent or parental notification for minors to obtain abortions; spousal mutual consent laws; spousal notification laws; laws requiring abortions to be performed in hospitals, not clinics; laws barring state funding for abortions; laws banning intact dilation and extraction, also known as partial-birth abortion; laws requiring waiting periods before abortions; and laws mandating that women read certain types of literature and watch a fetal ultrasound before undergoing an abortion.[74] In 1976, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, barring federal funding of abortions (except in cases of rape, incest, or a threat to the life of the mother) for poor women through the Medicaid program. The Supreme Court struck down some state restrictions in a long series of cases stretching from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, but upheld restrictions on funding, including the Hyde Amendment, in the case of Harris v. McRae (1980).[75]
Some opponents of abortion maintain that personhood begins at fertilization or conception, and should therefore be protected by the Constitution;[65] the dissenting justices in Roe instead wrote that decisions about abortion “should be left with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs.”[76]
Perhaps the most notable opposition to Roe comes from Roe herself: In 1995, Norma L. McCorvey revealed that she had become pro-life, and from then until her death in 2017, she was a vocal opponent of abortion.[77]
Legal
Justice Blackmun, who authored the Roe decision, stood by the analytical framework he established in Roe throughout his career.[78] Despite his initial reluctance, he became the decision’s chief champion and protector during his later years on the Court.[79] Liberal and feminist legal scholars have had various reactions to Roe, not always giving the decision unqualified support. One argument is that Justice Blackmun reached the correct result but went about it the wrong way.[80] Another is that the end achieved by Roe does not justify its means of judicial fiat.[81]
Justice John Paul Stevens, while agreeing with the decision, has suggested that it should have been more narrowly focused on the issue of privacy. According to Stevens, if the decision had avoided the trimester framework and simply stated that the right to privacy included a right to choose abortion, “it might have been much more acceptable” from a legal standpoint.[82] Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had, before joining the Court, criticized the decision for ending a nascent movement to liberalize abortion law through legislation.[83]Ginsburg has also faulted the Court’s approach for being “about a doctor’s freedom to practice his profession as he thinks best…. It wasn’t woman-centered. It was physician-centered.”[84] Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox wrote: “[Roe‘s] failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations…. Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution.”[85]
In a highly cited 1973 article in the Yale Law Journal,[9] Professor John Hart Ely criticized Roe as a decision that “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.”[86] Ely added: “What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure.” Professor Laurence Tribe had similar thoughts: “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.”[87] Liberal law professors Alan Dershowitz,[88] Cass Sunstein,[89] and Kermit Roosevelt[90] have also expressed disappointment with Roe.
Jeffrey Rosen[91] and Michael Kinsley[92] echo Ginsburg, arguing that a legislative movement would have been the correct way to build a more durable consensus in support of abortion rights. William Saletan wrote, “Blackmun’s [Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference.”[93] Benjamin Wittes has written that Roe “disenfranchised millions of conservatives on an issue about which they care deeply.”[94] And Edward Lazarus, a former Blackmun clerk who “loved Roe‘s author like a grandfather,” wrote: “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible…. Justice Blackmun’s opinion provides essentially no reasoning in support of its holding. And in the almost 30 years since Roe’s announcement, no one has produced a convincing defense of Roe on its own terms.”[95]
The assertion that the Supreme Court was making a legislative decision is often repeated by opponents of the ruling.[96] The “viability” criterion is still in effect, although the point of viability has changed as medical science has found ways to help premature babies survive.[97]
Public opinion
Americans have been equally divided on the issue; a May 2018 Gallup poll indicated that 48% of Americans described themselves as pro-choice and 48% described themselves as pro-life. A July 2018 poll indicated that only 28% of Americans wanted the Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs. Wade, while 64% did not want the ruling to be overturned.[98]
A Gallup poll conducted in May 2009 indicated that 53% of Americans believed that abortions should be legal under certain circumstances, 23% believed abortion should be legal under any circumstances, and 22% believed that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. However, in this poll, more Americans referred to themselves as “Pro-Life” than “Pro-Choice” for the first time since the poll asked the question in 1995, with 51% identifying as “Pro-Life” and 42% identifying as “Pro-Choice”.[99] Similarly, an April 2009 Pew Research Center poll showed a softening of support for legal abortion in all cases compared to the previous years of polling. People who said they support abortion in all or most cases dropped from 54% in 2008 to 46% in 2009.[100]
In contrast, an October 2007 Harris poll on Roe v. Wade asked the following question:
In reply, 56% of respondents indicated favour while 40% indicated opposition. The Harris organization concluded from this poll that “56 percent now favours the U.S. Supreme Court decision.” Anti-abortion activists have disputed whether the Harris poll question is a valid measure of public opinion about Roe‘s overall decision, because the question focuses only on the first three months of pregnancy.[102][103] The Harris poll has tracked public opinion about Roe since 1973:[101][104]
Regarding the Roe decision as a whole, more Americans support it than support overturning it.[105] When pollsters describe various regulations that Roe prevents legislatures from enacting, support for Roe drops.[105][106]
Role in subsequent decisions and politics
Opposition to Roe on the bench grew when President Reagan, who supported legislative restrictions on abortion, began making federal judicial appointments in 1981. Reagan denied that there was any litmus test: “I have never given a litmus test to anyone that I have appointed to the bench…. I feel very strongly about those social issues, but I also place my confidence in the fact that the one thing that I do seek are judges that will interpret the law and not write the law. We’ve had too many examples in recent years of courts and judges legislating.”[107]
In addition to White and Rehnquist, Reagan appointee Sandra Day O’Connor began dissenting from the Court’s abortion cases, arguing in 1983 that the trimester-based analysis devised by the Roe Court was “unworkable.”[108] Shortly before his retirement from the bench, Chief Justice Warren Burger suggested in 1986 that Roe be “reexamined”;[109] the associate justice who filled Burger’s place on the Court – Justice Antonin Scalia – vigorously opposed Roe. Concern about overturning Roe played a major role in the defeat of Robert Bork‘s nomination to the Court in 1987; the man eventually appointed to replace Roe-supporter Lewis Powell was Anthony Kennedy.
The Supreme Court of Canada used the rulings in both Roe and Doe v. Bolton as grounds to find Canada’s federal law restricting access to abortions unconstitutional. That Canadian case, R. v. Morgentaler, was decided in 1988.[110]
Webster v. Reproductive Health Services
In a 5–4 decision in 1989’s Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the Court, declined to explicitly overrule Roe, because “none of the challenged provisions of the Missouri Act properly before us conflict with the Constitution.”[111] In this case, the Court upheld several abortion restrictions, and modified the Roe trimester framework.[111]
In concurring opinions, O’Connor refused to reconsider Roe, and Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the Court and O’Connor for not overruling Roe.[111] Blackmun – author of the Roe decision – stated in his dissent that White, Kennedy and Rehnquist were “callous” and “deceptive,” that they deserved to be charged with “cowardice and illegitimacy,” and that their plurality opinion “foments disregard for the law.”[111] White had recently opined that the majority reasoning in Roe v. Wade was “warped.”[109]
Planned Parenthood v. Casey
During initial deliberations for Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), an initial majority of five Justices (Rehnquist, White, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas) were willing to effectively overturn Roe. Kennedy changed his mind after the initial conference,[112] and O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter joined Blackmun and Stevens to reaffirm the central holding of Roe,[113] saying, “Our law affords constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education. […] These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”[114] Only Justice Blackmun would have retained Roe entirely and struck down all aspects of the statute at issue in Casey.[78]
Scalia’s dissent acknowledged that abortion rights are of “great importance to many women”, but asserted that it is not a liberty protected by the Constitution, because the Constitution does not mention it, and because longstanding traditions have permitted it to be legally proscribed. Scalia concluded: “[B]y foreclosing all democratic outlet for the deep passions this issue arouses, by banishing the issue from the political forum that gives all participants, even the losers, the satisfaction of a fair hearing and an honest fight, by continuing the imposition of a rigid national rule instead of allowing for regional differences, the Court merely prolongs and intensifies the anguish.”[115]
Stenberg v. Carhart
During the 1990s, the state of Nebraska attempted to ban a certain second-trimester abortion procedure known as intact dilation and extraction (sometimes called partial birth abortion). The Nebraska ban allowed other second-trimester abortion procedures called dilation and evacuation abortions. Ginsburg (who replaced White) stated, “this law does not save any fetus from destruction, for it targets only ‘a method of performing abortion’.”[116] The Supreme Court struck down the Nebraska ban by a 5–4 vote in Stenberg v. Carhart (2000), citing a right to use the safest method of second trimester abortion.
Kennedy, who had co-authored the 5–4 Casey decision upholding Roe, was among the dissenters in Stenberg, writing that Nebraska had done nothing unconstitutional.[116] In his dissent, Kennedy described the second trimester abortion procedure that Nebraska was not seeking to prohibit, and thus argued that since this dilation and evacuation procedure remained available in Nebraska, the state was free to ban the other procedure sometimes called “partial birth abortion.”[116]
The remaining three dissenters in Stenberg – Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas – disagreed again with Roe: “Although a State may permit abortion, nothing in the Constitution dictates that a State must do so.”
Gonzales v. Carhart
In 2003, Congress passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which led to a lawsuit in the case of Gonzales v. Carhart. The Court had previously ruled in Stenberg v. Carhart that a state’s ban on “partial birth abortion” was unconstitutional because such a ban did not have an exception for the health of the woman. The membership of the Court changed after Stenberg, with John Roberts and Samuel Alito replacing Rehnquist and O’Connor, respectively. Further, the ban at issue in Gonzales v. Carhart was a clear federal statute, rather than a relatively vague state statute as in the Stenberg case.
On April 18, 2007, the Supreme Court handed down a 5 to 4 decision upholding the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, asserting that Congress was within its power to generally ban the procedure, although the Court left the door open for as-applied challenges. Kennedy’s opinion did not reach the question of whether the Court’s prior decisions in Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and Stenberg v. Carhart remained valid, and instead the Court stated that the challenged statute remained consistent with those past decisions whether or not those decisions remained valid.
Chief Justice John Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito joined the majority. Justices Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter, and Breyer dissented, contending that the ruling ignored Supreme Court abortion precedent, and also offering an equality-based justification for abortion precedent. Thomas filed a concurring opinion, joined by Scalia, contending that the Court’s prior decisions in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey should be reversed, and also noting that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act possibly exceeded the powers of Congress under the Commerce Clause.
Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt
In the case of Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the most significant abortion rights case before the Supreme Court since Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992,[117][118][119] the Supreme Court in a 5–3 decision on June 27, 2016, swept away forms of state restrictions on the way abortion clinics can function. The Texas legislature enacted in 2013 restrictions on the delivery of abortions services that created an undue burden for women seeking an abortion by requiring abortion doctors to have difficult-to-obtain “admitting privileges” at a local hospital and by requiring clinics to have costly hospital-grade facilities. The Court struck down these two provisions “facially” from the law at issue – that is, the very words of the provisions were invalid, no matter how they might be applied in any practical situation. According to the Supreme Court the task of judging whether a law puts an unconstitutional burden on a woman’s right to abortion belongs with the courts and not the legislatures.[120]
Activities of Norma McCorvey
Norma McCorvey became a member of the anti-abortion movement in 1995; she supported making abortion illegal until her death in 2017.[121] In 1998, she testified to Congress:
As a party to the original litigation, she sought to reopen the case in U.S. District Court in Texas to have Roe v. Wade overturned. However, the Fifth Circuit decided that her case was moot, in McCorvey v. Hill.[122] In a concurring opinion, Judge Edith Jones agreed that McCorvey was raising legitimate questions about emotional and other harm suffered by women who have had abortions, about increased resources available for the care of unwanted children, and about new scientific understanding of fetal development, but Jones said she was compelled to agree that the case was moot. On February 22, 2005, the Supreme Court refused to grant a writ of certiorari, and McCorvey’s appeal ended.
Activities of Sarah Weddington
After arguing before the Court in Roe v. Wade at the age of 26, Sarah Weddington went on to be a representative in the Texas House of Representatives for three terms.[123] Weddington has also had a long and successful career as General Counsel for the United States Department of Agriculture, Assistant to President Jimmy Carter, lecturer at Texas Wesleyan University, and speaker and adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin.[123]
Presidential positions
President Richard Nixon did not publicly comment about the decision.[124] In private conversation later revealed as part of the Nixon tapes, Nixon said “There are times when an abortion is necessary,… .”[125][126] However, Nixon was also concerned that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.”[125]
Generally, presidential opinion has been split between major party lines. The Roe decision was opposed by Presidents Gerald Ford,[127] Ronald Reagan,[128] and George W. Bush.[129] President George H.W. Bush also opposed Roe, though he had supported abortion rights earlier in his career.[130][131]
President Jimmy Carter supported legal abortion from an early point in his political career, in order to prevent birth defects and in other extreme cases; he encouraged the outcome in Roe and generally supported abortion rights.[132] Roe was also supported by President Bill Clinton.[133] President Barack Obama has taken the position that “Abortions should be legally available in accordance with Roe v. Wade.”[134]
President Donald Trump has publicly opposed the decision, vowing to appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court.[135] Upon Justice Kennedy’s retirement in 2018, Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to replace him, and he was confirmed by the Senate in October 2018. A central point of Kavanaugh’s appointment hearings was his stance on Roe v. Wade, of which he said to Senator Susan Collins that he would not “overturn a long-established precedent if five current justices believed that it was wrongly decided”.[136] Despite Kavanaugh’s statement, there is concern that with the Supreme Court having a strong conservative majority, that Roe v. Wade will be overturned given an appropriate case to challenge it. Further concerns were raised following the May 2019 Supreme Court 5-4 decision along ideological lines in Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt. While the case had nothing to do with abortion rights, the decision overturned a previous 1979 decision from Nevada v. Hall without maintaining the stare decisis precedent, indicating the current Court makeup would be willing to apply the same to overturn Roe v. Wade.[137] Pro-abortion organizations like Planned Parenthood are planning on how they will operate should Roe v. Wade be overturned.[138]
State laws regarding Roe
Since 2010 there has been an increase in state restrictions on abortion.
Several states have enacted so-called trigger laws which would take effect in the event that Roe v. Wade is overturned, with the effect of outlawing abortions on the state level. Those states include Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota.[139] Additionally, many states did not repeal pre-1973 statutes that criminalized abortion, and some of those statutes could again be in force if Roe were reversed.[140]
Other states have passed laws to maintain the legality of abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Those states include California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Nevada and Washington.[139]
The Mississippi Legislature has attempted to make abortion unfeasible without having to overturn Roe v. Wade. The Mississippi law as of 2012 was being challenged in federal courts and was temporarily blocked.[141]
Alabama House Republicans passed a law on April 30, 2019 that will criminalize abortion if it goes into effect.[142] It offers only two exceptions: serious health risk to the mother or a lethal fetal anomaly. Alabama governor Kay Ivey signed the bill into law on May 14, primarily as a symbolic gesture in hopes of challenging Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court.[143][144][145]
See also
Footnotes …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade
Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179 (1973), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court overturning the abortion law of Georgia.[1] The Supreme Court’s decision was released on January 22, 1973, the same day as the decision in the better-known case of Roe v. Wade.[2]
Contents
Background
The Georgia law in question permitted abortion only in cases of rape, severe fetal deformity, or the possibility of severe or fatal injury to the mother. Other restrictions included the requirement that the procedure be approved in writing by three physicians and by a three-member special committee that either (1) continued pregnancy would endanger the pregnant woman’s life or “seriously and permanently” injure her health; (2) the fetus would “very likely be born with a grave, permanent and irremediable mental or physical defect”; or (3) the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.[3][4] In addition, only Georgia residents could receive abortions under this statutory scheme: non-residents could not have an abortion in Georgia under any circumstances.
The plaintiff, a pregnant woman who was given the pseudonym “Mary Doe” in court papers to protect her identity, sued Arthur K. Bolton, then the Attorney General of Georgia, as the official responsible for enforcing the law in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The anonymous plaintiff has since been identified as Sandra Cano, a 22-year-old mother of three who was nine weeks pregnant at the time the lawsuit was filed. Cano, who died in 2014, described herself as pro-life and claimed her attorney, Margie Pitts Hames, lied to her in order to have a plaintiff.[5][6]
On October 14, 1970, a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia consisting of Northern District of Georgia Judges Albert John Henderson, Sidney Oslin Smith Jr., and Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Lewis Render Morgan unanimously declared the conditional restrictions portion of the law unconstitutional, though upheld the medical approval and residency requirements.[7] The court also declined to issue an injunction against enforcement of the law, similarly to the district court in the case Roe v. Wade. The plaintiff appealed to the Supreme Court under a statute, since repealed, permitting bypass of the circuit appeals court.
The oral arguments and re-arguments followed the same schedule as those in Roe. Atlanta attorney Hames represented Doe at the hearings, while Georgia assistant attorney general Dorothy Toth Beasley represented Bolton.
Opinion of the Court
The same 7-2 majority that struck down a Texas abortion law in Roe v. Wade, invalidated most of the remaining restrictions of the Georgia abortion law, including the medical approval and residency requirements. The Court reiterated the protected “right to privacy,” which applied to matters involving marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education.[3] Justice Harry A. Blackmun wrote the majority opinion for the Court, in which he explained “the sensitive and emotional nature” of the issue and “the deep and seemingly absolute convictions” on both sides.[4] Justice Blackmun went on to conclude that as a constitutional matter, the right to privacy was “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”[3][4]
Together, Doe and Roe declared abortion as a constitutional right and overturned most laws against abortion in other U.S. states. Roe legalized abortion nationwide for approximately the first six months of pregnancy until the point of fetal viability.[3]
Definition of health
The Court’s opinion in Doe v. Bolton stated that a woman may obtain an abortion after viability, if necessary to protect her health. The Court defined “health” as follows:
Subsequent developments
In 2003, Sandra Cano filed a motion to re-open the case claiming that she had not been aware that the case had been filed on her behalf and that if she had known she would not have supported the litigation.[8] The district court denied her motion, and she appealed. When the appeals court also denied her motion,[9] she requested review by the United States Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court declined to hear Sandra Cano’s suit to overturn the ruling.[10] Sandra Cano died on September 30, 2014.[6]
See also
References
External links
due process
under Section 1983
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Bolton
Griswold v. Connecticut
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Supreme Court of the United States
Decided June 7, 1965
Tom C. Clark · John M. Harlan II
William J. Brennan Jr. · Potter Stewart
Byron White · Arthur Goldberg
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965),[1] is a landmark case in the United States about access to contraception. The case involved a Connecticut “Comstock law” that prohibited any person from using “any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception.” The court held that the statute was unconstitutional, and that “the clear effect of [the Connecticut law …] is to deny disadvantaged citizens … access to medical assistance and up-to-date information in respect to proper methods of birth control.” By a vote of 7–2, the Supreme Court invalidated the law on the grounds that it violated the “right to marital privacy“, establishing the basis for the right to privacy with respect to intimate practices. This and other cases view the right to privacy as a right to “protect[ion] from governmental intrusion.”
Although the Bill of Rights does not explicitly mention “privacy”, Justice William O. Douglas wrote for the majority that the right was to be found in the “penumbras” and “emanations” of other constitutional protections, such as the self-incrimination clause of the Fifth Amendment. Douglas wrote, “Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.” Justice Arthur Goldberg wrote a concurring opinion in which he used the Ninth Amendment in support of the Supreme Court’s ruling. Justice Byron White and Justice John Marshall Harlan II wrote concurring opinions in which they argued that privacy is protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Contents
Background
Griswold v. Connecticut originated as a prosecution under the Connecticut Comstock Act of 1873. The law made it illegal to use “any drug, medicinal article, or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception…”. Violators could be “… fined not less than fifty dollars or imprisoned not less than sixty days nor more than one year or be both fined and imprisoned.”[1] By the 1950s, Massachusetts and Connecticut were the only two states that still had such statutes, although they were almost never enforced.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, physicians in the United States largely avoided the publication of any material related to birth control, even when they often recommended or at least gave advice regarding it to their married patients. Then in 1914, Margaret Sanger openly challenged the public consensus against contraception.[2] She influenced the Connecticut Birth Control League (CBCL) and helped to develop the eventual concept of the Planned Parenthood clinics.
The first Planned Parenthood clinic in Connecticut opened in 1935 in Hartford. It provided services to women who had no access to a gynecologist, including information about artificial contraception and other methods to plan the growth of their families. Several clinics were opened in Connecticut over the following years, including the Waterbury clinic that led to the legal dispute. In 1939, this clinic was compelled to enforce the 1879 anti-contraception law on poor women patients. This caught the attention of the CBCL leaders, who remarked on the importance of birth control for cases in which the lives of the patients depended upon it.[3]
During the 1940s, several cases arose from the provision of contraception by the Waterbury clinic, leading to legal challenges to the constitutionality of the Comstock law, but these failed on technical grounds. In Tileston v. Ullman (1943), a doctor and mother challenged the law on the grounds that a ban on contraception could, in certain sexual situations, threaten the lives and well-being of patients. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the appeal on the grounds that the plaintiff lacked standing to sue on behalf of his patients. Yale School of Medicine gynecologist C. Lee Buxton and his patients brought a second challenge to the law in Poe v. Ullman (1961). The Supreme Court again dismissed the appeal, on the grounds that the case was not ripe: the plaintiffs had not been charged or threatened with prosecution, so there was no actual controversy for the Court to resolve.
The polemic around Poe led to the appeal in Griswold v. Connecticut, primarily based on the dissent of Justice John Marshall Harlan II in Poe, one of the most cited dissents in Supreme Court history.
He argued, foremost, that the Supreme Court should have heard the case rather than dismissing it. Thereafter, he indicated his support for a broad interpretation of the due process clause. On the basis of this interpretation, Harlan concluded that the Connecticut statute violated the Constitution.
After Poe was handed down on June 1961, the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut (PPLC) decided to challenge the law again. Estelle T. Griswold served on the PPLC as Executive Director from 1954 to 1965.[5]Struggling through legal battles against birth control restrictions in Connecticut, Griswold and PPLC made an initial effort to financially support women who wanted contraceptives to bus to cities in New York and Rhode Island.[5] PPLC Executive Director Estelle Griswold[6] and Dr. Buxton (PPLC medical volunteer),[7] opened a birth control clinic in New Haven, Connecticut,[8] “thus directly challeng[ing] the state law.”[5] The clinic opened on November 1, 1961, and that same day received its first ten patients and dozens of appointment requests from married women who wanted birth control advice and prescriptions. Griswold and Buxton were arrested, tried, found guilty, and fined $100 each.[9] The conviction was upheld by the Appellate Division of the Circuit Court, and by the Connecticut Supreme Court.[10]
Court’s decision on relationship with the right to privacy
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Griswold appealed her conviction to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the Connecticut statute was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which reads that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law … nor deny any person the equal protection of the laws,” (Amendment 14 Section 1).[11] By a 7–2 majority, on June 7, 1965 the Supreme Court concluded that the Connecticut statute was unconstitutional.
Justice William O. Douglas, writing for the majority of the court, recognized the right to privacy, even though not enumerated in the Bill of Rights, is found in the “penumbras” and “emanations” of other constitutional protections, such as the self-incrimination clause of the Fifth Amendment, or the freedom of association clause of the First Amendment. The right to privacy is seen as a right to “protect[ion] from governmental intrusion.” Justice Arthur Goldberg wrote a concurring opinion in which he used the Ninth Amendment in support of the Supreme Court’s ruling, reasoning that the right of privacy was retained by the people. Justice Byron White and Justice John Marshall Harlan II also wrote concurring opinions in which they argued that privacy is protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Justices Hugo Black and Potter Stewart wrote dissenting opinions. Justice Black argued that the right to privacy is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. Furthermore, he criticized the interpretations of the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments by his fellow justices. Justice Stewart called the Connecticut statute “an uncommonly silly law” but argued that it was nevertheless constitutional.
The final decision of the court was later used in other cases related to sexual practices and other personal, often considered private, decisions for the American citizens.
Precedent for later cases
Later decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court extended the principles of Griswold beyond its particular facts.
Right to birth control for unmarried couples, 1972
Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) extended its holding to unmarried couples, whereas the “right of privacy” in Griswold was said to only apply to marital relationships.[12] The argument in Eisenstadt was that it was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to deny unmarried couples the right to use contraception when married couples did have that right (under Griswold).[13] Writing for the majority, Justice Brennan wrote that Massachusetts could not enforce the law against married couples because of Griswold v. Connecticut, so the law worked “irrational discrimination” if not extended to unmarried couples as well.
Right to abortion for any woman, 1973
The reasoning and language of both Griswold and Eisenstadt were cited in the concurring opinion by Associate Justice Potter Stewart in support of Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).[14] The decision in Roe struck down a Texas law that criminalized aiding a woman in getting an abortion.[15] The Court ruled that this law was a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Abortion became legalized for any woman for any reason, up through the first trimester, with possible restrictions for maternal health in the second trimester (the midpoint of which is the approximate time of fetal viability). In the third trimester of pregnancy, abortion is potentially illegal with exception for the mother’s health, which the court defined broadly in Doe v. Bolton.
Right to contraception for juveniles at least 16 years of age, 1977
Right to homosexual relations, 2003
Lawrence v. Texas (2003) struck down a Texas sodomy law that prohibited certain forms of intimate sexual contact between members of the same sex. Without stating a standard of review in the majority opinion, the court overruled Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), declaring that the “Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual.” Justice O’Connor, who wrote a concurring opinion, framed it as an issue of rational basis review. Justice Kennedy‘s majority opinion, based on the liberty interest protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, stated that the Texas anti-sodomy statute touched “upon the most private human conduct, sexual behavior, and in the most private of places, the home,” and attempted to “control a personal relationship that … is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished.” Thus, the Court held that adults are entitled to participate in private, consensual sexual conduct. While the opinion in Lawrence was framed in terms of the right to liberty, Kennedy described the “right to privacy” found in Griswold as the “most pertinent beginning point” in the evolution of the concepts embodied in Lawrence.[16]
Right to same-sex marriage, 2015
Griswold was also cited in a chain of cases that led the Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage in another landmark case, Obergefell v. Hodges.
See also
References
Further reading
External links
due process
under Section 1983
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut
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