Tag: restriction
Oklahoma Supreme Court Puts Abortion Restriction On Hold

Oklahoma Supreme Court Puts Abortion Restriction On Hold

By Michael Muskal, Los Angeles Times

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily put on hold a state law restricting abortions while the issue is argued in a lower court.

The unanimous action by the high court means that women in Oklahoma can continue to use the prescription drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, which induce abortion in the early weeks of pregnancy.

Oklahoma had sought to prohibit such abortions in a law known as House Bill 2684.

Reproductive Services in Tulsa and the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice filed suit against the law, which went into effect on Saturday, arguing that the measure in unconstitutional.

An Oklahoma County district judge last month put a portion of the law on hold. That decision was appealed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

In its action on Tuesday, the Supreme Court “temporarily enjoins enforcement of the Act until the constitutionality of the Act is fully and finally litigated.”

The court went on to note: “This court expresses no opinion concerning the validity of the Act.”

This type of abortion is an alternative to later surgical abortions.

Mifepristone causes the placenta to separate from the endometrium. Misoprostol is given later, causing contractions so that the body expels the uterine contents. Many doctors allow their patients to take misoprostol at home.

In its court papers, Reproductive Services argues that it uses the drugs in a protocol that is effective, but different from the procedure outlined by the federal Food and Drug Administration. Among the differences is that the groups’ doctors prescribe a lower dose of mifepristone, which reduces the rate of side effects.

“House Bill 2684’s restrictions impose a substantial obstacle for women seeking an abortion because the act bans the most common method of abortion for all of Reproductive Services’ patients who are between 49 and 63 days since” their last menstrual period.

The restrictions are being defended by state attorney general’s office.

“To this point, the courts have agreed with the attorney general’s argument that the Oklahoma Legislature was within its constitutional authority to enact HB 2684 to protect women from the dangerous off-label use of abortion inducing drugs,” Aaron Cooper, spokesman for Attorney General Scott Pruitt, told the Tulsa World on Friday.

Photo via Flickr Commons/World Can’t Wait

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Abortion Restrictions Take Effect In Arizona After Judge’s Ruling

Abortion Restrictions Take Effect In Arizona After Judge’s Ruling

By Michael Muskal, Los Angeles Times

Restrictions on some types of abortions in Arizona went into effect Tuesday morning after a federal judge upheld state changes limiting a woman’s access to an abortion-inducing drug.

U.S. District Judge David Bury issued an order Monday afternoon rejecting a bid to block the new abortion restrictions while the state’s 2012 law is litigated. The law allowed the state to issue new rules banning the use of the most common abortion-inducing drug, RU-486, after the seventh week of pregnancy, compared with the current restriction of nine weeks.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of local groups supporting abortion rights, said it is evaluating all available means of continuing to challenge the new rules.

Arizona has been aggressive in pushing anti-abortion measures, a movement that has included more than a dozen other states seeking to limit the 1973 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion. Laws over access to abortion have been challenged in Indiana, Iowa, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas.

States have tried to increase inspections of facilities, arguing they were needed to protect women’s health, and impose new restrictions on what drugs can be used at different stages of pregnancy.

The Arizona Legislature in the last few years has approved a number of anti-abortion measures. A House of Representatives-approved bill that is being considered by the Senate would allow for surprise, warrantless inspections of abortion clinics. Proponents of the bill say it protects women from clinics that are not up to health standards. Opponents say it puts women at risk and violates their privacy.

In January, the Arizona Department of Health Services issued new rules limiting RU-486, prompting Planned Parenthood Arizona and the private abortion clinic Tucson Women’s Center, to sue. Through its lawyers at the Center for Reproductive Rights, the groups argued that the rules infringe on a woman’s ability to have an abortion.

“This law serves no purpose other than to prevent Arizona women from using a safe alternative to surgical abortion and force their doctors to follow an outdated, riskier and less effective method,” David Brown, a lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. “This is what happens when politicians, not doctors, practice medicine.”

Bury was asked to grant an injunction that would have blocked the rules from taking effect, but the judge rejected that request after the state argued that the rules were just a small shift.

“The court finds that the injunction is not in the public interest,” the judge ruled, while acknowledging that the ruling would make it difficult for some women to get abortions.

Planned Parenthood estimated that 800 women would have had to get surgical abortions, rather than drug-induced ones, if the rules were in effect in 2012.

AFP Photo/Mandel Ngan

Clinton: GOP Disenfranchising Voters Jim Crow Style

Former President Bill Clinton lambasted Republican efforts to restrict voting rights in battleground states across the country at a meeting of progressive college students in the capital on Wednesday, comparing them, as Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz did recently, to Jim Crow laws that prevented blacks from voting until 1965.

“There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today,” Clinton said to the Campus Progress annual conference.

The laws in question restrict or eliminate early voting and late (or same-day) registration, all of which clearly benefited Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Indeed, Obama won the early vote in several battleground states by a healthy enough margin that losing the vote on election day was no big deal.

“Why is all of this going on? This is not rocket science. They are trying to make the 2012 electorate look more like the 2010 electorate than the 2008 electorate,” Clinton added.

Florida Governor Rick Scott’s move to block felons from voting was especially frustrating for the former president.

“Why should we disenfranchise people forever once they’ve paid their price?” Clinton posed to the audience. “Because most of them in Florida were African-Americans and Hispanics and would tend to vote for Democrats. That’s why.”

Indeed, it is clear that early voting–and voting on Sundays (after church)–mostly boosts minority, and especially black, turnout.

Republicans, of course, claim they are simply trying to block voter fraud and protect the “integrity” of elections. But by imposing obstacles on the least represented groups of America’s electorate, they are doing their best to keep the electorate small, old, and white.