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Roe v. Wade decision and abortion rights news

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Stacey Abrams speaks during a campaign event in Reynolds, Georgia on June 4. (Dustin Chambers/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

Stacey Abrams, Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee, called for a legislative solution that restores nationwide abortion access following the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, saying, “allowing each state to decide the quality of your citizenship is wrong.

Georgia has its own restrictive abortion law that bans abortions when a “fetal heartbeat” can be detected at about six weeks into a pregnancy. Unlike the states with so-called trigger laws that were designed to take effect as soon as such a Supreme Court ruling was issued, Georgia’s law was already passed and signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp but then suspended by federal courts as unconstitutional.

But now, with the Supreme Court precedent overturned, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta would be set to let the law go into effect soon.

“Women deserve bodily autonomy, the deserve the right to make these choices,” Abrams told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union,” adding, “In Georgia in particular, in a mater of days, this six-week ban will be the law of the land. That is horrendous, that is appalling an it is wrong. As the next governor, I’m going to do everything in my power to reverse it.”

Abrams said President Biden “should do what is within the per view of the executive,” but emphasized the need for a “legislative solution that restores the constitutional protection to women regardless of what state they live in.”

“I believe there should be federal law that allows women to have these choices, to have reproductive choice and reproductive justice, and I think that it has to stop being a political football where the ideology of the leader of a state can determine the quality of life for a woman and her ability to make the choices she needs,” Abrams added.

Abrams advised businesses to consider the health care challenges that will face Georgia employees once the 6-week abortion ban begins, noting abortion restrictions are likely to stiffen if Republican Gov. Brian Kemp wins another term.

“I would tell every single business and every single woman to do what is best for the women that work for them. They need to make sure they are accommodating the very real health challenges facing the women of Georgia,” Abrams said.

She added that Georgia has refused to expand Medicaid and has one of the nation’s highest maternal death rates, reiterating that citizens and businesses should “take into very real consideration the danger Brian Kemp poses to the life and welfare of women in this state.”

Abrams said Kemp has already shown his “ambiguity” regarding birth control, and that it is “very, very dangerous for women in Georgia right now,” as laws governing birth control access are expected to be the next step for Republicans nationwide.

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What to watch from Joe Biden’s trip to the G7

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Rising costs — driven in part by the Russian invasion of Ukraine — will be central to Sunday’s agenda, where leaders will simultaneously work to sustain their pressure on Moscow while also looking for ways to ease price spikes that have cost them each politically.

That could prove a challenging task. Bans on Russian energy have contributed to a spike in global oil prices, yet leaders are loathe to ease up on sanctions they believe are having an effect on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s economy. One area they have announced action: Banning imports of new Russian gold.

“This is a key export, a key source of revenue, a key alternative for Russia, in terms of their ability to transact in the global financial system. Taking this step cuts off that capacity,” a senior administration official said.

The ruling put into sharp relief the divisions roiling American politics and institutions, which have acted as a worrying subtext for leaders observing Biden’s attempts at restoring American leadership.

Here are several things to watch at Sunday’s G7 summit:

Finding balance

Biden and fellow G7 leaders will discuss ways to punish Russia while still managing an unsteady global economy during their first day of talks Sunday in the Bavarian Alps. The conversations will produce some announcements and “muscle movements,” according to a senior White House official.

“A large focus of the G7 and the leaders are going to be, you know, how to not only manage the challenges in the global economy as a result of Mr. Putin’s war, but how to also continue to hold Mr. Putin accountable and to make sure that he is being subjected to costs and consequences for what he’s doing,” said John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communication at the National Security Council, as Biden was flying to Europe.

Biden’s first engagement Sunday will be a bilateral meeting with the summit’s host, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, followed by the opening G7 session focused on global economic issues that have been aggravated by the Ukraine war.

“I think leaders are going to be looking for ways to do two things: One, continue to hold Mr. Putin accountable and to increase the costs and consequences of his war on him and his economy,” Kirby said. “And two, minimizing as much as possible the effect of these rising oil prices and the way he has weaponized energy on nations, particularly on the continent but also around the world.”

That balance will define this year’s G7, as leaders work to sustain their pressure campaign on Putin while also confronting rising inflation that has cost some leaders’ politically at home. Biden remarked on the solidarity of the G7 and NATO on Ukraine and the Russian invasion, telling Scholz ahead of the two leaders’ meeting that the groups must remain unified.

“We have to stay together. As Putin has been counting on from the beginning, that somehow NATO and the G7 would splinter, but we haven’t and we’re not going to,” Biden said.

The leaders have agreed to announce an import ban on new gold from Russia, Biden said on Twitter Sunday morning. Gold is the second largest export for Russia after energy.

Biden has weathered some of the harshest blowback as he’s seen his approval ratings drop amid a rise in prices.

“There may well be rising pressure in US politics, in the sense of some people in the primaries we’ve seen already have said I don’t care about Ukraine. What matters is cost of living,” one European official said ahead of this week’s trip. “And if the President did get a bounce in the polls because of his leadership on Ukraine, that’s very fast being dissipated. So there’ll be that effect.”

Division back home

Biden declared Friday the Supreme Court’s conservative majority “made the United States an outlier among developed nations in the world” by stripping the nationwide right to abortion.

Two days later, he will come face-to-face with the leaders of those nations in the Bavarian Alps, leaving behind a rapidly dividing country whose fractious politics have drawn the world’s concern.

The White House doesn’t believe the ruling or the fractures now splitting America will factor into Biden’s discussions.

“There’s real national security issues here that have to be discussed and the President is not at all concerned that the Supreme Court’s decision is going to take away from that at all,” Kirby said.

Yet four of the six fellow leaders Biden is joining in Germany found the ruling monumental enough to weigh in themselves.

“I’ve got to tell you, I think it’s a big step backwards,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. It’s a “devastating setback,” said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. French President Emmanuel Macron and Scholz were also critical.

Whether the ruling comes up in Biden’s private discussions remains to be seen. But the fundamentally changed and divided country he left behind will never be far from mind as he represents it on the world stage.

Challenging China

At last year’s G7 summit on the Cornish coast in England, Biden pressed fellow leaders into inserting tough new language condemning China’s human rights violations into a final communiqué. Leading up to the document, the group had at-times heated conversations behind closed doors about their collective approach to China.

The topic can make for fraught conversations since some European leaders do not necessarily share Biden’s view of China as an existential threat. Yet the President has made repeatedly clear he hopes to convince fellow leaders to take a tougher line. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has amplified the President’s oft-spoken warnings of autocracies versus democracies.

On Sunday afternoon, Biden is expected to unveil, alongside other leaders, an infrastructure investment program targeting low- and middle-income countries designed to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Beijing has poured billions into building roads, railways and ports worldwide to forge new trade links and diplomatic ties. Biden has pitched a similar program in the past, dubbing it Build Back Better World.

But with that name apparently retired, the White House is renewing the effort in Germany.

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World

Biden arrives in Europe to keep allies united against Russia as a grinding war in Ukraine takes its toll

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The President touched down in Germany late Saturday local time.

Yet big questions loom over the talks in Germany and Spain, most importantly whether the united western response to the conflict can be sustained — particularly as leaders face the threat of a global recession and growing anger at home over rising prices for gas, food and other goods.

Here are five things to watch at the G7 and NATO summits:

Keeping up the pressure

After several rounds of western sanctions, Moscow is feeling the pinch. But while the fighting has shifted eastward away from Kyiv, Moscow’s incremental gains have led to increasing US and European anxiety at the trajectory of the war.

At the same time, sanctions on Russian oil and gas have helped contribute to a surge in energy prices, leading to pain at the gas pump. And the war’s effect on Ukrainian grain exports has led to a surge in food prices and the threat of a hunger crisis in poorer nations, a topic expected to be discussed this week.

The ensuing political fallout has led to questions over leaders’ willingness to maintain the pressure campaign as the war grinds on.

“Ukraine is going to loom large, and the big question is around whether this group is going to be able to take forward the sanctions,” said Matt Goodman, senior vice president for economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Zelensky will appeal for more sanctions and more military assistance when he appears virtually at the G7 and NATO. And US officials said Biden plans to unveil steps alongside other leaders to increase pressure on Russia for its invasion — though they declined to say what they would look like.

At the same time, Biden expects the group to discuss steps to stabilize energy markets, an issue one official said would be at the “heart of the discussions” at the castle in the Bavarian Alps where the G7 is convening.

Biden and his fellow G7 leaders have agreed to announce an import ban on new gold from Russia, a source familiar with the announcement told CNN. Gold is Russia’s second-largest export after energy. The Treasury Department will issue a determination Tuesday to prohibit the import of new gold into the US, which the source said would “further isolate Russia from the global economy by preventing its participation in the gold market.”

Finding an endgame

At the start of the war, western leaders rallied behind a sanctions regime to isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin. But months later, how to bring the war to an end — and potentially end the sanctions that are helping drive inflation — have led to strain.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who visited Kyiv for the second time last week, has positioned himself as a top ally of Zelensky and insists Ukraine “must win.” French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, has warned against “humiliating” Russia. And along with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, he has maintained open channels of communication with the Kremlin.

That has sometimes put them at odds with Biden, who accused Putin of genocide and war crimes while also saying — at the end of his last visit to Europe — that he “cannot remain in power.” Biden’s Defense secretary said after his own visit to Ukraine that Russia must be “weakened.”

Biden’s aides insist the unity he’s worked hard to cultivate remains intact.

“I mean, every country speaks for themselves. Every country has concerns for what they’re willing to do or not do. But as far as the alliance goes, it truly has never been stronger and more viable than it than it is today,” said John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the White House National Security Council.

Those differences could make for intense conversations this week, when the leaders will inevitably need to discuss how the conflict will end — either through Ukrainian concessions, more concerted work toward brokering a ceasefire or just months of endless fighting.

“I don’t think anybody can know for sure,” Kirby said this week when asked how much longer the war would last.

Ultimately, the biggest threat to western resolve could be fatigue among leaders and their populations at a war without a clear path to ending.

“It was clear from the start that it’s going to get more and more difficult over time, because the war fatigue is coming,” said Prime Minister Kaja Kallas of Estonia earlier this month on CNN. “New crises emerge, but also that we move on, and if we put sanctions, then, first, they’re going to hurt Russia, but then they’re also going to hurt our side.”

NATO’s new members

There was a time when this week’s NATO summit in Madrid was seen as a potential welcoming party for the alliance’s newest members. But plans for fast-tracking Sweden and Finland’s recently applications to join were scuttled by roadblocks thrown up by Turkey and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The delay has led to frustration that what could have been a powerful signal to Putin has instead become bogged down by Turkish demands.

Erdogan accused the countries of harboring “terrorist” organizations that he claims threaten his country’s security, in particular Kurds from Turkey and elsewhere. He’s demanded extradition of certain followers of a US-based opposition leader, who he blamed for a failed coup in 2016.

US officials are still confident the two countries’ applications will eventually be successful. And they said Biden would likely discuss the matter on the sidelines of the meetings with officials from various countries, including Turkey.

But they expressed little confidence Erdogan’s concerns could be resolved by the end of the summit — scotching hopes for a grand welcome in Madrid.

A new focus: China

At last year’s G7 summit on the Cornish coast in English, Biden pressed fellow leaders into inserting tough new language condemning China’s human rights violations into a final communiqué. Leading up to the document, the group had at-times heated conversations behind closed doors about their collective approach to China.

The topic can make for fraught conversations since some European leaders do not necessarily share Biden’s view of China as an existential threat. Yet the President has made repeatedly clear he hopes to convince fellow leaders to take a tougher line. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has amplified the President’s oft-spoken warnings of autocracies versus democracies.

“I think it is fair to say last year marked an important watershed with respect to the G7, speaking for the first time to China’s coercive economic practices,” a senior administration official said this week. “We expect that that is going to be, if anything, a bigger a topic of conversation.”

At NATO as well, leaders will include China for the first time in the final “strategic concept” document, particularly the long-term challenges China poses to European security. For the first time, the summit will include leaders from Asia, including from Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, as guest participants.

And Biden plans to make a renewed effort at launching a global infrastructure partnership meant to advance low-and-middle income countries, another attempt to challenge China’s reach.

Climate commitments

G7 countries will also discuss their goal to reduce fossil fuel use and take meaningful steps toward addressing the climate crisis. But the race to get off Russian natural gas in Europe and to ease gasoline prices in the US has thrown a wrench in these countries’ climate commitments — and they are quickly running out of time to meet their targets.

After the EU touted a sped-up clean energy transition in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, individual European countries — including Germany and the United Kingdom — are moving back to coal to replace the lost gas. And Germany is also looking to Africa for new gas supply.

“Germany starting to backtrack and Chancellor Scholz looking at doing a new deal with Senegal on gas supply. That’s a worrying sign for the G7 unity in May for shifting out of fossil fuels,” Alex Scott, climate diplomacy and geopolitics program leader at global climate think tank E3G, told CNN. “What’s happening in Germany at the moment is sending the wrong message.”

Similarly, Biden and his administration have made bringing down gas prices their top priority at home, with Biden recently backing a gas tax holiday opposed by many members of his own party. Scott also told CNN she’s looking for concrete commitments from the US on phasing out coal, something it has struggled to do in past climate negotiations.

“It’s time for the US to actually put some new policy on the table,” Scott said. “That means clarifying when and how the US is going to end its obsession with coal. The change in government and the wave of climate ambition and target setting that brought is kind of expired now.”

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Ella Nilsen contributed to this report.

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RI cop allegedly attacks political opponent at abortion rally after Roe ruling

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A male off-duty Rhode Island police officer who was running for state Senate physically attacked his female political opponent at an abortion rights rally, she said.

Providence Police said Saturday that they have placed the cop, Jeann Lugo, on paid administrative leave as they launched a criminal investigation into Friday night’s alleged assault, which was captured on video.

Courtesy Bill Bartholomew — The Bartholomewtown Podcast

Lugo, who was running for Senate District 29 as a Republican, dropped out of the race Saturday afternoon. “I will not be running for any office this fall,” he wrote on Twitter, before temporarily deactivating his account.

Jen Rourke, a progressive running for the same seat who identifies herself as a reproductive rights organizer, said that Lugo “violently attacked me” after her speech at the rally outside the state house in Providence following the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

“This is what it is to be a Black woman running for office. I won’t give up,” Rourke wrote in a tweet that included a snippet of video of the incident.

The five-second clip, taken by Bill Bartholomew, a local journalist who runs The Bartholomewtown Podcast, appears to show a man throwing two punches at a woman’s head, at least one of which connects with its target.

Rourke went to a hospital in Kent, Rhode Island, on Saturday for a CT scan, a campaign spokesman told CNBC.

The Providence Police Department tweeted Saturday that it is “criminally investigating the behavior of an off-duty officer last evening during a protest where a female was assaulted.”

The officer, later explicitly identified as Lugo, has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the review, the department said. A spokesperson for the department did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

Before dropping out of the state Senate race, Lugo sent a statement to CNBC appearing to defend his actions without denying that he punched Rourke.

“As an officer that swore to protect and serve our communities, I, unfortunately, saw myself in a situation that no individual should see themselves in. I stepped in to protect someone that a group of agitators was attacking,” Lugo’s statement said. “At this moment, there’s a pending internal investigation, and as the facts of the incident come to light, I request that my family and I have privacy.”

Bartholomew, in an interview with CNBC, said that about 1,000 people had attended the rally to protest the Supreme Court’s ruling, which on Friday morning struck down the legal precedents that had protected federal abortion rights for nearly 50 years.

About 10 members of a right-wing group known as the Freedom Fighters also showed up to the event, Bartholomew said. One of those members, who was filming, appeared to be goading some members of the crowd. After being asked to leave, the person at first refused, then started to walk away — but when he turned back toward the crowd, someone punched him in the face and stomped on him, Bartholomew said. “A melee ensued,” the local journalist said, at which point he saw Rourke getting hit in the face.

Neither Lugo nor other members of the crowd who allegedly engaged in violence were arrested at that time, Bartholomew said.

Rourke, in a statement to CNBC from her campaign, said she was “deescalating the situation and the counter-protestor was leaving when the altercation started.”

“I was assaulted as a result of that,” she said.

“This is what it is to be a Black woman running for office. All across this country, people like me are threatened or attacked when they run. I’m not going to stop fighting – for reproductive rights, for the people in my district, or for people like me who want to run for office,” Rourke said.

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World

Biden heads to Europe to keep allies united against Russia as a grinding war in Ukraine takes its toll

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Yet big questions loom over the talks in Germany and Spain, most importantly whether the united western response to the conflict can be sustained — particularly as leaders face the threat of a global recession and growing anger at home over rising prices for gas, food and other goods.

Keeping up the pressure

After several rounds of western sanctions, Moscow is feeling the pinch. But while the fighting has shifted eastward away from Kyiv, Moscow’s incremental gains have led to increasing US and European anxiety at the trajectory of the war.

At the same time, sanctions on Russian oil and gas have helped contribute to a surge in energy prices, leading to pain at the gas pump. And the war’s effect on Ukrainian grain exports has led to a surge in food prices and the threat of a hunger crisis in poorer nations, a topic expected to be discussed this week.

The ensuing political fallout has led to questions over leaders’ willingness to maintain the pressure campaign as the war grinds on.

“Ukraine is going to loom large, and the big question is around whether this group is going to be able to take forward the sanctions,” said Matt Goodman, senior vice president for economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Zelensky will appeal for more sanctions and more military assistance when he appears virtually at the G7 and NATO. And US officials said Biden plans to unveil steps alongside other leaders to increase pressure on Russia for its invasion — though they declined to say what they would look like.

At the same time, Biden expects the group to discuss steps to stabilize energy markets, an issue one official said would be at the “heart of the discussions” at the castle in the Bavarian Alps where the G7 is convening.

Biden and his fellow G7 leaders have agreed to announce an import ban on new gold from Russia, a source familiar with the announcement told CNN. Gold is Russia’s second-largest export after energy. The Treasury Department will issue a determination Tuesday to prohibit the import of new gold into the US, which the source said would “further isolate Russia from the global economy by preventing its participation in the gold market.”

Finding an endgame

At the start of the war, western leaders rallied behind a sanctions regime to isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin. But months later, how to bring the war to an end — and potentially end the sanctions that are helping drive inflation — have led to strain.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who visited Kyiv for the second time last week, has positioned himself as a top ally of Zelensky and insists Ukraine “must win.” French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, has warned against “humiliating” Russia. And along with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, he has maintained open channels of communication with the Kremlin.

That has sometimes put them at odds with Biden, who accused Putin of genocide and war crimes while also saying — at the end of his last visit to Europe — that he “cannot remain in power.” Biden’s Defense secretary said after his own visit to Ukraine that Russia must be “weakened.”

Biden’s aides insist the unity he’s worked hard to cultivate remains intact.

“I mean, every country speaks for themselves. Every country has concerns for what they’re willing to do or not do. But as far as the alliance goes, it truly has never been stronger and more viable than it than it is today,” said John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the White House National Security Council.

Those differences could make for intense conversations this week, when the leaders will inevitably need to discuss how the conflict will end — either through Ukrainian concessions, more concerted work toward brokering a ceasefire or just months of endless fighting.

“I don’t think anybody can know for sure,” Kirby said this week when asked how much longer the war would last.

Ultimately, the biggest threat to western resolve could be fatigue among leaders and their populations at a war without a clear path to ending.

“It was clear from the start that it’s going to get more and more difficult over time, because the war fatigue is coming,” said Prime Minister Kaja Kallas of Estonia earlier this month on CNN. “New crises emerge, but also that we move on, and if we put sanctions, then, first, they’re going to hurt Russia, but then they’re also going to hurt our side.”

NATO’s new members

There was a time when this week’s NATO summit in Madrid was seen as a potential welcoming party for the alliance’s newest members. But plans for fast-tracking Sweden and Finland’s recently applications to join were scuttled by roadblocks thrown up by Turkey and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The delay has led to frustration that what could have been a powerful signal to Putin has instead become bogged down by Turkish demands.

Erdogan accused the countries of harboring “terrorist” organizations that he claims threaten his country’s security, in particular Kurds from Turkey and elsewhere. He’s demanded extradition of certain followers of a US-based opposition leader, who he blamed for a failed coup in 2016.

US officials are still confident the two countries’ applications will eventually be successful. And they said Biden would likely discuss the matter on the sidelines of the meetings with officials from various countries, including Turkey.

But they expressed little confidence Erdogan’s concerns could be resolved by the end of the summit — scotching hopes for a grand welcome in Madrid.

A new focus: China

At last year’s G7 summit on the Cornish coast in English, Biden pressed fellow leaders into inserting tough new language condemning China’s human rights violations into a final communiqué. Leading up to the document, the group had at-times heated conversations behind closed doors about their collective approach to China.

The topic can make for fraught conversations since some European leaders do not necessarily share Biden’s view of China as an existential threat. Yet the President has made repeatedly clear he hopes to convince fellow leaders to take a tougher line. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has amplified the President’s oft-spoken warnings of autocracies versus democracies.

“I think it is fair to say last year marked an important watershed with respect to the G7, speaking for the first time to China’s coercive economic practices,” a senior administration official said this week. “We expect that that is going to be, if anything, a bigger a topic of conversation.”

At NATO as well, leaders will include China for the first time in the final “strategic concept” document, particularly the long-term challenges China poses to European security. For the first time, the summit will include leaders from Asia, including from Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, as guest participants.

And Biden plans to make a renewed effort at launching a global infrastructure partnership meant to advance low-and-middle income countries, another attempt to challenge China’s reach.

Climate commitments

G7 countries will also discuss their goal to reduce fossil fuel use and take meaningful steps toward addressing the climate crisis. But the race to get off Russian natural gas in Europe and to ease gasoline prices in the US has thrown a wrench in these countries’ climate commitments — and they are quickly running out of time to meet their targets.

After the EU touted a sped-up clean energy transition in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, individual European countries — including Germany and the United Kingdom — are moving back to coal to replace the lost gas. And Germany is also looking to Africa for new gas supply.

“Germany starting to backtrack and Chancellor Scholz looking at doing a new deal with Senegal on gas supply. That’s a worrying sign for the G7 unity in May for shifting out of fossil fuels,” Alex Scott, climate diplomacy and geopolitics program leader at global climate think tank E3G, told CNN. “What’s happening in Germany at the moment is sending the wrong message.”

Similarly, Biden and his administration have made bringing down gas prices their top priority at home, with Biden recently backing a gas tax holiday opposed by many members of his own party. Scott also told CNN she’s looking for concrete commitments from the US on phasing out coal, something it has struggled to do in past climate negotiations.

“It’s time for the US to actually put some new policy on the table,” Scott said. “That means clarifying when and how the US is going to end its obsession with coal. The change in government and the wave of climate ambition and target setting that brought is kind of expired now.”

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Ella Nilsen contributed to this report.

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Roe v. Wade decision and abortion rights news

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Abortion rights supporters gather for a demonstration outside the Supreme Court on Friday. (Sarah Silbiger for CNN)

Te Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade Friday, holding that there is no longer a federal constitutional right to an abortion. Going forward, abortion rights will be determined by states, unless Congress acts. 

Here are the answers to some of the most common questions about what this ruling means.

Will women get arrested for having an abortion?

An abortion-seeker’s criminal liability will depend on the abortion policies that her state put into place.

Leaders of the anti-abortion movement have said in the past that women shouldn’t be prosecuted for obtaining an abortion and that criminal laws prohibiting it should be aimed at abortion providers or others who facilitate the procedure. Several states with abortion prohibitions that could go into effect with Roe’s reversal have language exempting from prosecution the woman who obtained the abortion.

There’s also nothing to stop lawmakers from passing the laws calling for the prosecution of the people who sought the abortion.

In the event of rape or incest or even underage pregnancy, where does the law lie for these individuals?

Exemptions in abortion bans for rape, incest or the health of the mother will now vary state by state. In the wave of abortion limits that have been passed by state legislatures recently in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s ruling, only a few of the proposals included exemptions for rape and incest.

It’s a question lawmakers will likely revisit now that the opinion has been handed down. While previewing plans to call a special legislative session once the opinion is issued, Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said he opposed rape or incest exemptions. On the flip side, Arkansas Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson told CNN this May that he supported adding rape and incest exemptions in the trigger law currently on the books in the state.

How are in vitro fertilizations defined? If a state defines the fertilized egg as a human with rights, then if a doctor fertilizes four eggs, but does [not] implant all four in a woman, is that homicide?

What this opinion means for fertility treatments is still uncertain. Some state laws have language that would appear to exempt the disposal of unused embryos created for IVF, but that language doesn’t necessarily exempt the process of selective reduction — when a woman whose fertility treatments lead to multiple pregnancies has one or more of those fetuses terminated to protect the viability of the other fetuses and/or the health of the mother. More broadly, fertility law experts raise concerns about how Roe’s reversal will embolden lawmakers to regulate IVF procedures — which have been largely shielded from the abortion debate because of the protections of Roe.

Why does the currently Democrat-controlled legislature not pass a federal law making abortion legal?

Democrats currently lack the votes to dismantle the Senate filibuster, a 60-vote procedural mechanism that Republicans can use to block federal abortion rights legislation — so as long as 40 senators oppose abortion rights. But it’s worth noting that the Women’s Health Protection Act — a bill that would codify and expand upon Roe — failed 49-51 when it was voted on in May in the Senate, meaning that, even without the filibuster, it would have not become law.

There are also legal questions about whether it would be constitutional for federal lawmakers to enact a nationwide ban. The late Justice Antonin Scalia stressed in his legal writings about abortion that the policy decisions belonged in the hands of individual states, while expressing skepticism that Congress has the constitutional authority to regulate the procedure.

Get more answers to common questions here.

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Biden signs bipartisan gun safety bill into law: ‘God willing, it’s going to save a lot of lives’

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“God willing, it’s going to save a lot of lives,” Biden said at the White House as he finished signing the bill.

The legislation came together in the aftermath of recent mass shootings at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school and a Buffalo, New York, supermarket that was in a predominantly Black neighborhood. A bipartisan group of negotiators set to work in the Senate and unveiled legislative text on Tuesday. The bill — titled the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — was released by Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Democratic Sens. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

In his remarks Saturday, the President announced he’d host members of Congress who supported the landmark gun safety legislation at a White House event on July 11, following his return from Europe, to celebrate the new law with the families of gun violence victims.

The package represents the most significant new federal legislation to address gun violence since the expired 10-year assault weapons ban of 1994 — though it fails to ban any weapons and falls far short of what Biden and his party had advocated for, and polls show most Americans want to see.

“While this bill doesn’t do everything I want, it does include actions I’ve long called for that are going to save lives,” Biden said. “Today, we say more than ‘enough.’ We say more than enough. This time, when it seems impossible to get anything done in Washington, we are doing something consequential.”

Biden added, “If we can reach compromise on guns, we ought to be able to reach a compromise on other critical issues, from veterans’ health care to cutting edge American innovation and so much more. I know there’s much more work to do, and I’m never going to give up, but this is a monumental day.”

It includes $750 million to help states implement and run crisis intervention programs. The money can be used to implement and manage red flag programs — which through court orders can temporarily prevent individuals in crisis from accessing firearms — and for other crisis intervention programs like mental health courts, drug courts and veterans courts.
This bill closes a years-old loophole in domestic violence law — the “boyfriend loophole” — which barred individuals who have been convicted of domestic violence crimes against spouses, partners with whom they shared children or partners with whom they cohabitated from having guns. Old statutes didn’t include intimate partners who may not live together, be married or share children.

Now the law will bar from having a gun anyone who is convicted of a domestic violence crime against someone they have a “continuing serious relationship of a romantic or intimate nature.” The law isn’t retroactive. It will, however, allow those convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence crimes to restore their gun rights after five years if they haven’t committed other crimes.

The bill encourages states to include juvenile records in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System with grants as well as implements a new protocol for checking those records.

The bill goes after individuals who sell guns as primary sources of income but have previously evaded registering as federally licensed firearms dealers. It also increases funding for mental health programs and school security.

Just before signing the bill, Biden praised the families of gun violence victims with whom he had met. He said their activism in the face of loss was a difference-maker.

“I especially want to thank the families that Jill and I have (met), many of whom we sat with for hours on end, across the country. There’s so many we’ve gotten to know who’ve lost their soul to an epidemic of gun violence. They’ve lost their child, their husband, their wife,” Biden said.

“Nothing is going to fill that void in their hearts. But they led the way so other families will not have the experience and the pain and trauma they’ve had to live through.”

This story has been updated with additional developments on Saturday.

CNN’s Clare Foran, Kristin Wilson, Annie Grayer, Ariane de Vogue, Lauren Fox, Ali Zaslav, Melanie Zanona and Jeremy Herb contributed to this report.

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US

‘Roe is on the ballot’: Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion rights raises stakes in midterms

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How the tectonic shift set off by the Supreme Court’s decision will play out in November’s elections will take time to gauge.

The court’s decision opened the door to new Republican efforts that range from enforcing existing state laws that outlaw abortion in most cases to enacting federal and state measures that would limit the number of weeks into pregnancy that abortions are legal. Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, the sponsor of a measure that would implement a nationwide ban after 20 weeks, said the court had created a “brand-new opportunity to defend the weakest and most vulnerable from the violence of abortion.”

Democrats, meanwhile, are attempting to galvanize voters around preserving their narrow majorities in Congress to block new federal restrictions on abortion rights. Some are pushing to codify Roe v. Wade’s protections in federal law.

And in statehouses across the country, new authority to implement abortion restrictions has raised the stakes of governor’s races and state legislative contests.

Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans opposed overturning Roe v. Wade. But it’s too soon to tell whether wide swaths of voters will consider abortion rights the defining issue this fall or just one of many they weigh alongside the economy, inflation and more.

Republicans hope Friday’s ruling will motivate the party’s socially conservative base, while Democrats hope to galvanize younger voters who historically sit out midterm elections and suburban moderates who handed the party major victories in 2018 and 2020 but have drifted away since.

“It could plausibly help Democrats turn out young voters who dramatically don’t like Biden. But in primaries that have occurred after the leak [of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion overturning Roe], there’s little evidence it’s dramatically altering voter focus on inflation and crime,” said longtime GOP consultant Rob Stutzman.

Meanwhile, one GOP strategist who requested anonymity said multiple Republicans had sent him a video of Barstool Sports President Dave Portnoy claiming the Supreme Court’s decision had set the United States “backwards” and would ensure that people like him — describing himself as “financially conservative” — vote for Democrats.

“That’s how so many people feel,” said the GOP strategist.

Outside the Supreme Court on Friday evening, pro-abortion rights protesters — one of whom was holding a Stacey Abrams sign, despite living in Washington — said they were pessimistic that the court’s ruling would galvanize the voters Democrats need to turn out in November.

“I do think that people are feeling really deflated, considering the fact so many Americans don’t believe in Roe v. Wade getting overturned, like the power is still completely centralized. What can our votes really do?” said Daniella Levine, a 28-year-old graduate student. “Granted, that won’t stop me from voting, but I imagine that may stop others.”

Dana Bornstein, 29, who works in leadership development for a non-profit, said that “the people that need to show up to help impact the midterms are not showing up and they haven’t been showing up.”

“Not to be like super down and not optimistic, but I think we need some real serious change,” Bornstein said.

State candidates on notice

Several states that have traditionally been presidential battlegrounds could move to the forefront as the battle over abortion shifts to governors, state legislatures and state courts.

In Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — states with Democratic governors and Republican-controlled legislatures — Democratic officials and candidates cast themselves as the only obstacles in the way of abortion bans.

“We are the majority — and we’re not backing down without a fight. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment,” said Sarah Godlewski, one of the Democrats running to take on Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democratic up for reelection in November who has sued to block a state law from taking effect that would make abortion illegal in all cases other than to preserve the woman’s life — including pregnancies resulting from rape and incest — following Roe v. Wade’s reversal, called the Supreme Court’s decision “devastating.”

“My pending lawsuit to protect abortion access is more urgent than ever. I will continue to fight like hell,” Whitmer said.

In Pennsylvania, the race to replace term-limited Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf is between Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who says he would defend abortion rights, and Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who sponsored legislation to ban abortions after six weeks.

Abortion could also become a key issue in the state’s Senate race. Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman has said he would vote to repeal the Senate’s filibuster, a move that could pave the way for Democrats to seek to codify Roe v. Wade’s protections nationally. Republican nominee Mehmet Oz said in a statement that “as a heart surgeon, I’ve held the smallest of human hearts in the palm of my hand, and will defend the sanctity of life.”

Still, Republican strategists said the Supreme Court’s decision is unlikely to become the dominant factor in states with clear protections for abortion rights already on the books — a potentially important factor in the battle for control of the House, where many of the most competitive districts are suburban, including some in blue states.

Trump pollster Jim McLaughlin told CNN the issue could benefit Democrats in races that will be won on the margins, “only if the economy gets appreciably better and Biden’s approval ratings increase.”

“In places like New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, abortion laws won’t change much” before November, he said, adding that right now “voters are literally worried about feeding their families and being able to afford gas for their cars.”

But in his reaction to the ruling on Friday, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said he would push for a new 15-week abortion ban in his state, a change from the state’s current law allowing abortions in the first and second trimesters.

The Republican governor, who was elected last year and has been viewed as a model for other GOP candidates to follow, said he opposes abortion, but he cast 15 weeks as a compromise in a meeting with The Washington Post on Friday, saying he wanted to find “a place we can come together.”

Virginia has a Republican-controlled House of Delegates and a Democratic-led state Senate, and any change in the state’s law would have to clear both chambers. Virginia holds off-year elections — Youngkin’s 2021 victory was a sign that the national political environment had shifted in the GOP’s favor — so control of the state government is not on the ballot in November. However, Virginia is home to at least three competitive US House races with Democratic incumbents.

In Georgia, where Republicans control the legislature and the governor’s office, a 2019 law that Gov. Brian Kemp signed that would outlaw abortions after doctors can detect an embryo’s cardiac activity, typically about six weeks into pregnancy — which had been blocked by the courts — could soon take effect.

Abortion rights could be a critical factor in the governor’s race in a state where the swelling, increasingly diverse Atlanta suburbs have shifted in Democrats’ favor in recent years.

“I am appalled. Enraged. Undaunted & ready to fight back,” Kemp’s Democratic challenger, Stacey Abrams, said Friday on Twitter. “Our freedom matters. Our rights matter. We will not be still.”

Abrams had briefly paused fundraising, directing money instead to reproductive choice groups, after the draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade leaked early in May.

Kemp on Friday touted Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s push to have a federal court reverse its decision to block the 2019 Georgia law.

“We are continuing our legal fight in light of the new United States Supreme Court precedent with renewed momentum,” Kemp said on Twitter.

Arizona, which like Georgia has competitive races for governor and a Senate seat on the ballot in November, is also likely to soon see a ban on abortions after 15 weeks take effect that was enacted by state lawmakers and signed into law earlier this year by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey. The Arizona Republic reported that courts there might first need to settle whether the new law or a 158-year-old law that imposes stricter restrictions and penalties would prevail.

“Now the pro-life fight must continue in the states,” said Blake Masters, a Republican seeking to take on Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.

“Mark Kelly — and nearly every other Democrat in the Senate — voted to legalize abortion up until the moment of birth,” Masters charged. “These Democrats must be held accountable.”

Kelly, meanwhile, called the Supreme Court’s decision “a giant step backward for our country.”

“It’s just wrong that my granddaughter will have fewer freedoms than my grandmother did,” he said. “Women deserve the right to make their own decisions about abortion. Period.”

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World

Ukrainian army leaving battered city for fortified positions

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — After weeks of ferocious fighting, Ukrainian forces have begun retreating from a besieged city in the country’s east to move to stronger positions, a regional official said Friday, the four-month mark in Russia’s invasion.

The planned withdrawal from Sievierodonetsk, the administrative center of the Luhansk region, comes after relentless Russian bombardment that has reduced most of the industrial city to rubble and cut its population from 100,0000 to 10,000. Ukrainian troops fought the Russians in house-to-house battles before retreating to the huge Azot chemical factory on the city’s edge, where they remain holed up in its sprawling underground structures in which about 500 civilians also found refuge.

In recent days, Russian forces have made gains around Sievierodonetsk and the neighboring city of Lysychansk, on a steep bank across a river, in a bid to encircle Ukrainian forces.

Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk have been the focal point of the Russian offensive aimed at capturing all of the Donbas and destroying the Ukrainian military defending it — the most capable and battle-hardened segment of the country’s armed forces. The two cities and surrounding areas are the last major pockets of Ukrainian resistance in the Luhansk region — 95% of which is under Russian and local separatist forces’ control. The Russians and separatists also control about half of the Donetsk region, the second province in the Donbas.

Russia used its numerical advantages in troops and weapons to pummel Sievierodonetsk in what has become a war of attrition, while Ukraine clamored for better and more weapons from its Western allies. Bridges to the city were destroyed, slowing the Ukrainian military’s ability to resupply, reinforce and evacuate the wounded and others. Much of the city’s electricity, water and communications infrastructure has been destroyed.

Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said Ukrainian troops have been ordered to leave Sievierodonetsk to prevent bigger losses and move to better fortified positions. The head of the regional administration, Roman Vlasenko, said the withdrawal has already begun and will take several days.

“As of now, the Ukrainian military still remains in Sievierodonetsk,” Vlasenko told CNN. “They are being withdrawn from the city at the moment. It started yesterday.”

Ukraine’s military spokesman declined to confirm the retreat order, saying government policy prevents comments on Ukrainian troop movements.

“Regrettably, we will have to pull our troops out of Sievierodonetsk,” Haidai told The Associated Press. “It makes no sense to stay at the destroyed positions, and the number of killed in action has been growing.”

A senior U.S. defense official, speaking in Washington on condition of anonymity, on Friday called the Ukrainians’ move a “tactical retrograde” to consolidate forces into positions where they can better defend themselves. This will add to Ukraine’s effort to keep Russian forces pinned down longer in a small area, the official said.

Haidai noted that while the retreat is under way, some Ukrainian troops remain in Sievierodonetsk, facing Russian bombardment that has destroyed 80% of buildings.

“As of today, the resistance in Sievierodonetsk is continuing,” Haidai told the AP. “The Russians are relentlessly shelling the Ukrainian positions, burning everything out.”

Haidai said the Russians are also advancing toward Lysychansk — from Zolote and Toshkivka — adding that Russian reconnaissance units conducted forays on the city’s edges but its defenders drove them out. The governor added that a bridge leading to Lysychansk was badly damaged in a Russian airstrike and is unusable for trucks. Ukrainian military analyst Oleg Zhdanov told the AP that some of the troops moving away from Sievierodonetsk are heading to the fight in Lysychansk.

In other battlefield reports, the Russian Defense Ministry declared Friday that four Ukrainian battalions and a unit of “foreign mercenaries” totaling about 2,000 soldiers have been “fully blocked” near Hirske and Zolote, south of Lysychansk. The claim couldn’t be independently verified.

Following a botched attempt to capture Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, in the early stage of the invasion that started Feb. 24, Russian forces have shifted their focus to the Donbas, where the Ukrainian forces have fought Moscow-backed separatists since 2014.

After repeated requests to its Western allies for heavier weaponry to counter Russia’s edge in firepower, four medium-range American rocket launchers have arrived, with four more on the way. The senior U.S. defense official said Friday that more Ukrainian forces are training outside Ukraine to use the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, and are expected back in their country with the weapons by mid-July.

The rockets can travel about 45 miles (70 kilometers). Also to be sent are 18 U.S. coastal and river patrol boats. The official said there is no evidence Russia has been successful in intercepting any of what has been a steady flow of military aid into Ukraine from the U.S. and other nations. Russia has repeatedly threatened to strike, or actually claimed to have hit, such shipments.

IN OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

The day after Ukraine was approved as a candidate to join the European Union, Zelenskyy urged Ukrainians not to focus on all that still must be done before the country is accepted into the EU but to quietly celebrate the moment and be proud of how far Ukraine has already come in moving away from its Soviet past.

“Do not be happy that this is a slap in the face for Moscow but be proud that this is applause for Ukraine,” he said in his nightly video address. “Let it inspire you. We deserve it. Please smile and let God bless us all with a quiet night. Then tomorrow, again into battle. With new strength, with new wings.”

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Zelenskyy urged music fans at the Glastonbury Festival to “spread the truth about Russia’s war.” Speaking to the crowd at the British music extravaganza by video on Friday before a set by The Libertines, Zelenskyy said, “We in Ukraine would also like to live the life as we used to and enjoy freedom and this wonderful summer, but we cannot do that because the most terrible has happened — Russia has stolen our peace.”

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An official with the pro-Moscow administration in the southern city of Kherson, which was captured by Russian troops early in the invasion, was killed in an explosion Friday. The pro-Russian regional administration in Kherson said that Dmitry Savlyuchenko died when his vehicle exploded in what it described as a “terror attack.” There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

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Yuras Karmanau reported from Lviv.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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US

Apple responds to Roe v. Wade rollback

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An aerial view of Apple Park is seen in Cupertino, California, United States on October 28, 2021.

Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Apple employees can use their company benefits to travel out-of-state to receive medical care, the company confirmed on Friday. The benefit has been available to employees for over 10 years, the company said.

The statement comes as corporations around the country, including Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta are committing to pay for employees to travel to receive abortions if they are in states where it is banned after the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade, rolling back the federal right to receive an abortion.

“As we’ve said before, we support our employees’ rights to make their own decisions regarding their reproductive health. For more than a decade, Apple’s comprehensive benefits have allowed our employees to travel out-of-state for medical care if it is unavailable in their home state,” an Apple spokesperson told CNBC.

In September, Apple said in an internal memo that it was monitoring legal proceedings about abortion laws in Texas, and said at the time that the company’s benefits give employees the ability to get medical care out-of-state if it’s unavailable in their home state.

Separately, the decision overturning Roe v. Wade has highlighted health apps and the concern over the data they collect, such as menstrual cycle tracking, which some advocates say could be used to prosecute people who seek abortions in states where it is illegal.

Apple’s Health app does have a cycle tracking feature, and if data is uploaded to Apple’s servers for backup and the user has two-factor authentication on, then it’s encrypted, meaning that Apple cannot read the data.

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