Abortion Laws

POCATELLO, Idaho - When Pocatello police got a tip that Jennie Linn McCormack had ended her pregnancy by taking an abortion drug obtained over the Internet, they showed up at her apartment one cold January day in 2011 and demanded an explanation. McCormack eventually took them out to her back porch, where the remains of her fetus were on the barbecue, wrapped up in a plastic bag and a cardboard box. "My baby is in the box," McCormack said. Officers uncovered the frozen remains of a 5-month-old fetus and erected crime scene tape around the porch before taking her to the police station and charging her with a felony.

North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple has signed into law the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, including one that bans abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, which can come as soon as six weeks after conception. A second bill signed by the Republican governor bans abortions solely for the purpose of gender selection and genetic abnormalities. And another requires that any physician who performs abortions must have staff privileges at a nearby hospital. The three new laws -- and a previously approved resolution calling for a November referendum on a constitutional amendment that is designed to protect life at any stage of development -- places the state at the forefront of efforts to limit abortion rights.

When Barack Obama campaigned for president, he promised to enact legislation to prohibit the states from limiting the right to abortion. Now that he is in the White House and Democratic majorities are ensconced in Congress, opponents of abortion rights are bracing for that and other major changes to abortion laws. But there are indications that what those groups dread most and some liberal voters eagerly anticipate as the rewards of victory may not come to pass -- at least not yet.

The approval by Arkansas' Legislature on Wednesday of the nation's most restrictive abortion law raises a lot of questions. No, I don't mean the usual questions about when life begins or whether the government has a right to intrude in such an intensely personal decision; I don't presume to be able to answer those, nor could anybody do so in a way that would satisfy true believers on the other side. Mine are reserved for the state legislators: Have you guys really thought this thing through?

A dozen regulations in one of the nation's toughest abortion laws were struck down by a federal judge who said the rules imposed an unconstitutional burden on people seeking and providing abortions. U.S. District Judge William H. Barbour Jr. in Jackson, Miss., issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting Mississippi from enforcing the new rules, generally aimed at abortion doctors and clinics.

The Parliament merged the old East German and West German abortion laws into one Thursday, ending five years of legislative disagreement with a convoluted new law that makes abortion a crime but allows women to undergo the procedure without being punished.

Cabinet Minister Loris Fortuna, considered the father of divorce and abortion legislation in Italy, has died of cancer in a Rome hospital. Fortuna, who defied both the Vatican and thousands of predominantly Roman Catholic letter writers around the world, died Thursday at age 61. He was a criminal lawyer, journalist and longtime Socialist legislator who had served since August in Socialist Premier Bettino Craxi's Cabinet as minister of relations with the European Economic Community.

Missouri legislators on Thursday enacted one of the toughest anti-abortion laws in the nation--one that never uses the word "abortion." Instead, the law talks of "infanticide" as it threatens doctors--and, for the first time, women--with sentences of up to life in prison for causing the death of any "intact child" who is "partially born or born." Anti-abortion legislators, who enacted the law by overriding Gov.

A federal appeals court on Friday refused to put the nation's strictest anti-abortion law on the fast track to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals denied motions by Louisiana Atty. Gen. William Guste to expedite a hearing on the issue and to certify issues in the case for immediate Supreme Court review. The three-judge circuit panel gave no reasons for the decision.

Those opposed to abortion hoped, and those who support abortion rights feared, that Pennsylvania's abortion law would finally provide the vehicle for the Supreme Court's conservative majority to categorically overturn a woman's right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. That a bare 5-4 majority, fractured and muddled, did not do so is no cause for relief, even if it could have the effect of making it harder for states to enact even more restrictive abortion laws.

Arkansas legislators approved the nation's most restrictive abortion law on Wednesday after overriding a veto by the state's Democratic governor, who said the legislation was "blatantly unconstitutional. " Senate Bill 134, known as the Arkansas Human Heartbeat Protection Act , bans abortions involving fetuses 12 weeks or older that have heartbeats, excluding medical emergencies, and mandates an ultrasound for expecting mothers before they attempt an abortion. The state's House of Representatives followed the Senate in voting to override Gov. Mike Beebe's veto.

The Irish government announced Tuesday that it would draft new laws and regulations to spell out when doctors can terminate a pregnancy, weeks after an ailing woman was refused an abortion and perished. Exactly what rules will be proposed is still unclear, but activists celebrated the move as the first step toward addressing the legal confusion over abortion in the largely Roman Catholic country. “We can see our government will be taking this issue seriously,” said James Burke, a member of the Termination for Medical Reasons Ireland campaign.

Outrage over the death of an Indian woman denied an abortion in Ireland resounded in her home country this week, as politicians and her grieving parents demanded changes in Irish laws.  "We should lodge a very strong protest with the Irish authorities as they are responsible for committing a crime which resulted in loss of a human life," politician Brinda Karat told the Press Trust of India . “They preferred to sacrifice the young...

Rep. Todd Akin, the GOP's candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri, caused a huge stir the other day with his comments about how women who are true rape victims rarely get pregnant. "If it's a legitimate rape," he said, "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. " In a piece that was typical of the widespread outrage the remarks stirred, the Atlantic magazine called them the "contemporary equivalent of the early American belief that only witches float. " The writer was onto something important.

WASHINGTON -- After saying he “can't defend” Rep. Todd Akin's suggestion that women don't get pregnant from rape, Mitt Romney stepped up his rebuke on Tuesday when he called on Akin to drop out of the Missouri Senate race. But archives from Romney's previous presidential bid show that the Massachusetts Republican has historically supported the person who is the source of Akin's theory, Dr. Jack C. Willke, the father of the antiabortion movement. A physician and former president of the National Right to Life Committee, Willke was an “important surrogate” for Romney's 2008 presidential bid. Willke is the oft-cited source of the theory that rape-related pregnancies are “rare.” The theory is sometimes used by antiabortion advocates to argue that abortion laws should not contain exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape or incest.

The Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat from Missouri is rightly being excoriated for his suggestion that a "legitimate rape" seldom results in pregnancy because "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. " This pseduo-scientific theory, which I remember from debates about abortion laws in Pennsylvania, has amazing staying power among abortion foes. But in endorsing it in what he later called "off-the-cuff remarks," Rep. Todd Akin committed a major gaffe.

One of Europe's strictest abortion laws survived a strenuous challenge Friday when Polish lawmakers failed to override a presidential veto of legislation that would have made abortions more readily available. The vote was a victory for President Lech Walesa, and it staved off a high-stakes power struggle between the staunchly antiabortion president and the governing coalition, which is led by former Communists who favor easing abortion restrictions.

WHAT IF THE Supreme Court overrules Roe vs. Wade by allowing South Dakota's new abortion statute to pass constitutional review? Abortion, which has been governed in our time by constitutional law, again would be a matter of criminal law. The chief question would be: Who goes to prison?

POCATELLO, Idaho - When Pocatello police got a tip that Jennie Linn McCormack had ended her pregnancy by taking an abortion drug obtained over the Internet, they showed up at her apartment one cold January day in 2011 and demanded an explanation. McCormack eventually took them out to her back porch, where the remains of her fetus were on the barbecue, wrapped up in a plastic bag and a cardboard box. "My baby is in the box," McCormack said. Officers uncovered the frozen remains of a 5-month-old fetus and erected crime scene tape around the porch before taking her to the police station and charging her with a felony.

LAS VEGAS - Following a national trend of new get-tough abortion legislation, Arizona has passed a law that severely restricts the procedure, banning most abortions after 20 weeks - setting the stage for another showdown between social conservatives and women's rights groups. With GOP Gov. Jan Brewer's signature on the Republication-sponsored legislation, Arizona took a stand on an issue that could become fodder during this year's presidential campaign. Proponents say the law protects fetuses, which they say can feel pain after five months of development.