Politics
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Elizabeth Wellington: Overturning Roe v. Wade takes away the right to choose the life we want
I was born 10 months after the Supreme Court upheld a woman’s right to obtain an abortion in the 1973 landmark case of Roe v. Wade.
If, God forbid, I’d ever been raped in an alley, on a date, by a family member, or heck, a priest and conceived a child, abortion was a medical decision that was mine to make. I started having sex in my early ...Read more

Commentary: It's not paranoia. Supreme Court could come for gay marriage and contraception
Women and LGBTQ people woke up on Friday to a world in which their rights to prevent pregnancies, have sex and marry could vanish with the stroke of a Supreme Court ruling.
This dystopian, “Handmaid’s Tale” scenario isn’t just liberal hyperbole, I hate to say.
The U.S. Supreme Court opinion reversing Roe v. Wade released Friday took ...Read more

Editorial: With Roe decision, Supreme Court sneers at precedent -- and places women's health in jeopardy
The inescapable fallacy that hangs like an albatross around the neck of the antiabortion movement is the misguided assumption that women will stop terminating their pregnancies if the procedure becomes illegal. America has been there, done that.
Abortion was illegal in this country before the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, yet ...Read more

Mark Z. Barabak: Abortion decision means more anger, strife in a country already divided against itself
Never before has the Supreme Court so dramatically taken away a constitutional right.
It's impossible, therefore, to know the full effect of its seismic decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
Only that life in America will grow edgier, angrier and even more contentious in a country already so deeply divided that it's more like hostile entities, red...Read more

Commentary: The Supreme Court upholds democracy in the Dobbs abortion decision
The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, the notorious 1973 decision that wrote abortion rights into law. Critics of the court’s new ruling overlook a crucial fact: By throwing out one of the most anti-democratic court decisions in the past 100 years, the justices have upheld the democratic process.
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health ...Read more

Stephen L. Carter: Can companies still cover abortion travel costs?
With Roe v. Wade no longer the law of the land, women seeking abortions will soon start traveling. Could a state punish an employer for covering their costs? The issue is likely to arise: A number of major corporations have come forward with offers to pay the expenses of employees who leave the state to end their pregnancies, and some state ...Read more

Editorial: The impractical end of Roe v. Wade
In 1973, the United States Supreme Court found constitutional protection for a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, her autonomous personhood deserving to be free from excessive governmental restriction.
Some 49 years later, that same illustrious body, albeit of different human constitution, has changed its mind.
No such protection ...Read more

Editorial: Roe has been overturned. Feel outraged, feel betrayed -- then fight to get it back
In a dreaded and once-unfathomable decision, the Supreme Court on Friday overturned Roe v. Wade. It’s a dark time in America as this once-revered institution has taken the rare and awful path of depriving people of their rights.
With its 5-4 decision the court abolished the constitutional right to an abortion up to the point of viability of ...Read more

Noah Feldman: Ending Roe is institutional suicide for Supreme Court
Modern constitutional law as we have known it ended Friday.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, it repudiated the very idea that America’s highest court exists to protect people’s fundamental liberties from legislative majorities that would infringe on them.
What the dissent aptly called a “...Read more

Commentary: Roe made our abortion debate worse. With it gone, can we compromise on rights and limits?
It doesn’t seem like it now, with the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade reversal roiling the nation. But we may someday look back on June 24, 2022, as the day we started out toward a compromise, even consensus, on abortion.
Roe was poorly decided on constitutional grounds, a fact that even abortion-rights supporting liberals have acknowledged. It...Read more

Editorial: The Supreme Court vs. women: The radicals dressed as conservatives shred the abortion ruling start to finish
What some insisted was a still-incubating draft majority decision overturning Roe v. Wade was fully born Friday: The Supreme Court has completely dismantled Roe and the series of cases upholding that core precedent, giving the states the ability to ban abortion starting from the moment of conception.
Coming on the heels of Thursday’s ruling ...Read more

Commentary: Letting states outlaw abortion will harm women and, in turn, US health outcomes
Returning the determination of abortion legality to the states will, without question, harm economically disadvantaged women and further compound health disparities.
Data show that preventable health disparities exist because of economic, environmental or social disadvantages that adversely affect a specific population. Black women, for example...Read more

Commentary: Ending Roe is a pure exercise of Republican power, wielded to reduce women's freedom and equality
Freedom and equality have expanded enormously over the course of American history, which makes the ending of a constitutional right virtually unprecedented.
In Dobb’s v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court overruled a half-century of decisions protecting a constitutional right of women to choose whether to end their pregnancies. ...Read more

Jackie Calmes: The Jan. 6 hearings are sorting real heroes from the fakes
This was Heroes Week for the House committee investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his election defeat and cling to power. So Mike Pence wasn’t there.
Real heroes were.
Some analysts have called Pence a hero, and Democrats on the committee repeatedly praise the former vice president for refusing Trump’s demands that Pence, in ...Read more

Commentary: Being child-free lets me live my most authentic life
When I was a young married 20-something in the Midwest, I thought a woman’s role and joy in life was motherhood. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when I would step into my role of birthing babies and raising them. But life took many turns, including separating from my husband and finding passion in my career.
This calibration away from the ...Read more

Editorial: Andrew Gillum's indictment is just more bad news for Florida Democrats
He was a rising Democratic star who, in 2018, came close enough to being Florida’s governor to trigger a statewide machine recount.
Now Andrew Gillum, the former mayor of Tallahassee who lost the race to Ron DeSantis, has been indicted in federal court on 21 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud and making false statements — charges related to ...Read more

Commentary: 'They' said they had my son. 'They' demanded money. So began the days of waiting and crying
It was a strange number from Huntington Park, but I always answer odd numbers because it could be my son calling. He is 33, unhoused in Los Angeles, mentally ill and treatment-resistant. It’s just something my family lives with, though we never imagined this would be our lives.
When I answered, I heard crying and sobbing, “Mom, Momma, ...Read more

Matthew Yglesias: Biden is delivering on his bipartisan promise
For all his many political struggles, President Joe Biden is quietly delivering on one of the central — and most implausible — promises of his campaign: restoring a sense of normalcy and bipartisanship to the legislative process.
The latest example is the bipartisan deal on gun regulation, which finally puts vague Republican rhetoric on ...Read more

Martin Schram: A party without shame
Throughout the heartland, the MAGA wing of the GOP has erupted in yet another round of hate-based onslaughts and outbursts that seem deliberately calculated to Make America Grate Again.
And grind. And grimace.
But not to the point where you might actually display the patriotic guts to do the one thing you know, deep down, you absolutely need ...Read more

Commentary: Will the new 988 hotline be a game changer for mental health or a missed opportunity?
Today, the 911 system is taken for granted. Anyone, virtually anywhere in the United States, should be able to dial three digits during a physical health emergency and expect a fast, local response — sometimes making the difference between life and death.
On July 16, “988” will become the equivalent hotline for mental health emergencies. ...Read more