Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are suing Arkansas over its abortion ban

[DonViejo]

Source: USA Today/AP


Associated Press Published 9:24 a.m. ET June 27, 2019 | Updated 9:31 a.m. ET June 27, 2019

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Abortion rights supporters on Wednesday challenged an Arkansas law banning the procedure 18 weeks into a woman's pregnancy and another requirement that they say would likely force the closure of the state's only surgical abortion clinic.

In all, the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood targets three abortion restrictions and asks a federal judge to block them before they take effect July 24. The abortion restrictions are among several approved by the majority-Republican Legislature this year. Arkansas currently bans abortion 20 weeks into a woman's pregnancy.

"Today, we're challenging three plainly unconstitutional laws that would completely outlaw abortions for many Arkansans and target health providers with restrictions that would push care even further out of reach," Holly Dickson, ACLU of Arkansas' legal director, said in a statement.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Planned Parenthood Great Plains and Little Rock Family Planning Services. Planned Parenthood operates facilities in Little Rock and Fayetteville that administer abortion-inducing medication but don't perform surgical abortions. Little Rock Family Planning performs surgical abortions. The plaintiffs also include a physician who administers abortion medication at Planned Parenthood's Fayetteville facility, and a physician who is also Little Rock Family Planning's medical director.

Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/06/27/arkansas-abortion-ban-challenged-aclu-planned-parenthood-lawsuit/1581906001/

[CrispyQ]

1. I wish the pro-choice groups would add this argument to their arsenal.

Abortion and the 13th Amendment

https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1031&context=facultyworkingpapers

2010
Forced Labor, Revisited: The Thirteenth Amendment and Abortion
Andrew Koppelman
Northwestern University School of Law, [email protected]

I. The basic argument
The Thirteenth Amendment reads as follows:

1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

My claim is that the amendment is violated by laws that prohibit abortion. When women are compelled to carry and bear children, they are subjected to "involuntary servitude" in violation of the amendment. Abortion prohibitions violate the Amendment's guarantee of personal liberty, because forced pregnancy and childbirth, by compelling the woman to serve the fetus, creates "that control by which the personal service of one man [sic] is disposed of or coerced for another's benefit which is the essence of involuntary servitude."6

Such laws violate the amendment's guarantee of equality, because forcing women to be mothers makes them into a servant caste, a group which, by virtue of a status of birth, is held subject to a special duty to serve others and not themselves.

====================================
Parents can't be compelled to donate their organs to their child, even to save the child's life. Why does a fetus have more claim on a woman's organs than her child who has been born?

[Initech]

2. They have taken the bait.

And that's exactly what these draconian laws were designed to do - get lawsuit bait and end up before SCOTUS. The ACLU took that bait. I foresee this not ending well.

[CTyankee]

3. The ACLU is run by very smart people. I think they know what they are doing.

[Initech]

4. I certainly hope so!

[CTyankee]

5. I worked for them many years ago in both their NY and DC offices. I met some great

people who had argued landmark cases in the Supreme Court. Their policy debates, which I attended as a notetaker, were fascinating. I felt like I had received an education in civil liberties law. I was in awe of many of the leaders of that organization.