abortion

After roughly 12 hours of debate — and no absence of GOP stalling — the House late last night passed an $894 billion proposal that would forever change the way the nation’s health care system operates. The vote was 220 to 215 in the lower chamber, where only a simple majority is required to pass [...]

The threat from moderate House Democrats to derail health reform legislation over abortion funding concerns is a problem that can be worked out this week, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters Tuesday.
“We are still working on that,” Hoyer said, “but I am reasonably confident. I have talked to people who have varying views [...]

WATERTOWN, N.Y. – Here’s a look at the campaign literature NY-23 Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman’s backers are handing out today.

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 [...]

Randall Terry, the anti-abortion rights activist whose visibility has been on the way up since relocating his operation to Washington, is launching another please-let-this-become-viral campaign: encouraging conservatives to create flaming effigies of Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to protest Democratic support of abortion rights. The explanatory video (which [...]

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 [...]

Earlier this year when Arlen Specter was still a Republican, the Pennsylvania senator was among the harshest critics of Dawn Johnsen, the Indiana University law professor who is President Obama’s pick to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
The OLC is the office that housed such Bush-era luminaries as John Yoo and Jay Bybee, [...]

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.