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The new war between the states

It will be fought in the courts. For now.

Photo by Laurie Shaull via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Michelle Goldberg on the right’s war on women:

The right won’t be content to watch liberal states try to undermine abortion bans. As the draft of a forthcoming article in The Columbia Law Review puts it, “overturning Roe and Casey will create a novel world of complicated, interjurisdictional legal conflicts over abortion. Instead of creating stability and certainty, it will lead to profound confusion because advocates on all sides of the abortion controversy will not stop at state borders in their efforts to apply their policies as broadly as possible.”

Already, a Missouri lawmaker introduced a measure that would let private citizens sue anyone who helps a Missouri resident get an out-of-state abortion. More such proposals will probably follow. Under a Texas law passed last year, people in other states sending abortion pills through the mail to Texas residents could be extradited to face felony charges, though the authorities in liberal states are unlikely to cooperate.

If not a nationwide ban, Republicans are considering legislation harkening back to fugitive slave laws for women who seek legal abortion outside their home states. Lawsuits will fly in state after state. A new war between the states has begun.

“You think we hate each other now? Just wait until the new round of lawsuits start,” Goldberg concludes.

Louisiana has a bill in committee to classify abortion a homicide and to define human as beginning at fertilization:

“No compromises,” the Rev. Brian Gunter, pastor of First Baptist Church in Livingston and a leading supporter of the bill, told lawmakers before they voted on Wednesday. “No more waiting.”

[…]

The proposal is “a barbaric bill that would subject people to murder prosecutions, punishable by life without parole, for having abortions,” Chris Kaiser, the advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, said in a statement. The vote for the bill to advance out of committee, Mr. Kaiser added, “gives me grave concern for what’s to come.”

“Supporters of this legislation,” he continued, “expressed no reservations about imprisoning people for exercising control of their reproduction.”

Which Republican legislature will be first to make it a felony for any man to do evil in the sight of the LORD by “spilling his seed” … on the ground, as it were?

That was a rhetorical question.

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