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tomorrowusa · 1 year

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Extremist GOP anti-abortion policies in red states are ironically making it difficult for women to give birth in such places.

Hospitals are increasingly closing down their obstetrics units because it’s becoming harder to find doctors who would want to work in areas where they could be prosecuted for providing women’s healthcare.

Brooke Macumber planned to have her fourth child in the same small hospital where two of her older children were born — the same place her husband had been delivered decades earlier.

[ ... ]

Bonner General Health in rural Sandpoint, Idaho, was shuttering its obstetrics unit after almost 75 years. Now, the closest hospital able to deliver her baby is more than an hour’s drive from her home.

[ ... ]

Access to obstetric services has been on the decline for years in rural areas, with at least 89 obstetrics units in rural U.S. hospitals closing their doors between 2015 and 2019, according to the American Hospital Association. More than half of rural counties — home to 2.2 million women of childbearing age — are now maternity-care deserts.

Some obstetricians say the problem has been exacerbated by the recent passage of laws criminalizing abortion, which can make recruiting and retaining physicians all the more difficult.

You can blame the overwhelmingly Republican Idaho legislature for the end of obstetrics at Bonner General Health.

In a news release announcing the decision on Friday, Bonner General Health officials cited a shortage of pediatricians and decreasing number of deliveries. The release also pointed to the “legal and political climate” in a state where trigger laws banned nearly all abortions after the fall of the constitutional right to an abortion.

“Highly respected, talented physicians are leaving,” it said. “Recruiting replacements will be extraordinarily difficult. In addition, the Idaho Legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care.

”Idaho has some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation. A trigger law passed in 2020, which the state Supreme Court allowed to take effect last summer, criminalizes the procedure in almost all cases, with possible defenses if a doctor determines it necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman or if the pregnant woman has reported rape or incest to law enforcement. A medical provider who violates the law can face felony charges punishable by two to five years in prison, along with suspension or revocation of their medical license.

Far right Republicans pretend that they are are pro-family. At the behest of extreme fundamentalist Christians they would turn women into little more than baby-making machines. But their laws may be making women reconsider having children because medical care for them is becoming more scarce in rural red states.

The Idaho Republican Party platform — adopted in the summer of 2022, weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that allowed states to ban abortion — goes further. It declares that “abortion is murder from the moment of fertilization” and calls for its prevention “regardless of the circumstances of conception, including persons conceived in rape and incest.” The platform says the party supports criminalizing all abortions within the state.

Republicans legislators in red states are more interested in revoking three centuries of social progress which then results in serious healthcare issues for their constituents.

The loss of labor and delivery services in rural hospitals can be dangerous. An absence of obstetric care is significantly associated with increased preterm births and more births in facilities that lack staffs trained in labor and delivery, according to a 2018 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Some patients who have problems in pregnancy walk into centers without obstetrics departments, leaving emergency-medicine doctors to handle issues that may be beyond their expertise.

Gustafson said she fears that Idaho’s maternal death total — which more than doubled from 2019 to 2020, the most recent year for which data is available — will rise with one fewer unit of doctors trained in labor and delivery.

The US already had the highest maternal mortality rate in the industrialized world. The GOP is working to get that rate even higher.

These Republican restrictions on abortion are the products of GOP state legislatures. People tend to pay little attention to state government until it’s too late.

The very first step in ending GOP control is to find out who is representing you in the chambers of your legislature. This site can help with that.

Find Your Legislators Look your legislators up by address or use your current location.

Once you know who represents you, get active in electing Democrats and defeating fundamentalist anti-woman Republicans.

EDIT: Idaho Republicans are too busy bringing back firing squads to care about obstetric services for constituents.

Idaho lawmakers approve bill that would allow execution by firing squad

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freshvinculum2 · 2 months

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#Idaho #grassroots #commissioner #constitution #hearing #legislature #support #Call #article v #self governance #convention of states

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recreation-law · 1 year

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Idaho Businesses are Stingy: at least with the new Outfitter bill

https://rec-law.us/3YUmQeq State: Idaho There is a new law that is trying to get passed in Idaho. The law wants outfitters to be able to use a release. Idaho law currently allows a release to be used to block a lawsuit. See Plaintiff raised argument in work/team building situation that they were forced to sign release. release. The state is not a stalwart of release law but the few cases, I’ve…

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#Bill #Guide #Idaho #Inhernet Risk #Legislature #Outfitter #Outfitter and Guide #statute

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jadewalker · 2 years

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#idaho #idaho state university #republican legislature #boise state university #no public funds abortion act

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reasonsforhope · 28 days

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For all the concern in recent years that U.S. democracy is on the brink, in danger or under threat, a report out Tuesday offers a glimmer of good news for American voters worried that casting a ballot will be difficult in 2024.

Put simply, the new data shows that voting in America has gotten easier over the past two decades. More voters have the ability to cast a ballot before Election Day, with the majority of U.S. states now offering some form of early in-person voting and mail voting to all voters.

"Although we often talk in a partisan context about voter fraud and voter suppression and whether voters have access to the ballot, the reality is, over the past 25 years, we've greatly increased the convenience of voting for almost all Americans," said David Becker, the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), which authored the new report...

The data shows that, despite real efforts by some Republican-led legislatures to restrict access at the margins, the trend in the U.S. since 2000 has been toward making it easier to vote: Nearly 97% of voting-age American citizens now live in states that offer the option to vote before Election Day.

"The lies about early voting, the lies about voting machines and efforts in some state legislatures to roll back some of the election integrity and convenience measures that have evolved over the last several decades, those efforts almost all failed," Becker said. "In almost every single state, voters can choose to vote when they want to."

Forty-six states and Washington, D.C., offer some form of early in-person voting, the report tallied, and 37 of those jurisdictions also offer mail voting to all voters without requiring an excuse...

In 2000

In 2024

Infographic via NPR. If you go to the article, you can watch an animation of this map that shows voting availability in every election since 2000.

There are some political trends that show up in the data. Of the 14 states that don't offer mail voting to all voters, for instance, 12 have Republican-led legislatures.

-via NPR, March 19, 2024. Article continues below.

But maybe the more striking trends are geographic. Every single state in the western U.S. has offered some form of early and mail voting to all voters since 2004, according to the data. And those states span the political spectrum, from conservative Idaho to liberal California.

"It's really hard to talk about partisanship around this issue because historically there just hasn't been much," Mann said. "We've seen voting by mail and early in-person voting supported by Republican legislatures, Democratic legislatures, Republican governors, Democratic governors. We see voters in both parties use both methods." ...

In 2020, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts all made changes to make voting more easily accessible, which have since partially or fully become permanent. Delaware is currently embroiled in a legal fight over whether it can implement early and mail voting changes this election cycle as well.

The South, with its history of slavery and Jim Crow laws, has long lagged behind when it comes to voting access. The CEIR data shows that, although some states have slowly started expanding options for voters, generally it is still the most difficult region for voters to cast a ballot.

As options nationwide have become more widely available, voters have also responded by taking advantage.

In the 2000 election, 86% of voters voted at a polling place on Election Day, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

In 2020, during the pandemic, that number dropped to less than 31% of voters. It went back up in 2022, to roughly half of the electorate, but was still in line with the two-decade trend toward more ballots being cast early.

...in reality, Becker says, more voting options actually make elections more secure and less susceptible to malicious activity or even human error.

"If there were a problem, if there were a cyber event, if there were a malfunction, if there were bad weather, if there were traffic, if there were was a power outage, you could think of all kinds of circumstances. ... The more you spread voting out over a series of days and over multiple modes, the less likely it's going to impact voters," he said...

-via NPR, March 19, 2024

#united states #voting #voting matters #early voting #mail in ballots #voting access #american politics #us elections #election 2024 #us politics #democrats #republicans #election day #election news #good news #hope

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gusty-wind · 2 months

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#the great awakening #war is real #ncswic

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socialjusticeinamerica · 3 months

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Republicans want you to die. VOTE BLUE and end this war on us.

#republican assholes #republican party #roe v wade #abortion rights #reproductive rights #pregnancy #birth #Republican war on women

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renthony · 2 months

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From the article:

Less than two months into 2024, lawmakers in at least 13 states have introduced legislation that could disrupt libraries’ services and censor their materials. The new wave of bills follows a historic year of book challenges, mainly affecting titles centered on the topics of race, gender identity or sexual orientation. “The American Library Association condemns in the strongest terms possible legislation in more than a dozen states that would threaten librarians and other educators with criminal prosecution for doing their jobs,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, in a statement. “This is not a culture war; it’s a threat to our democracy.” Caldwell-Stone added, “Nowhere have we witnessed attacks on education like those currently proposed in Wisconsin.” The Wisconsin Legislature is considering a bill to take away protections from library employees being prosecuted on charges of possessing “obscene” materials by removing public, private and tribal schools from the list of institutions exempt from prosecution for obscene materials violations. “Those who would prosecute librarians and teachers would divert precious education resources to defending frivolous lawsuits and policing our nation’s most trusted institutions and community anchors: libraries and schools,” Caldwell-Stone said. In Idaho, a bill proposes to prohibit librarians from making materials that include sexual conduct available to minors. Homosexuality is included in that category alongside sexual intercourse and masturbation.

#queer news #censorship #libraries #racism

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porterdavis · 3 months

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Bellwether for the rest of Gilead.

#women's reproductive rights #idaho

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Idaho already has some of the most extreme abortion restrictions on the books, with nearly all abortions banned in the state and an affirmative defense law that essentially asserts any doctor who provides an abortion is guilty until proven innocent. And now Idaho Republicans have set their sights on hindering certain residents from traveling out of state to get an abortion.

House Bill 242, which passed through the state House and is likely to move quickly through the Senate, seeks to limit minors’ ability to travel for abortion care without parental consent. The legislation would create a whole new crime — dubbed “abortion trafficking” — which is defined in the bill as an “adult who, with the intent to conceal an abortion from the parents or guardian of a pregnant, unemancipated minor, either procures an abortion … or obtains an abortion-inducing drug” for the minor. “Recruiting, harboring, or transporting the pregnant minor within this state commits the crime of abortion trafficking,” the legislation adds.

Abortion trafficking would be a felony, and those found guilty would face two to five years in prison. The legislation also includes a statute allowing the Idaho attorney general to supersede any local prosecutor’s decision, preemptively thwarting any prosecutor who vows not to enforce such an extreme law.

Since the bill would criminalize anyone transporting a pregnant minor within the state to get an abortion or to obtain medication abortion, it could apply to an aunt who drives a pregnant minor to the post office to pick up a package that includes abortion pills. Or it could target an older sibling who drives a pregnant minor to a friend’s house to self-manage an abortion at home. Either violation would carry a minimum sentence of two years in prison.

The legislation doesn’t actually say anything about crossing state lines, but Republican lawmakers are creative. Most pregnant people in Idaho are not traveling to obtain an abortion elsewhere in the state, since nearly all abortions are illegal in Idaho; they’re traveling to the border with the intent of crossing state lines, likely into Washington, Oregon or Montana, to get an abortion there.

“Technically, they’re not criminalizing people driving in Washington state with a minor. The crime is the time that someone is driving the minor in Idaho,” said David Cohen, a law professor at Philadelphia’s Drexel University whose work focuses on constitutional law and abortion policy.

“They’re going to say what they’re doing is just criminalizing actions that take place completely within Idaho, but in practice what they’re criminalizing is the person helping the minor,” Cohen, who also litigates abortion-related cases with the Women’s Law Project nonprofit, told HuffPost.

State Rep. Barbara Ehardt (R), one of the sponsors of the abortion trafficking bill, said plainly that the intent of the legislation is to limit minors’ ability to travel out of state without parental consent.

“It’s already illegal to get an abortion here in the state of Idaho,” she told HuffPost. “So, it would be taking that child across the border, and if that happens without the permission of the parent, that’s where we’ll be able to hold accountable those that would subvert a parent’s right.”

In the past, a bill like this would have been brushed aside as political fodder, never to become law. But Idaho has seen a Christian white nationalist insurgency in recent years, helping to create a Legislature that’s quickly gone down the far-right rabbit hole — including by introducing legislation that would bring back firing squad executions, or make it a crime punishable by life in prison for a parent to get gender-affirming care for their transgender child.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, the country has yet to find the floor on how extreme abortion restrictions can get — and Republicans in Idaho are actively testing the waters.

“The far right has an incremental plan. It’s death by a thousand cuts on many things, but they’re especially unrelenting on abortion,” Idaho Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow (D) told HuffPost. “My colleagues are just rabid about denying all access to abortion care. It’s really harmful to women, and it’s harmful to our state.”

The abortion trafficking bill is rapidly advancing through the Legislature. It passed along party lines in the state House (57-12-1) earlier this month with less than 10 minutes of floor discussion. The final roadblock for the bill was the Senate State Affairs Committee, which on Monday agreed to hold a full Senate vote. A handful of amendments, which don’t substantively change the bill, were added on Monday, meaning the bill will head back to the House for a full vote after the Senate vote takes place. It’s extremely likely to pass in the Senate, where Republicans outnumber Democrats 4 to 1, and in the House which has already passed the bill once. Gov. Brad Little (R), a devout anti-abortion advocate and the first governor to enact a copycat of Texas’ infamous bounty hunter abortion restriction, is likely to sign the bill into law.

Wintrow is prepared to fight the legislation in the Senate, but she’s only one of 18 Democrats in a Legislature of 105 members. She’s not optimistic, despite being acutely aware of just how devastating a bill like this could be for minors, physicians and the greater health care system in Idaho.

“It feels terribly inevitable that this bill will pass,” said Wintrow, who has been teaching gender studies at Boise State University for over 20 years. “That’s what we’re facing. That’s my fear. That’s the pit in my stomach.”

Ehardt stressed to HuffPost that the bill is about parental rights.

“What we want to make sure of is that parents are the ones who are in charge of their children. Parents are the ones who need to be involved in helping to make these decisions,” she said.

“A parent absolutely still has the right to take their child across the border and get an abortion,” Ehardt added. “The parent still has the right to cede that power and authority to someone else, such as a grandparent or an aunt, to take that child, should they be pregnant, across the border and get an abortion.”

The language in the Idaho legislation is ripped nearly word for word from a model law published by the National Right to Life Committee, a leading anti-abortion group, just weeks before Roe fell. Idaho Right to Life, a state-level organization of National Right to Life, crafted the bill that Ehardt is leading through the Legislature.

What was once viewed as an extremist’s dream agenda is now very real.

“This is the first of what will probably be many states that pass provisions like this because it does seem to be something that the movement wants, at least for minors. Whether they expand it to adults, too, we will see,” Cohen said. “But at least for minors, this seems to be part of the blueprint. And Idaho is now the first state that’s putting it into reality.”

Most teenagers and adolescents voluntarily include at least one parent in abortion decisions. But for the minority of those who don’t, it’s often for good reason. Studies show that requiring parental involvement can increase the risk of harm or abuse, delay care and lead minors to seek out dangerous alternatives. The risk of abuse is especially acute for LGBTQ kids.

And parental consent laws are common. Currently, 36 states require some kind of parental involvement for a minor to receive abortion care. Almost all of those states have a judicial bypass process that allows a minor to obtain approval from a court without alerting their parents, although this procedure is time-consuming and confusing, and it puts up many logistical barriers for young people who have few resources.

Idaho state Rep. Lauren Necochea (D) brought up this issue during the brief discussion on the House floor this month before the bill passed.

“There are cases where a minor might not feel safe telling their parents they need abortion care,” she said. “It could be an abusive family situation. It could be any number of circumstances that make it feel unsafe for a 17-year-old to go to her parents, but maybe she has a big sister who can help her out,” Necochea added, noting that the bill would prohibit a minor from talking to a sibling or other trusted relative about plans to obtain an abortion.

Several national health groups agree that a minor should not be required to involve their parents in decisions to obtain an abortion, including the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

But targeting minors is why such legislation works. They have fewer rights than adults in some situations, allowing lawmakers to litigate away critical health care for adolescents. (Just look at what Florida, Tennessee and a dozen or so other states are doing to gender-affirming care for trans youth.)

“It’s a very creative way of getting around the legality of this,” Rebecca Wang, legal support counsel at the reproductive justice nonprofit If/When/How, told HuffPost about the Idaho bill. “The phrasing of this law is very strategically trying not to impede on the right to travel but focusing more on the state’s right to interfere with young people’s medical decisions. I certainly see this as part of the trend of chipping away at the right to travel.”

For her part, Ehardt said she took on this bill because of her passion for parental rights. She is not looking to limit any adult’s ability to travel across state borders to get abortion care for themselves.

“I can’t speak for what any organization or someone else may try to do, but as far as I’m concerned this is a way to handle parental rights,” she said. “I am not interested in carrying legislation to try to restrict someone’s ability, if they are pregnant and they are an adult, to go somewhere else [out of state].”

Similar to other abortion restrictions, the legality of the bill is suspect. And since people travel around Idaho and across state lines every day, it’s unclear how it would be enforced. Between the legal jargon and constant confusion around abortion limitations, the legislation is likely to simply have a chilling effect.

“This is another one of those laws that seeks to create an atmosphere of not being able to trust the people around you. They [Republican lawmakers] are relying on a network of people around a person seeking care to potentially report them to authorities,” Wang said.

“The very real effect we will see is adults who are supportive of a young person’s right to get an abortion are going to be quite hesitant to offer that assistance, and be concerned that they might be prosecuted and go to jail as a result of this,” she added. “That’s concerning because young people, more than anybody, need additional community support to access services.”

Restricting anyone’s ability to travel looks and sounds unconstitutional. But in the U.S. — a country where the Supreme Court repealed nearly 50 years of precedent, lawmakers are vowing to surveil and prosecute pregnant people, and a lawsuit with no scientific basis is threatening access to medication widely used for abortion and miscarriage care — what’s constitutional or unconstitutional is up for debate.

“There is nothing clear about current Supreme Court case law that mandates the result that I think is right, which is that this is unconstitutional,” Cohen said. “And because it’s not clear from the case law, I think motivated judges are going to have the ability to decide one way or the other based on how they feel about abortion.”

In his concurring opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh did state that the right to interstate travel is still constitutionally protected. But since the abortion trafficking bill is crafted in a way that only pertains to travel inside Idaho, lawmakers may have found a loophole.

Rebecca Gibron, the CEO of a Seattle-based Planned Parenthood affiliate, told HuffPost that her organization will meet the legal battle wherever it is.

“This wouldn’t be the first time that the Idaho Legislature and the governor put bills into law that are unconstitutional. We have challenged them and won,” said Gibron, who heads Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky.

“There’s no way this bill is constitutional, and if it’s passed there will absolutely be a legal battle. Idaho can bet on that.”

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tomorrowusa · 3 months

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When you put Republicans in total control of a state, here's what happens after they've banned books, banned abortion, and persecuted the LGBTQ+ community.

The Idaho legislature, with GOP supermajorities, is taking up a bill dealing with cannibalism. The bill was proposed by Republican (of course) State Rep. Heather Scott who was motivated by a satirical Tik-Tok video which she took to be real.

A preoccupation of mine is that we need to pay much more attention to state government and especially state legislatures. Check now to see who represents you in your state legislature.

Find Your Legislators Look your legislators up by address or use your current location.

If you are represented by a brainless MAGA Republican like Heather Scott, contact your state or county Democratic Party and ask how you can help elect more Democrats to the legislature.

#idaho #republicans #cannibalism #wingnuts #heather scott #idaho hb 522 #composting #fameless #state government #state legislatures #vote blue no matter who #election 2024

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mindblowingscience · 1 year

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After clearing both legislative chambers, Idaho could become the first state in the country, according to Planned Parenthood, to criminally charge those who help pregnant minors get an abortion across state lines without parental consent.

If convicted, the penalty could be two to five years in prison under the bill passed by the Idaho Senate Thursday.

Neighboring Oregon, Montana, Washington and Wyoming currently allow abortions with varying levels of restrictions.

Republican State Sen. Scott Herndon supported the bill, but wanted it to go further.

"Neither a parent nor a guardian should be allowed protection from trafficking a minor for purposes of an abortion outside the state," Herndon said Thursday.

#science #stem #abortion #politics #the idaho 4

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rapeculturerealities · 7 months

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Idaho Banned Abortion. Then It Turned Down Supports for Pregnancies and Births. — ProPublica

Idaho legislators disbanded a state committee that investigated the root causes of maternal deaths, making it the only state in the nation with no such mortality review.

They allowed two bills to die that would have put Idaho on the same track as nearly every other state with abortion restrictions — including Florida, Kentucky and Texas — by extending postpartum Medicaid coverage to 12 months. Idaho’s Medicaid coverage ends two months after birth, the minimum under federal law.

They turned down $36 million in federal grants to support child care this summer, while other states with new abortion restrictions — Alabama, Louisiana and Missouri among them — made investments in early childhood education and day care. Idaho lawmakers at the time attributed the decision to a pending audit of a different batch of grants.

Democrats generally support these kinds of measures, but Idaho Republicans dominate the state capitol and therefore control which bills move forward.

Rep. Brent Crane, a longtime Republican leader who chairs the House State Affairs Committee, said GOP lawmakers last year had hoped to put forward bills to improve health care and support for kids and families after the Supreme Court struck down federal protections for abortion rights. They instead got bogged down in debate over exceptions to the abortion ban.

#Idaho #Abortion #reproductive rights #reproductive health #reproductive justice

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justinspoliticalcorner · 9 days

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Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day:

You don’t need to be a political genius to know that Republicans are straight up shitting themselves right now. The Arizona Supreme Court ruling in favor of an 1864 ban was a tipping point across the country, and the GOP—in every state, at every level—knows that voters are furious.

It’s not just the nightmare stories of raped children being denied care and women going septic that put voters over the edge, but the disdain for women that seeps out of every anti-abortion decision. At the same time Arizona Republicans are enacting a law from before women had the right to vote, anti-abortion groups and Idaho Republicans are headed to the Supreme Court to argue that states shouldn’t have to give women life-saving abortions. How much clearer can they get? All of which is to say: strategists have their work cut out for them. How can they convince voters ahead of November that the anti-abortion horror show they’ve unleashed on Americans is good, actually?

If anyone has an answer, it’s Kellyanne Conway. The Republican strategist and all-around terrible person has been doing damage control in the wake of the Arizona ruling, pushing out talking points at record speed. And the messages she’s focusing on paint a clear picture of what we can expect to see from GOP candidates—including Donald Trump—over the next few months. In a recent appearance on Fox News, for example, Conway stuck to some of her old standards—namely, attacking Democrats as the real extremists. She honed in on ballot measures, specifically, saying that abortion rights activists are trying to pass amendments that are “more permissive than pre-Dobbs.” Of course, this is demonstrably false. It’s also one of the reasons I don’t love ‘viability’ language in proposed amendments—in addition to the fact that it’s just another restriction, Republicans will claim we’re pushing for abortion ‘up until birth’ regardless.

Conway also repeated some of our favorite anti-abortion bingo words like “compassion,” and “federal minimum standard” in lieu of ‘ban’—but it was something she said about states’ rights that piqued my interest.

[“What is state’s rights? Is it when the state Supreme Court speaks? Is it through a ballot initiative? Is it through the governor and the state legislature working together? Is it through the trigger laws that have been on the books? I can argue that it’s all of the above.”]

Over the last few months—especially as pro-choice ballot measures have advanced in multiple states—I’ve noticed Republicans tinkering with the definition of states’ rights and the ‘will of the people.’ Essentially, they know that they’re passing abortion bans against voters’ wishes, so they need to make it sound as if these laws are something Americans actually want. (That’s why they say ‘consensus’ instead of ‘ban.’)

This week, for example, Fox News ran a headline about the EMTALA case headed to the Supreme Court, stating that the Biden administration is “subverting state’s rights” by requiring hospitals to give women life-saving and stabilizing abortions. John Bursch, an attorney from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the radical legal group arguing the case, told Fox News, “It’s pushing abortion on states that don't want it.” It takes a lot of nerve to pass abortion bans no one wants, only to then accuse pro-choice politicians of disregarding voters’ wishes! But that’s the message I’m seeing come up again and again among Republican legislators, anti-abortion activists and conservative media.

Jessica Valenti’s Abortion, Every Day Substack exposes the GOP’s abortion bans are the “will of the people” charade in which they falsely suggest that the Democrats are the ones extreme on abortion.

These nimrods claim to be for “states’ rights” when it comes to abortion bans, but they would ban it nationwide in a heartbeat if given a chance to do so.

#Abortion Bans #Abortion #GOP #2024 Elections #Kellyanne Conway #Reproductive Health #Abortion Every Day #Jessica Valenti #Anti Abortion Extremism #States' Rights

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reasonsforhope · 8 months

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"Two years ago, the biggest battles in state legislatures were over voting rights. Democrats loudly — and sometimes literally — protested as Republicans passed new voting restrictions in states like Georgia, Florida and Texas. This year, attention has shifted to other hot-button issues, but the fight over the franchise has continued. Republicans have enacted dozens of laws this year that will make it harder for some people to vote in future elections.

But this year, voting-rights advocates got some significant wins too: States — controlled by Democrats and Republicans — have enacted more than twice as many laws expanding voting rights as restricting them, although the most comprehensive voter-protection laws passed in blue states. In all, 39 states and Washington, D.C., have changed their election laws in some way this year...

Where voting rights were expanded in 2023 (so far)

Unlike two years ago, though, we’d argue that the bigger story of this year’s legislative sessions was all the ways states made it easier to vote. As of July 21, according to the Voting Rights Lab, [which runs an excellent and completely comprehensive tracker of election-related bills], 834 bills had been introduced so far this year expanding voting rights, and 64 had been enacted. What’s more, these laws are passing in states of all hues.

Democratic-controlled jurisdictions (Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island and Washington) enacted 33 of these new laws containing voting-rights expansions, but Republican-controlled states (Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming) were responsible for 23 of them. The remaining eight became law in states where the two parties share power (Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia).

That said, not all election laws are created equal, and the most comprehensive expansive laws passed in blue states. For example:

New Mexico adopted a major voting-rights package that will automatically register New Mexicans to vote when they interact with the state’s Motor Vehicle Division, allow voters to request absentee ballots for all future elections without the need to reapply each time and restore the right to vote to felons who are on probation or parole. The law also allows Native Americans to register to vote and receive ballots at official tribal buildings and makes it easier for Native American officials to get polling places set up in pueblos and on tribal land.

Minnesota followed suit with a law also establishing automatic voter registration and a permanent absentee-voting list. The act allows 16- and 17-year-olds to preregister to vote too. Meanwhile, a separate new law also reenfranchises felons on probation or parole.

Michigan enacted eight laws implementing a constitutional amendment expanding voting rights that voters approved last year. Most notably, the laws guarantee at least nine days of in-person early voting and allow counties to offer as many as 29. The bills also allow voters to fix mistakes on their absentee-ballot envelopes so that their ballot can still count, track the status of their ballot online, and use student, military and tribal IDs as proof of identification.

Connecticut became the sixth state to enact a state-level voting-rights act, which bars municipalities from discriminating against minority groups in voting, requires them to provide language assistance to certain language minority groups and requires municipalities with a record of voter discrimination to get preclearance before changing their election laws. The Nutmeg State also approved 14 days of early voting and put a constitutional amendment on the 2024 ballot that would legalize no-excuse absentee voting.

No matter its specific provisions, each of these election-law changes could impact how voters cast their ballots in future elections, including next year’s closely watched presidential race. There’s a good chance your state amended its election laws in some way this year, so make sure you double-check the latest rules in your state before the next time you vote."

-via FiveThirtyEight (via FutureCrunch), July 24, 2023

#voting rights #voting matters #united states #us politics #new mexico #Minnesota #Michigan #Connecticut #voting rights act #ballot box #civil rights #elections #election 2024 #election law #constitutional amendments #felon voting #native american #first nations

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