{"id":8143,"date":"2022-06-18T15:48:54","date_gmt":"2022-06-18T15:48:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=8143"},"modified":"2022-06-18T15:48:54","modified_gmt":"2022-06-18T15:48:54","slug":"the-states-will-soon-be-at-each-others-throats-over-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=8143","title":{"rendered":"The States Will Soon Be at Each Other\u2019s Throats Over Abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“it will be worse still if what happens in Texas doesn\u2019t stay in Texas. Extra-territoriality still lies over the horizon; Connor Semelsberger, an official with the anti-abortion Family Research Council, told me his organization was far more focused on reviving pre-Roe<\/em> state laws restricting abortion and on preventing the sale of abortion pills than on pursuing action across the border. Yet efforts to limit the sale of abortifacients will almost inevitably involve enforcement beyond state lines, as is the case with the Texas extradition statute. Katie Glenn, government affairs counsel of Americans United for Life, testified in Texas in favor of the new law and says she expects to see \u201cinterstate scuffles\u201d as pro-abortion rights states resist the cross-border reach of anti-abortion legislation. Those scuffles could involve either extradition demands or attempts to hold out-of-state figures, whether doctors or Uber drivers, civilly liable for facilitating an abortion. The new Connecticut statute<\/a> specifically bars local officials from cooperating with extradition requests over the facilitation of abortion. Just so, in 1850, did Vermont pass legislation requiring citizens to help, rather than apprehend, fugitives running from slavery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Supreme Court, which seems to think it will have finally washed its hands of the issue, will have no choice but to adjudicate the dispute. The court has been here before as well. In 1846, Dred Scott, an enslaved man from Missouri, sued for his freedom on the grounds that his enslaver had taken him into Northern territories where he had lived for many years. The case finally reached the Supreme Court in 1857. The court ruled that Scott remained mere property, as the Fugitive Slave Act stipulated. Chief Justice Roger Taney then added, in perhaps the single worst decision in the history of the Supreme Court, that because enslaved people had no \u201crights which the white man was bound to respect,\u201d the federal government could neither confer citizenship on Black people nor bar slavery in federal territories. The Dred Scott<\/em> decision convinced Northerners that the \u201cslave power\u201d had gained control over all three branches of government. Slavery could not be extirpated save by war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The questions that will face the court are, of course, very different this time: Whether the state laws in question violate a principle implicit in the Constitution like the \u201cright to travel,\u201d or which of two conflicting state laws take precedence over the other. Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University and the author of several books on abortion and the law, says there simply are \u201cno settled answers to these questions.\u201d After all, states have not tried to impose their laws on one another for the past 170 years or so. \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot to constrain the justices,\u201d says Ziegler, \u201cwhich adds to the unpredictability.\u201d One can only hope that the court will act in such a way as to dampen conflict rather than advance the anti-abortion cause, though there\u2019s little reason to have much confidence.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2022\/05\/19\/the-new-civil-war-00033782<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“it will be worse still if what happens in Texas doesn\u2019t stay in Texas. Extra-territoriality still lies over the horizon; Connor Semelsberger, an official with the anti-abortion Family Research Council, told me his organization was far more focused on reviving pre-Roe state laws restricting abortion and on preventing the sale of abortion pills than on pursuing action across the border. Yet efforts to limit the sale of abortifacients will almost inevitably involve enforcement beyond state lines, as is the case with the Texas extradition statute. Katie Glenn, government affairs counsel of Americans United for Life, testified in Texas in favor of the new law and says she expects to see \u201cinterstate scuffles\u201d as pro-abortion rights states resist the cross-border reach of anti-abortion legislation. Those scuffles could involve either extradition demands or attempts to hold out-of-state figures, whether doctors or Uber drivers, civilly liable for facilitating an abortion. The new Connecticut statute specifically bars local officials from cooperating with extradition requests over the facilitation of abortion. Just so, in 1850, did Vermont pass legislation requiring citizens to help, rather than apprehend, fugitives running from slavery.
\nThe Supreme Court, which seems to think it will have finally washed its hands of the issue, will have no choice but to adjudicate the dispute. The court has been here before as well. In 1846, Dred Scott, an enslaved man from Missouri, sued for his freedom on the grounds that his enslaver had taken him into Northern territories where he had lived for many years. The case finally reached the Supreme Court in 1857. The court ruled that Scott remained mere property, as the Fugitive Slave Act stipulated. Chief Justice Roger Taney then added, in perhaps the single worst decision in the history of the Supreme Court, that because enslaved people had no \u201crights which the white man was bound to respect,\u201d the federal government could neither confer citizenship on Black people nor bar slavery in federal territories. The Dred Scott decision convinced Northerners that the \u201cslave power\u201d had gained control over all three branches of government. Slavery could not be extirpated save by war.<\/p>\n

The questions that will face the court are, of course, very different this time: Whether the state laws in question violate a principle implicit in the Constitution like the \u201cright to travel,\u201d or which of two conflicting state laws take precedence over the other. Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University and the author of several books on abortion and the law, says there simply are \u201cno settled answers to these questions.\u201d After all, states have not tried to impose their laws on one another for the past 170 years or so. \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot to constrain the justices,\u201d says Ziegler, \u201cwhich adds to the unpredictability.\u201d One can only hope that the court will act in such a way as to dampen conflict rather than advance the anti-abortion cause, though there\u2019s little reason to have much confidence.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[521,759],"class_list":["post-8143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-abortion","tag-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8144,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8143\/revisions\/8144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}