Victories in Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Texas

[lynn82md.livejournal.com]

The Oklahoma Supreme Court unanimously vetoed a ballot measure that would have given embryos full personhood rights on Monday, ruling it "clearly unconstitutional" because it would block a woman's legal right to have an abortion.

The personhood measure would give embryos the same legal rights as people from the moment of fertilization, which opponents say would ban abortion and complicate the legality of in vitro fertilization and many forms of birth control. Enacting such a law would violate the U.S. Supreme Court's 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which allows states to pass some abortion restrictions but prevents them from overturning the constitutional right to end a pregnancy.

"The mandate of Casey is as binding on this Court today as it was twenty years ago," the Oklahoma Supreme Court wrote in its decision. "Initiative Petition No. 395 conflicts with Casey and is void on its face and it is hereby ordered stricken."
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Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (D) on Monday vetoed a controversial bill that would limit access to drugs such as the morning-after pill.

The legislation, sponsored by GOP state Rep. Joyce Peppin, would have required doctors to be physically present for the prescribing, as well as taking, of emergency contraceptive pills such as Plan B.

Current law allows for the drug to be administered via video conference by an abortion provider present at a remote location.

Peppin had argued for her measure's merit as a step to protect women who might suffer from side-effects of such medication. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that opponents claimed popular over-the-counter drugs such as Viagra or Tylenol had a much higher rate of side-effects, and that Peppin's bill was actually an attempt to restrict women's rights to choose.

"This bill's unique, new regulatory burden for a single procedure would increase the cost of health care and add unnecessary new barriers to a Constitutionally protected health care service for women," Dayton wrote in his veto statement. "Minnesota's laws should not target or restrict the Constitutional rights of women."
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A federal court in Texas ruled to stop a new law on Monday that excluded Planned Parenthood from the Texas Women's Health Program, which serves about 130,000 low-income women in the state. U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled that the law was unconstitutional because it bars eight Planned Parenthood clinics that don't provide abortions from participating in the program based on their affiliation with legally and financially separate entities that offer abortions.

Yeakel also cited the fact that the Department of Health and Human Services cut off all Medicaid funding for family planning to Texas because of the new law, which could jeopardize the entire program.

"The court is particularly influenced by the potential for immediate loss of access to necessary medical services by several thousand Texas women," Yeakel wrote in his ruling. "The record before the court at this juncture reflects uncertainty as to the continued viability of the Texas Women's Health Program."

Considering all this happened yesterday, I wondered if the politicans and justices of America got a wake up call from all the "Unite against the War on Women" protests that happened this past weekend that women's reproductive rights shouldn't be messed with.

Comments

[endlessdeep.livejournal.com]

Let's hope.

[lynn82md.livejournal.com]

Yes, I would be doing a lot of hoping about that