Reproductive Rights

In the opening pages of “Going Rogue,” Sarah Palin tells an anecdote about the Alaska State Fair that took me aback. Here’s the story:
Ahead, on my right, I saw the Alaska Right to Life (RTL) booth, where a poster caught my eye, taking my breath away. It featured the sweetest baby girl swathed in pink, [...]

The abortion debate in the Senate is looking more and more like that in the House every day.
Last week, it was liberal Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) predicting that anti-abortion lawmakers in the upper chamber wouldn’t be able to rally the 60 votes needed to pass an amendment to health reform legislation restricting abortion. This week, [...]

Rep. Bart Stupak, the adamantly anti-abortion Michigan Democrat, has stirred up a firestorm with his amendment prohibiting abortion coverage under insurance plans targeting low- and middle-income women on the exchange. And he isn’t backing down.
In an interview with Detroit News, the 57-year-old Catholic warned that “the other side is playing with fire,” if they try [...]

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a long-time abortion rights advocate, is predicting that a controversial amendment restricting abortion coverage that passed the House won’t win the 60 votes needed to pass in the Senate, The Huffington Post reports.
“If someone wants to offer this very radical amendment, which would really tear apart [a decades-long] compromise, then I [...]

The Hill reports:
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the Democrats’ chief deputy whip in the House, said that she and other pro-abortion rights lawmakers would work to strip the amendment included in the House health bill that bars federal funding from subsidizing abortions.
“I am confident that when it comes back from the conference committee that [...]

The Hill reports today that liberal groups are stepping up their pressure on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to call a vote on Dawn Johnsen, President Obama’s pick to head the Office of Legal Counsel.
As I reported earlier this week, Republicans have stalled Johnsen’s nomination with their ambivalence about supporting cloture and the leadership’s [...]

The Michigan Messenger’s Todd Heywood reports:
While the state is coming down from its second temporary shut down in two years, ever increasing unemployment and unresolved budget issues, Michigan House Republicans this week introduced legislation to amend the state constitution to define life as beginning at fertilization.
The resolution to amend the constitution was introduced by Democratic [...]

On Tuesday I reported that an Arizona judge had ordered Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to stop pre-charging female prisoners for the transportation and security costs associated with their obtaining abortion services at a medical clinic. The American Civil Liberties Union had won its argument that the charges — which ranged from $300 to $900 [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union just won a court order against Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona, who was illegally pre-charging female prisoners hundreds of dollars for the costs of being securely transported to medical clinics to obtain abortions.

Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio, not content with arresting illegal immigrants despite having lost his federal authority to do so, is now resisting a federal court order to allow women in his prisons to obtain abortions, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing him over this in Arizona.