Planned Parenthood has joined the chorus of voices with nothing much positive to say about Netflix’s new Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde, giving an interview today that blasts the film as “anti-abortion propaganda.”
This is per THR, which reached out to the reproductive rights organization for comment on Andrew Dominik’s new film, which stars Ana De Armas as a version of the legendary Hollywood star, and which depicts two illegal abortions as part of the web of trauma that led to Monroe’s death. (Including CGI talking fetuses that say things like, “You won’t hurt me this time, will you?”)
In response, Caren Spruch, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s national director of arts and entertainment engagement, told THR that, “As film and TV shapes many people’s understanding of sexual and reproductive health, it’s critical these depictions accurately portray women’s real decisions and experiences. While abortion is safe, essential health care, anti-abortion zealots have long contributed to abortion stigma by using medically inaccurate descriptions of fetuses and pregnancy. Andrew Dominik’s new film, Blonde, bolsters their message with a CGI-talking fetus, depicted to look like a fully formed baby.”
Spruch added:
Planned Parenthood respects artistic license and freedom. However, false images only serve to reinforce misinformation and perpetuate stigma around sexual and reproductive health care. Every pregnancy outcome — especially abortion — should be portrayed sensitively, authentically and accurately in the media. We still have much work to do to ensure that everyone who has an abortion can see themselves onscreen. It is a shame that the creators of Blonde chose to contribute to anti-abortion propaganda and stigmatize people’s health care decisions instead.
Dominik has come under fire both for the content of the film itself—based on the book by Joyce Carol Oates—and for the press he’s given around it, in which he’s suggested a sort of baseline contempt for Monroe’s various films. Addressing the abortion issue in a recent interview with The Wrap, he suggested that the film is not anti-choice, and that unhappiness at its depiction of abortion was rooted in the Supreme Court’s recent overturn of Roe v. Wade. “No one would have given a shit about that if I’d made the movie in 2008, and probably no one’s going to care about it in four years’ time.”
An Arizona judge revived a ban on abortion that dates back to the mid-19th century, lifting a decades-old injunction that means the procedure is effectively illegal in the state at all times except when a pregnant person’s life is at risk.
Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson’s ruling was released Friday, a day before a law that restricts abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy was due to take effect. The conflicting restrictions on abortion had created confusion, with state Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) pushing to enforce the tougher prohibitions and Gov. Doug Ducey (R) previously insisting that the 15-week ban was the law of the land.
Johnson cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which established a fundamental right to abortion, as rationale for lifting the injunction. Roe had been the basis of the 1973 injunction that prevented bans on abortion from being enforced, Johnson ruled. And because the nation’s top court had returned decisions on the procedure to Congress and the states, that injunction can also be annulled, she wrote.
The Arizona law threatens abortion providers with between two and five years in prison. It originated from a 1864 law, and has no exception for victims of rape or incest. Some states did not update the laws on their books after Roe was decided in 1973, and the overturning of that decision has caused confusion from Michigan to West Virginia as to whether those laws still apply.
Johnson indicated that the older law, which was updated and codified in 1901, supersedes the recently passed law that was to take effect Saturday. “Most recently in 2022, the Legislature enacted a 15-week gestational age limitation on abortion. The legislature expressly included in the session law that the 15-week gestational age limitation does not ‘repeal’” the older ban, she wrote.
Abortion is now banned in these states. See where laws have changed.
Ducey’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment late Friday. Brnovich thanked Johnson on Twitter, saying that the court had provided “clarity and uniformity on this important issue. I have and will continue to protect the most vulnerable Arizonans.”
Planned Parenthood Arizona, which was a plaintiff in the case, criticized the court for reviving an “archaic” law that it said would send “Arizonans back nearly 150 years.” The reproductive health organization, which can appeal the ruling, also said it “will never back down.”
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Katie Hobbs said in a statement that she was “mourning” the decision and pledged to veto antiabortion legislation if elected.
Johnson’s ruling means the older abortion ban “is no longer unenforceable” and Brnovich’s position as the state’s chief law enforcement officer “opens the door to prosecutions under that law,” said Kaiponanea Matsumura, a family law professor at Loyola Marymount University who previously taught in Arizona.
Barbara Atwood, a law professor emerita at the University of Arizona, predicted further legal and legislative wrangling over abortion in Arizona.
The 1901 law “directly conflicts with many laws regulating abortion in Arizona enacted since 1973,” she said, including those that permit the procedure in emergencies such as pregnancies that can result in the loss of major organ function for pregnant women and other pregnant individuals.
The race to the midterm elections will accelerate after Labor Day—and if past is prologue, Democrats are likely to lose control of at least one legislative chamber. But current facts are more ambiguous than the historical record.
Midterm elections are usually referendums on the incumbent president and his party. Although President Biden’s job approval remains low (as it has been for the past year), it appears to have improved by 2 to 3 percentage points in recent weeks. If this trend continues, the president will be less of a drag on his party’s candidates than he was at his nadir.
Surprisingly, Democrats remain tied with Republicans in the generic congressional ballot, which reflects national preferences for the parties’ House candidates. If this is still true on Election Day, Republican gains will be much smaller than they were in 1994 and 2010. Other factors—including the record low number of truly competitive House districts—point in the same direction.
In Senate races, candidate quality matters more. As has happened repeatedly in recent cycles, Republicans appear to have damaged their prospects during primary contests by choosing nominees who have more appeal with their party’s base than with statewide electorates. In Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, nominees backed by
Donald Trump
trail their Democratic opponents, several by wide margins.
Read More Politics & Ideas
In the race to succeed
Pat Toomey,
the two-term Republican senator from Pennsylvania, Democrat Lt. Gov.
John Fetterman
leads TV personality
Mehmet Oz
by double digits. In Ohio—which Mr. Trump carried by wide margins in 2016 and 2020—Democratic Rep.
Tim Ryan
has moved out to a 4.5-point lead over political neophyte J.D. Vance. If Democrats can pick up this seat, which Republicans have held since 1999, the GOP’s chances of retaking the Senate will be dealt a possibly fatal blow, even if
Herschel Walker
and
Blake Masters
manage to eke out victories over Democratic incumbents in Georgia and Arizona.
Inflation will do more than any other issue to shape this year’s midterms, and broad-based price increases have tilted polls toward the Republicans since last fall. But even on this issue recent trends have been favorable for Democrats. According to the AAA’s daily survey, gasoline prices have fallen to $3.95 a gallon from a peak of $5.02 two months ago. Lower shipping prices and a strengthening dollar should hold down the prices of imported goods, and bloated inventories will force retailers to give consumers some relief. Although July’s more positive inflation report—which showed a modest reduction in year-over-year inflation, to 8.5% from 9.1%—doesn’t necessarily signal a trend, a sustained decline between now and November could persuade some voters that the worst is behind them.
In midterm elections, turnout is variable—and crucial. When Democratic interest in the 2014 cycle was muted, Republicans added 13 House seats to their already substantial majority. In 2018, by contrast, Democrats surged to the polls to express their opposition to President Trump and gained 41 seats, retaking the majority after eight years in opposition.
Democrats’ enthusiasm about going to the polls this fall had substantially trailed Republicans’—but recent events have narrowed the gap. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Democratic interest in the midterms surged. The passage of the major energy-and-climate bill that many Democrats had given up for dead further lifted their spirits.
The abortion issue could prove a game-changer. As the results of Kansas’ Aug. 2 referendum indicate, the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization isn’t popular, and severe restrictions on abortion are even less so. Eighty-five percent of Americans favor allowing abortions in cases of rape, incest and risks to the mother’s life, and a strong majority believe that the procedure should be widely available during the first trimester of pregnancy. While only 3 in 10 Americans favor abortion on demand, less than 1 in 10 support an outright ban. Most voters accept abortion in some circumstances but not others, and candidates who appear dogmatic or extreme will pay a price at the polls. By a margin of 25 points, voters favor protections for abortion in their state constitutions—a position backed by most demographic groups and even by one-third of Republicans.
Women care about this issue, which now trails only inflation in their list of top concerns. The pain of loss typically outweighs the satisfaction of gain, and tens of millions of pro-choice women have suffered a loss that until recently seemed unimaginable. If Democrats do better than expected this November, the justices who voted to overturn Roe will be a big piece of the explanation.
Indiana lawmakers approved a near-total ban on abortion Friday, making the state the first in the nation to pass sweeping limits on access to the procedure since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.
The Republican-dominated state Senate passed the legislation in a 28-19 vote that had divided GOP legislators over how far the ban should go. Before Gov. Eric Holcomb (R) signed the bill into law on Friday, some GOP members had expressed support for allowing abortion in cases of rape and incest, while others opposed the bill because of those exceptions.
The measure, which will go into effect Sept. 15, allows abortion only in cases of rape, incest, lethal fetal abnormality or when the procedure is necessary to prevent severe health risks or death. Here’s what some state officials said on the ban:
“The body inside of the mom’s body is not her body. Let me repeat that: The body inside of the mom’s body is not her body. Not her body, not her choice,” said Jacob, astaunch abortion opponent who supported removing exceptions including for rape.
“Trying to end all abortion is not forced birth, but rather it is trying to end murdering children,” he said on the floor.
“Sir, I am not a murderer. And my sisters are not murderers, either,” she said.
Pack told the chamber she had an abortion in 1990 while serving in the army, according to the Indianapolis Star. “We are pro-choice. That is what we are,” she added. “We believe we have command over our own bodies.”
“I think we’ve landed in a great place and good policy for the state of Indiana,” said McNamara, whosponsored the House bill. She told reporters the ban “makes Indiana one of the most pro-life states in the nation.”
Indiana passes near-total abortion ban, the first state to do so post-Roe
Bohacek, who voted against the bill, could not finish his testimony as he spoke about his daughter, who has Down syndrome, and his concerns about protecting rape victims with disabilities. “If she loses her favorite stuffed animal, she’s inconsolable,” he said. “Imagine making her carry a child to term,” he said before choking up and stepping away.
Pryor referenced the recent case of a 10-year-old rape victim who had to travel to Indiana for the procedure because abortions are now banned in Ohio after six weeks. “I just don’t understand why we would force a baby, really at 10, to have a baby,” Pryor said.
“By closing abortion clinics and limiting abortions to only the most heartbreaking instances, we are making massive strides for the pro-life movement,” said Leising, who called Friday “a monumental day,” according to WRTV in Indianapolis. She said the ban should be “combined with funding increases directed toward pregnancy services and easing the financial burden of adoption.”
“Eight of us in this chamber have ever had the possibility of becoming pregnant, yet we are about to tell millions of Hoosier women what they can do with their bodies,” she said.
Breaux described the legislation as an infringement on democracy, “Women should have the right to make these decisions in consultation with their doctors, not their state legislators,” she wrote in a tweet.
Vermilion condemned fellow Republicans for describing women who obtain abortions as murderers. “I think that the Lord’s promise is for grace and kindness,” she said, according to the Associated Press. “He would not be jumping to condemn these women.”
“Following the overturning of Roe, I stated clearly that I would be willing to support legislation that made progress in protecting life,” he said in a statement. After days of hearings and testimony, he said the legislation “and its carefully negotiated exceptions” addressed “some of the unthinkable circumstances a woman or unborn child might face.”
“I am personally most proud of each Hoosier who came forward to courageously share their views in a debate that is unlikely to cease any time soon,” Holcomb added.
Amy Cheng and Kim Bellware contributed to this report.
From left, Sheila Gregory, Cariann Dureka and Emily Daniel, volunteers for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, knock on doors in Leawood, Kan., to encourage people to reject a state constitutional amendment that could further restrict abortion access in Kansas. (Christopher Smith/For the Washington Post)
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — At a recent gathering of abortion rights canvassers in a strip-mall office in this Kansas City suburb, a hand-lettered sign on the wall summed up the confusion over the state’s looming ballot question in two lines — a “no” vote equals support of abortion rights, “yes” means against abortion rights.
Kansans are heading to the polls Aug. 2 to decide whether the state’s constitution protects the right to abortion — the first such constitutional amendment to be determined since the Supreme Court’s historic overturning of Roe v. Wade, ending federal protection, on June 24. More than a dozen Republican states have already moved by other means to ban or further restrict abortion in the wake of the decision that reversed Roe.
The ballot measure, if approved, would effectively overturn a 2019 decision by the state’s Supreme Court enshrining abortion rights in its constitution. The measure could pave the way for the legislature to pass a ban on abortion at a time when Kansas has become a destination for pregnant patients fleeing strict abortion measures in nearby states.
Even though the vote is expected to be close, proponents of abortion rights say they are facing an uphill battle to overcome road blocks they say the Republican legislature has deliberately put in their way — including holding the vote on a primary day rather during the general election, and the convoluted wording of the amendment that has confused many voters.
“When they say on the TV say yes or say no it’s confusing to me,” said Rotonda Johnson, 56, of Wichita. She recently spoke with organizers at Kansans for Constitutional Freedom — a group opposed to the amendment and supportive of abortion rights — and asked for guidance figuring it out. “I had to ask, which way for yes and which way for no? Either way, I don’t think the government should stop abortion.”
The energy around the pitched battle in the state is palpable: As Kansas melted under an oppressive heat wave, canvassers on both sides of the debate have been knocking on doors since beforeearly voting began July 13. “Stop the ban: Vote No” and “Vote Yes!” signs dot lawns, and televisions are buzzing with nearly $2 million in issue ads, according to the tracking company AdImpact.
“The stakes could not be higher,” said Brittany Jones, a spokeswoman for Value Them Both, an antiabortion coalition that includes Kansans for Life, the Kansas Catholic Conference and others who have worked for decades to end abortion in the deeply red state, which has not voted for a Democrat for president since Lyndon B. Johnson.
Value Them Both and other antiabortion advocates — who have knocked on more than 100,000 doors — have taken the public position that the ballot measure will not automatically lead to an outright ban on abortion but, rather, protect what they term reasonable safeguards passed before the state’s high court decision in 2019. Kansas allows abortion up to 22 weeks in pregnancy with additional restrictions such as a mandatory 24-hour waiting period and parental consent for minors.
Kansas University law professor Stephen McAllister, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who served as the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Kansas, said that they are being disingenuous, and the real goal of the amendment is to pave the way for the Republican-led legislature to pass an outright abortion ban in its next session in January.
“Their big lie is that they simply want to clear the decks so we can have reasonable debate on what regulations might be appropriate, and that is not it at all,” McAllister said. “The goal is to clear the decks so they can ban abortion next session. That’s what this is about.”
Jones said this assertion is “absolutely not true.” But the Kansas Reflector, a news website, obtained audio from a meeting in Reno County, Kan., last month at which Republican state Sen. Mark Steffen said that if the amendment passes, the legislature could pass further laws, “with my goal of life starting at conception.” Steffen, a physician, declined to comment.
Newvoting laws that make it a felony to knowingly impersonate an elections official have had a “chilling” impact on voter registration drivesin advance of the election, according to Jacqueline Lightcap, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Kansas. The group normally registers more than 6,000 Kansans in a typical election year but halted its efforts this year out of fear it might — even inadvertently — run afoul of the new law.
Republicans in the state legislatureplaced the abortionmeasure on the ballot as a special election alongside the previously scheduled primary, where traditionally only party-affiliated voters are allowed to vote. Many of thestate’s unaffiliated voters — about 30 percent of the electorate — may not be aware they can vote this time, said Davis Hammet, the president and founder of Loud Light, a voter advocacy group, who called the move “blatantly anti-democratic.”
“This is not a persuasion campaign; it’s about trying to inform people this election is even happening and it’s happening in August,” Hammet said.
Kansas has long been at the center of the abortion debate. The state’s laws were once viewed as some of the least-restrictive in the country, prompting the Summer of Mercy antiabortion protests in 1991, when thousands of protesters converged on Wichita and were arrested at sit-ins and clinic blockades.In 2009, George Tiller, one of the country’s few third-trimester abortion providers, was murdered in Wichita by an antiabortion extremist.
In recent years, Kansans have been slightly less supportive of abortion rights than the country as a whole, experts say. For example, an Associated Press VoteCast survey of 2020 election voters in Kansas found that 54 percent said abortion should be illegal in most or all cases, while 44 percent said it should be mostly or always legal, compared with 59 percent nationwide who felt abortion should be legal. Yet the AP survey found that 62 percent of Kansas voters had wanted the Supreme Court to leave Roe v. Wade asit was, while 35 percent said it should be overturned (nationally, 69 percent said the court should leave Roe as it was).
Gabrielle Lara, 23, has been leading the canvassing efforts in the Kansas City area for Students for Life Action, an antiabortion group, since she graduated in May from Benedictine College, a nearby Catholic school. Originally from California, she said she grew up supporting abortion rights in a household where the issue was rarely discussed. But she changed her views after watching a friend endure guilt and shame after an abortion three years ago, she said.
Many of those she has met canvassing in the suburbs of Kansas City have not yet made up their minds, she said.
“There’s a lot of swing voters in certain areas, voters planning to vote the day of and wanting to do more research,” she said. “They have a lot of questions after Roe v. Wade and us being the first state to have a ballot initiative. It’s really kind of a big deal for us here in Kansas.”
Last year, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment released statistics that showed a 9 percent increase in total abortions from 2019 to 2020, leading to criticism fromabortion opponents, who charged that the state was becoming an abortion “sanctuary” led by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. Much of that surge was because of short-term pandemic restrictions in clinics in Oklahoma and Texas, officials said.While this year’s preliminary data shows a 4 percent increase in abortions from 2020 to 2021, the majority of those were from in-state patients, the agency said.
McAllister, the law professor, was the state’s solicitor general in 2017 when he argued in court that abortion was not guaranteed by the state constitution in the case decided in 2019. He said that he believed nearly five decades of federal protection for abortion was settled case law and did not expect Roe to be overturned.
“Where we’re headed with bans and trying to make things crimes, I find appalling and unacceptable,” McAllister said. “The chicanery and trickery that is going on here in Kansas with the amendment disgusts me; people are pretending this is something it’s not.”
The amendment affirms there is no constitutional right to an abortion in Kansas and would “reserve to the people of Kansas, through their elected state legislators, the right to pass laws to regulate abortion, including, but not limited to, in circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, or when necessary to save the life of the mother.”
One recent hot Sunday afternoon, abortion rights supporters Sheila Gregory, 24, a political consultant, Emily Daniel, 28, a scientific research assistant, and Cariann Dureka, 23, an art and communications director, took to the quiet streets of Leawood, a majority White, affluent city whose voters gave heavily to Donald Trump in 2016. The three tracked potential no votes on the mobile canvassing app MiniVAN.
Each woman had been raised in a conservative Christian home and came to their feelings about a woman’s right to choose in their college years, they said.
As Daniel walked, she said she wished that she and others her age had been more mindful of years of warnings that the Supreme Court was going to overturn Roe.She was dubious that Roe, which she considered “settled law,” would fall up until the day it was struck down, she said.
“I learned an important lesson — if people are giving warnings, it’s better to pay attention,” she said.
They met a few uncommitted voters, one man who was a strong yes and Kirsten Sneid, who had donned a Pro Roe shirt to water her garden. Sneid, 62, a registered nurse and former Republican, greeted the sweaty canvassers with hugs and offers of water and Popsicles.
“I think my point is I have no right to tell someone else to do with their body,” Sneid said. “It is appalling to me that we’re looking at state control and the vilification and criminalization of women and the slut shaming and blaming.”
“The whole world is watching us,” Sneid said. “We can do it.”
Magda Jean-Louis, Scott Clement and Emily Guskin contributed to this report.
The House on Friday passed legislation that would protect access to reproductive health care, including the ability to travel across state lines for an abortion, as part of Democrats’ efforts to minimize the consequences of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade last month.
One bill, the Women’s Health Protection Act, would enshrine the protections of Roe v. Wade into law. The House already passed the bill last year, but it did not advance in a Senate vote in May. The House passed the bill, 219-210, prompting applause from Democrats in the chamber. All Republicans and Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) voted against the measure.
Another bill, the Ensuring Women’s Right to Reproductive Freedom Act, would reaffirm the right for someone seeking an abortion to travel freely across state lines. The House passed that measure, 223-205, with three Republicans — Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), Fred Upton (Mich.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) — joining all Democrats in backing the bill.
Despite passage in the Democratic-led House, the bills are almost certain to fail in the Senate, where they would require 60 votes or the suspension of filibuster rules and a simple majority. Both are unlikely in the face of Republican opposition.
The debate in the House underscored the deep divide between the two parties, with Democrats warning that Republicans will impose further restrictions on women, including a national abortion ban, and Republicans insisting that they are protectors of “unborn children.”
“Neither the courtsnor states nor politicians should have the say in women’s ability to make their own decisions about their health, their well-being and their future that rests with their loved ones, their doctor and their God,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “If we claim to love freedom, to be a free and just society, we must ensure that this basic human right is finally enshrined intolaw.”
As further proof of their opposition to the measure, Republicans falsely renamed the legislation in their whip notice as the “Abortions on Demand until Birth Act” — which is a misrepresentation of the bill — and repeated that claim on the House floor.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) called abortion “the human rights issue” of a generation.
“Do not close your ears. Do not close your eyes. Do not close your hearts, dehumanizing a life,” she said as the House debated the measure. “Let’s come together. Let’s protect the human rights of the unborn. We cannot deny life to the most disadvantaged and marginalized among us.”
Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.). argued that the most marginalized would be affected if abortion rights are obliterated.
“My middle name is Blunt, so let me be clear about who’s going to be hit the hardest,” she said. “Poor women, young women, women in rural areas and women of color. People who may not have the ability to travel hundreds of miles to get the care they need.”
Rep. Mayra Flores (R-Tex.), who represents a district that narrowly flipped Republican with her recent special election win, said the bill does not align with the values of voters in her district.
“Protecting the voiceless ought to be a top priority in this House and in every corner of this land,” she said. “As a mother of four beautiful, strong children, I find it hard to believe there are those who think that defending life is optional — even to the last month of pregnancy.”
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) directly addressed Republicans during the debate, warning that freedoms conservatives hold dear could be erased next.
“You’re trying to take away people’s right to travel,” she said. “What in the world is this? Is this America?”
“They come for me today; they’re coming for you tomorrow,” the lawmaker added.
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) pushed back on a belief among religious conservatives about the origin of life while expressing her support for the legislation.
“If you believe life begins at conception, don’t get an abortion,” she said Friday. “But that’s your belief. It’s not science, and others do not share it.”
“I don’t think anyone over here would ever force someone with your beliefs to get an abortion,” the mother of two added. “But you are forcing your beliefs on others, and that is wrong.”
Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) argued that passing the bill expeditiously is necessary given the long-term goals of Republican lawmakers to prohibit the procedure nationwide — and the immediate impact that conservative judges have had on abortion rights.
“The court’s ideological decision ignored nearly 50 years of precedent and is the culmination of decades of unrelenting efforts by Republican politicians to control women and their bodies,” he said Friday. “Republicans have made it clear. This is just the beginning, pushing a national abortion ban.”
In May, Senate Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) blocked the Women’s Health Protection Act, and on Thursday, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) blocked the Senate version of a bill that would have protected travel across state lines for those seeking an abortion, accusing Democrats of attempting “to inflame, to raise the what ifs.”
Lankford’s comments came amid intense focus on the case of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was raped and had to travel to Indiana to undergo an abortion because the procedures are now banned in Ohio after six weeks.
Record shows Indiana doctor fulfilled duty to report 10-year-old’s abortion
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), a co-sponsor of the Senate bill, pushed back at Lankford, saying “radical, anti-choice policymakers” at the state level were already threatening to criminalize interstate travel for abortions — and that even the prospect of that legislation was having a chilling effect on abortion providers in states where the procedure remains legal.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that some states are going to continue to move forward with these kinds of legislation,” Cortez Masto said. “This is a form of gaslighting, to keep insisting that American women will be able to get care when we know that anti-choice legislators and groups are working to stop them from doing so. What legislators are doing across the country to restrict women from traveling is just blatantly unconstitutional.”
Despite the bills’ doomed futures, Democrats have been under pressure from their base to show that they are doing everything possible to preserve abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision. Abortion rights activists have already accused the White House of not taking enough action — particularly since a draft of the Supreme Court decision was leaked in early May.
However, Pelosi defended the Biden administration’s response Thursday.
“I have no question about this administration’s support for a woman’s right to choose and to take the necessary actions to ensure that,” Pelosi told reporters. “This is something that is core to who we are. It’s about freedom. It’s about health care. It’s about respect for women. And that is something that the president is wedded to.”
White House officials have reportedly been debating internally about whether to declare abortion access a public health emergency. President Biden has said he would support altering the filibuster rules in the Senate to preserve abortion rights, while pushing abortion rights voters to make their feelings known at the ballot box, starting in November’s midterm elections.
Pelosi echoed that sentiment Thursday, suggesting that only by electing more Democratic senators to get around the filibuster would Congress be able to pass legislation that “truly impacts a woman’s right to choose” — not just what she called “halfway” measures.
“We’re not going to negotiate a woman’s right to choose,” Pelosi said. “What are you going to negotiate? Whether a woman can have contraception? Is that a cause for negotiation? Whether people can have birth control? Yes or no? A little bit here. A little bit there. No.”
Ahead of the House votes Friday, Pelosi pledged that her party would continue “ferociously defending freedom for women” during an event on the Capitol Steps in which dozens of lawmakers wore green, which has become the color of the abortion rights movement.
Pelosi said Democrats are sending a message of “hands off our reproductive health.”
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) announced that next week the House will vote on a bill to ensure access to contraception.
“American women deserve to be able to make decisions about their own bodies and their own lives, including whether to become pregnant and have children,” Hoyer said in a statement.
A pregnant Texas woman who was ticketed for driving in the HOV lane suggested that Roe v. Wade being overturned by the Supreme Court means that her fetus counted as a passenger, and that she should not have been cited.
Brandy Bottone was recently driving down Central Expressway in Dallas when she was stopped by a sheriff’s deputy at an HOV checkpoint to see whether there were at least two occupants per vehicle as mandated. When the sheriff looked around her car last month, she recounted to The Washington Post that he asked, “Is it just you or is someone else riding with you?”
“I said, ‘Oh, there’s two of us,’” Bottone said. “And he said, ‘Where?’”
Bottone, who was 34 weeks pregnant at the time, pointed to her stomach. Even though she said her “baby girl is right here,” Bottone said one of the deputies she encountered on June 29 told her it had to be “two bodies outside of the body.” While the state’s penal code recognizes a fetus as a person, the Texas Transportation Code does not.
“One officer kind of brushed me off when I mentioned this is a living child, according to everything that’s going on with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. ‘So I don’t know why you’re not seeing that,’ I said,” she explained to the Dallas Morning News, the first to report the story.
Bottone was issued a $215 ticket for driving alone in the two-or-more occupant lane — a citation she told local media she’d be challenging in court this month.
“I will be fighting it,” Bottone, 32, of Plano, Tex., said to The Post.
While the Texas Department of Transportation has not indicated whether it is weighing changing the transportation code, Bottone’s case is one that could move the state into “unchartered territory” following the June 24 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Chad Ruback, a Dallas-based appellate attorney, told The Washington Post.
“I find her argument creative, but I don’t believe based on the current itineration of Texas Transportation Code that her argument would likely succeed in front of an appellate court,” he said. “That being said, it’s entirely possible she could find a trial court judge who would award her for her creativity.”
Ruback added, “This is a very unique situation in American jurisprudence.”
Representatives for the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department and Texas Department of Transportation did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The news comes as all corners of the country are dealing with the fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision more than two weeks ago. President Biden delivered an emotional speech Friday announcing an array of steps aimed at bolstering abortion rights, responding to growing demands from activists that he take bolder and more forceful action. Biden signing an executive order to enhance access to reproductive health-care services was a move generally welcomed by abortion activists, many said it would likely do little for women in states where abortion is banned. The president acknowledged the limits of his executive powers, saying the Dobbs ruling was “the Supreme Court’s terrible, extreme and, I think, so totally wrongheaded decision.”
“What we’re witnessing wasn’t a constitutional judgment,” Biden said. “It was an exercise in raw political power.”
Biden, in fiery speech, announces actions on abortion rights
Texas is among the 13 states that had “trigger bans” designed to take effect once Roe was struck down, prohibiting abortions within 30 days of the ruling.
This Texas teen wanted an abortion. She now has twins.
It is Texas’s nearly century-old abortion ban that was ruled unconstitutional in Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe on June 24 in a 5-4 decision, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) advised that prosecutors could now enforce the 1925 law, which he described as “100% good law” on Twitter. Abortion rights groups and clinics sued, arguing that it should be interpreted as repealed and unenforceable.
A judge in Harris County, Tex., granted a temporary orderlast monthto allow clinics to offer abortions for at least two weeks without criminal prosecution. Judge Christine Weems (D) ruled that a pre-Roe ban enforced by Paxton and prosecutors would “inevitably and irreparably chill the provision of abortions in the vital last weeks in which safer abortion care remains available and lawful in Texas.”
But the Texas Supreme Court granted an “emergency motion for temporary relief” of Weems’s ruling last week, after Paxton requested the injunction.
Texas Supreme Court blocks order that allowed abortions to resume
Five days after the Dobbs ruling, Bottone said she was in a rush to pick up her 6-year-old son and decided to drive her GMC Yukon into the HOV lane since she “couldn’t be a minute late.”
As she attempted to argue the fetus was her second passenger, Bottone told The Post that the deputy wasn’t open to the debate.
“I thought it was weird and said, ‘With everything that’s going on, especially in Texas, this counts as a baby,’” she said. “He kind of waved me on and said, ‘This officer will take care of you.’”
Bottone said that while one of the deputies told her that the ticket would likely get dropped if she fought it, she’s upset that the citation was issued in the first place.
“I thought it was a waste of my time. It just rubbed me wrong,” she said. “I don’t think it was right.”
Bottone emphasized that while she believes women should have a choice on what they do with their bodies, “that’s not saying I’m also pro-choice.” She noted that she also drove in the HOV lane when she was pregnant with her first child, her 6-year-old son.
Ruback told The Post that he is not aware whether Texas or other states would consider such a change to their transportation codes.
“It’s entirely possible that Brandy could petition the representatives in legislature to make that change, but I have not heard about it if it happened,” said Ruback, who is not involved in her case. “My impression is that I think she would be happy if she got out of her traffic ticket. Then again, these are unusual times we’re living in, that’s for sure.”
Bottone maintained to The Post that she hoped the Texas laws would be consistent on how the measures recognize unborn children.
“The laws don’t speak the same language, and it’s all been kind of confusing, honestly,” she said.
She’s due in court on July 20, which is only two weeks before her daughter’s due date of Aug. 3.
“It wasn’t because of Roe v. Wade that I hopped in the HOV lane,” she said. “I just thought of it as me and another person.”
Matt Viser, Caroline Kitchener and Adela Suliman contributed to this report.
Vice President Kamala Harris was caught with another course of word salad, this time during an interview with CBS News.
Following the historic Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, CBS News correspondent Robert Costa asked Harris on Friday whether Democrats both in the White House and in Congress “failed” to codify the federal protection of abortions in the nearly 50 years since the precedent was established.
“I think that, to be very honest with you, I do believe that we should have rightly believed, but we certainly believe that certain issues are just settled. Certain issues are just settled,” Harris responded.
HIGHLAND PARK SHOOTING: KAMALA HARRIS GOES VIRAL WITH ‘SERIOUSLY’ WORD SALAD DURING VISIT TO CHICAGO SUBURB
“Clearly were not,” Costa replied.
“No, that’s right,” Harris said. “And that’s why I do believe that we are living, sadly, in real unsettled times.”
US Vice President Kamala Harris speaks while meeting with state legislative leaders in the Vice President’s Ceremonial Office in Washington, D.C., US, on Friday, July 8, 2022. Photographer: Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Critics panned her comments, some calling them incoherent “word salad.”
“This is incoherent. Is everything ok…?” Emma Vigeland of the progressive YouTube show “Majority Report.”
“Captions need a bouncing ball to follow along with the words,” Ring Magazine reporter Ryan Songalia tweeted.
KAMALA HARRIS PANNED FOR OFFERING ‘WORD SALAD’ AT WH EVENT WITH JAMAICAN PRIME MINISTER: ‘IS SHE PUNKING US?’
“What is with this administration and an aversion to basic speaking skills and grasp of the English language?” NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck wondered.
“hm that’s not what was asked,” reporter Dan Moritz-Rabson reacted.
“Somewhere at a Montana vacation lodge someone just pumped his fist in the air,” journalist David Freedlander quipped, alluding to the highly-speculated 2024 prospects of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Others knocked the vice president over the substance of her answer, specifically suggesting Democrats believed Roe v. Wade was “settled.”
“How absurdly naive,” New Yorker staffer Lainna Fader reacted.
KAMALA HARRIS RIPPED FOR LOOKING TO POLISH PRESIDENT FOR HELP ON QUESTION ABOUT UKRAINIAN REFUGEES
“Holy cow what a bad answer. This is going to cause a Dem revolt. The GOP has been after this for decades. But the Dems thought it settled so did nothing?!” conservative radio host Erick Erickson exclaimed.
“Anyone. Who has paid. The slightest. Tiniest. Bit of attention. To women’s health issues. For the past SEVERAL DECADES. Knew. It. Was. Not. Settled,” film critic Jason Bailey wrote.
US Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a surprise visit to the site of a shooting which left seven dead in Highland Park, Illinois, on July 5, 2022. (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images) (KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
This isn’t the first time this week Harris was accused of “word salad.” On Tuesday, the vice president raised eyebrows during her visit to Highland Park, Illinois, following the mass shooting at an Independence Day parade that left seven dead.
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“We’ve got to take this stuff seriously, as seriously as you are because you have been forced to take this seriously,” Harris said to the press and Highland Park residents.
“The whole nation should understand and have a level of empathy to understand that this could happen anywhere [to] any people in any community. And we should stand together and speak out about why it’s got to stop,” Harris added before stepping away.
Joseph A. Wulfsohn is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to joseph.wulfsohn@fox.com and on Twitter: @JosephWulfsohn.
President Biden had planned to nominate a conservative opponent of abortion rights to a lifetime federal judgeship in Kentucky, according to newly released emails, prompting criticism of the White House from some fellow Democrats.
After facing opposition from Democrats in Kentucky, the White House has not put former state solicitor general Chad Meredith’s name forward as a nominee. A round of federal judicial nominations released last week did not include Meredith. It was unclear Wednesday whether the White House would ever move forward with nominating him.
But the episode has underscored the impassioned responses from Democrats in the wake of the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade. At times, Democrats have directed some of their anger at the White House.
On June 23, White House official Kate Marshall emailed Coulter Minix, the director of Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s office in Washington. “To be Nominated tomorrow,” the message read, followed by the qualifications and experience of Meredith, whom the Biden administration planned to nominate to be a judge in the Eastern District of Kentucky the next day.
The email, released Wednesday, was titled “close hold,” meaning information that is not supposed to be widely distributed. Minix said he would “share the info and appreciate the heads up.”
The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade the next day, jolting the country and igniting demands that Democratic elected leaders do all they could to protect access to abortions. An email that followed a few days later included what appeared to be an effort to contain potential fallout.
“Sorry for not including this in the original email,” wrote Marshall, a former lieutenant governor in Nevada who joined the White House’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs in August. “But I wanted to clarify that the email I sent was pre-decisional and privileged information. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you. Kate.”
The governor’s office initially told news outlets the exchange between Marshall and Minix was conditional and could not be released. It was ultimately obtained Wednesday by The Washington Post and other news organizations after a public records request. The office of Beshear, a Democrat, declined to comment on Wednesday, referring reporters to statements he made in a news conference.
The revelations have ignited criticism of a president who vowed to do everything he could to protect abortion rights — and urged incensed voters to express their anger by voting for fellow Democrats in the midterms.
They have also raised tensions between the White House and Democratic elected officials in Kentucky, including Rep. John Yarmuth and Beshear, who confirmed and criticized the administration’s intent to nominate Meredith.
“If the president makes that nomination, it is indefensible,” Beshear said at a news conference last Thursday. He pointed to Meredith’s role in a series of controversial pardons at the end of the governorship of Republican Matt Bevin, including of a man convicted of raping a child. Beshear called Meredith “an individual who aided and advised on the most egregious abuse of power by a governor in my lifetime.”
Yarmuth issued a recent statement accusing Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) of striking a prior agreement over Meredith.
“Given that a judicial position isn’t currently open on the Eastern District Court, it’s clear that this is part of some larger deal on judicial nominations between the President and Mitch McConnell,” Yarmuth said in a statement. “I strongly oppose this deal and Meredith being nominated for the position. That last thing we need is another extremist on the bench.”
Scott Sloofman, a spokesman for McConnell, denied there was any such arrangement. “Discussions about Judge Caldwell’s seat have only involved who should fill Judge Caldwell’s seat,” Sloofman said in a statement, referring to the vacancy that was ultimately revealed publicly.
Both the White House and the Kentucky governor’s office have declined to expound on the conversations and decisions involving Meredith.
The new details add to denunciations the White House has received since the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to an abortion established in Roe. Many abortion rights advocates have said Biden responded to the ruling with inadequate force, adding to concerns over his handling of other issues and widening fissures in a political party facing stiff head winds ahead of the November election.
The White House has tried to avoid questions about what, if any, desire Biden had for Meredith to serve on the federal bench. When asked about it Wednesday on Air Force One, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre deflected.
“So we don’t — we — we make it a point here to not comment on any — on any vacancy, whether it is on the executive branch or judicial branch, especially those that have not — have not — the nomination has not been made yet,” she told reporters. “So I don’t have anything to say on that. It is something that we just don’t comment on.”
She also would not say whether the administration has a rule to not nominate judges who oppose abortion.
Critics have gone after the White House for not having a better plan to protect reproductive rights — or other privacy rights that could be affected by the decision — especially because a draft opinion leaked weeks before the official ruling.
A consortium of abortion rights groups voiced anger at the administration, pointing out that appointing conservative judges to the federal bench had paved the way for Roe v. Wade to be overturned.
“We are in a national abortion crisis,” said a statement from groups including NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “We are in this moment because antiabortion judges were intentionally nominated at every level to take away our fundamental right to abortion — and given his record, we know Chad Meredith would be no exception.”
The White House said it has convened meetings with stakeholders to form a plan to combat the results of the Supreme Court decision. Among other measures, the administration said it would seek to protect access to mifepristone, an abortion pill that can be prescribed via a telehealth visit and delivered in the mail, skirting some state restrictions. Biden said he would also protect women who travel across state lines seeking an abortion.
During five decades in political office, Biden has been openly conflicted over abortion, at times struggling to square the views shaped by his Catholic faith with those of his political party.
For most of his career, he has supported abortion rights but opposed federal funding for the procedure, including in some instances of pregnancies resulting from rape and incest. And he was among the few Democrats in 1982 to vote for a constitutional amendment that would have let states bypass Roe v. Wade and restrict abortion.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned, he said the rights taken away by the court threatened other freedoms, and sought to turn the fight for reproductive rights into a midterm campaign issue.
“This fall, we must elect more senators and representatives who will codify a woman’s right to choose into federal law once again, elect more state leaders to protect this right at the local level,” he said from the White House two hours after the Supreme Court’s decision. “We need to restore the protections of Roe as law of the land. We need to elect officials who will do that. This fall, Roe is on the ballot. Personal freedoms are on the ballot. The right to privacy, liberty, equality, they’re all on the ballot.”
Katy Perry has been called out for recently supporting “anti-abortionist” Rick Caruso after tweeting about the Roe v Wade ruling on Independence Day.
Last month, the super-conservative majority court ruled in favour of a Mississippi law that criminalises abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy, while also overturning key precedents established by the 1973 decision in Roe v Wade.
Since then, the controversial ruling, which strips American women of the constitutional right to safe abortions, has been widely denounced in the US and around the world.
On Monday (4 July), Perry reacted to the ruling in a Twitter post which read: “‘Baby you’re a firework’ is a 10 but women in the US have fewer rights than an actual sparkler smh.”
The singer was referencing her 2010 song “Firework” in the critical tweet.
However, some fans have called Perry out over an earlier tweet expressing support for billionaire Caruso, running for Los Angeles mayor.
Perry’s tweet on 4 June read: “Rick Caruso FTW”
(Twitter)
Replying to Perry, one person tweeted: “Did you mean to time this up to be exactly one month after this tweet where you endorse an anti-abortion candidate?”
“Perhaps you should have done a little more research before supporting billionaire Rick Caruso, known anti-abortionist, for mayor of LA,” another user commented.
“Hypocrite,” one person wrote.
The Independent has reached out to Perry’s representatives for comment.
Real estate developer Caruso will lock horns with Democrat congresswoman Karen Bass in the runoff election this November to become the mayor of Los Angeles.
(Twitter)
On 4 May, Caruso tweeted he will “vigorously protect a woman’s right to choose” if elected to mayor of Los Angeles.
Soon after, reproductive health not-for-profit Planned Parenthood noted it was “deeply disturbing” to see Caruso’s “long-standing support of anti-choice individuals and organizations” in a letter to the mayor hopeful (obtained by TMZ) this May.
“Throughout your career, you’ve publicly supported organizations and policymakers who have taken aggressive action to limit access to abortion, overturn Roe v Wade, and defund Planned Parenthood,” the letter read.
“You’ve donated nearly $1 million to policymakers who put forth legislation that criminalized abortion,” it continued, asking Caruso to clarify his stance on abortion rights and “issue a public apology for the countless actions you’ve taken that put women’s health and well-being at risk”.