As Senate Schedule Raises Alarm, Sessions Announces Proposal Requiring Sufficient Time To Review Any Debt Limit Bill

by Jeff Sessions on Friday, July 1, 2011 at 11:57am

As Senate Schedule Raises Alarm, Sessions Announces Proposal Requiring Sufficient Time To Review Any Debt Limit Bill

“For weeks, Republicans have insisted that the Senate should not recess without working to control our enormous surging debt and unsustainable spending… But now it looks like we may be in session only for show—it seems no work is slated on cutting spending, developing a budget, or addressing the debt ceiling… Given where we are headed, I will introduce legislation next week that establishes a new rule requiring that a debt limit increase be made public 7 days before a vote occurs.”

            WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued the following statement today in response to reports that, after keeping the Senate in session next week “because we have work to do,” Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Senate Democrat leadership have not scheduled any budget markup or any action on the debt ceiling or related matters:

“President Obama and Senate Democrat leaders continue to maneuver to avoid putting a credible budget plan on paper. They know that they cannot produce a plan that will both prevent the most predictable economic crisis in American history and sustain their big-government vision. This latest announcement that they will have ‘meetings’ and produce only a budget ‘vision’ is nothing more than an attempt to lull the growing concerns, and continues the fiscal rope-a-dope. It has been almost 800 days since this chamber has passed a budget under Democrats’ leadership. It appears no resolution will be brought forward next week, only more closed-door meetings and selectively disseminated information. There is no mark-up scheduled—the Committee still remains barred from meeting, in public, to craft and amend a budget for this nation. This is a continued breach of both our legal and moral obligations.

For weeks, Republicans have insisted that the Senate should not recess without working to control our enormous surging debt and unsustainable spending. The president and Senate Democrat leaders realized the public would not tolerate a vacation under these circumstances, so the Senate will be in session next week. But now it look like we may be in session only for show—it seems no work is slated on cutting spending, developing a budget, or addressing the debt ceiling. Instead, as our economy suffers, the only major item that has been scheduled is a Libya resolution.

Meanwhile, the debt limit deadline is only weeks away—and the president continues his refusal to set forth a coherent plan that he stands behind. He continues to rely on secret meetings, and it’s clear that the White House expects to thrust a last-minute deal on Congress under the threat of panic. They assume lawmakers will support such a deal with no time to review it, no time to amend or revise it, no time for the public to weigh in, and no time for national opinion to form as meaningful discussion and analysis unfold. Given where we are headed, I plan to offer legislation next week that establishes a new rule requiring that a debt limit increase be made public 7 days before a vote occurs. This is the minimum time needed to address such an important matter. We shouldn’t ‘have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.’

Now is the time to get busy. I hope President Obama and Democrat leaders will reconsider their approach and allow us to work next week in a meaningful, open way on the defining issues of our time.”

Greece, And Us

 Posted 06/30/2011 07:00 PM ET

Politics: While Washington haggles away over the debt ceiling, Greece has just passed a huge austerity package that will make Greeks pay and pay for years. As much for us as for them, that's the price of ignoring runaway spending.

Greece, which has turned government into a vehicle for special interests seeking their own slices of the pie, where voters are unable to quit electing socialists, is a textbook example of a nation that ignored its debt, let it snowball and now is paying a price.

The reckoning came Wednesday, with Greece's parliament passing a $40 billion austerity package to qualify for the last tranche of an International Monetary Fund bailout.The act went against every political instinct any of these free-spending politicians had, but they had no choice. "What stops socialism? Only bankruptcy, I fear," Victor Davis Hanson has observed.

That force — bankruptcy — was strong enough to collapse the Soviet empire in 1991, the Spanish empire in 1652, China's Manchu Dynasty in 1839, Chile in 1973, Argentina in 2001, Greece now and, the hard fact is, America, if its politicians remain in denial about spending.

In the U.S., congressional Republicans are trying to force their Democratic counterparts to agree to spending cuts in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling to avoid a default on Aug. 2 — and the Democrats remain in denial, with President Obama refusing to meet with Senate Republicans, such as Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who has sought to consult the president.

The sorry situation appears even worse when one looks at the Democratic smear against the one man who's trying to avoid a Greek repeat here: Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who has been humiliated and lied about as someone intent on stealing grandma's check, when the reality is, he's trying to defeat the same bankruptcy monster that took down Greece.

Greeks have nothing to look forward to in the new austerity regime intended to keep their government afloat.

For starters, they face massive tax hikes in the next two years — whatever it takes to raise 2.32 billion euros this year, 3.38 billion in 2012 — and three smaller hikes in the next three years. The self-employed will be taxed with a flat rate, paying whether they earn anything or not, based on the fact they're expected to try to evade taxes.

Social security gets slashed by 1.09 billion euros this year, with more cutbacks over the next four. Means testing will be employed, and the retirement age goes up from 61 to 65. Health spending will be cut by more than 2 billion euros through 2014. Education gets a cut, too.

Public employee union members, the big champions of government spending, will see their salaries cut 15%.

There's far more, and it's a bitter pill. The one thing it shows is that as a situation is allowed to deteriorate, the options diminish for any meaningful reform. Not one Greek change is likely to create economic growth. Instead, austerity is the bill coming due, the piper getting paid, and our fate too if Congress doesn't heed the lesson.

John Lennon A Reagan Republican

06/30/2011 03:02:48 PM EST

posted by bmiranda58

I hope Cenk or Ana read this story on air cause it's really crazy.

 Here's the Article

June 30, 2011 | 8:28 AM ET

John Lennon a Reagan Republican?

 

He loved Ron, yeah yeah yeah…

That’s right – peace and love uber hippie John Lennon was a closeted Reagan Republican at the time of his death, according to the Beatle’s last personal assistant.

Fred Seaman, who worked for Lennon from 1979 until he was gunned down in the street outside his apartment in 1980, said the singer admired Reagan, who was running for president against Jimmy Carter at the time.

“John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on Jimmy Carter,” Seaman says in a new Beatles documentary. “He’d met Reagan back, I think, in the 70s at some sporting event.”

“I also saw John embark in some really brutal arguments with my uncle, who’s an old-time communist,” Seaman said. “It was pretty obvious to me he had moved away from his earlier radicalism.”

“He was a very different person back in 1979 and 80 than he’d been when he wrote ‘Imagine,’ Seaman said. “By 1979 he looked back on that guy and was embarrassed by that guy’s naivete.”

According to Fox News Online, John Lennon was a Republican right before he got shot in 1980 the very year that Reagan was elected President (It was the death of two eras really). Now there is a man named Fred Seaman who was the last assistant John Lennon ever had and he is quoted as saying,

“He was a very different person back in 1979 and 80 than he’d been when he wrote ‘Imagine,’ Seaman said. “By 1979 he looked back on that guy and was embarrassed by that guy’s naivete.”

Pretty damning evidence wouldn't you say I mean that was his last assistant and he would be privy to knowledge about John that the rest of us wouldn't. I mean it's not like he would be making things up in order to make money and capitalize on the memory of a world famous artist would he?

Here is the Headline from the Guardian in 2002

Lennon PA asks forgiveness for theft

A former personal assistant to John Lennon who was accused of stealing hundreds of the late Beatle's personal photographs and letters, issued an apology to his widow, Yoko Ono, in a Manhattan courtroom yesterday.

"I offer no excuses for my conduct, and ask only that you can find it in your heart to forgive me," Frederick Seaman, 49, said in a statement issued as part of a settlement in a case which offered an unprecedented glimpse into Lennon's domestic habits, his falling-out with Paul McCartney, and the insomnia and fear of stalkers which dominated the last months of his life.

Here's something else from the lawsuit of Yoko vs. Seaman

Within two weeks of John Lennon's Murder this man had organized a scheme called, "Project Walrus" which had two objectives

1) To steal John's most personal possessions in order to establish himself as member of John's Inner Circle

2) To destroy the reputation of Yoko Ono through lies

He then had a contract drawn up and notarized with Bob Rosen in which they would split the profits of the Lennon book that they were going to write.

Now this is nothing new to you all that Fox would quote a man who had plead guilty to something like that and not even reference it in the article. The real problem I have (Not just that I am a massive Beatles fan) is that is this revisionist history at it's worst. They took a man who was against war and a big part of the hippie culture and said yeah he knew later that his ideas were stupid so there clearly Reagan was awesome.

They are trying to take one of the Left's biggest Superstars and say oh no secretly he was a Republican, when he was older and wiser obviously. They do it with everybody and and it's so stupid when it's clearly obvious that Fred Seaman is a liar and would do anything for money. I say we should start spreading lies about their historical figures who can't defend themselves because they are dead.

Ronald Reagan secret Muslim?

I can't wait to see that article

Can a Female Governor Hold Back an Anti-Choice Tide in North Carolina?

by Cynthia Greenlee-Donnell

June 29, 2011 - 8:00am (Print 

Just hours before a looming midnight deadline on Monday, North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue vetoed a state bill mandating an abortion waiting period and pre-abortion counseling. But the fight is not over yet.

In vetoing House Bill 854 (given the Orwellian name of the “Women’s Right to Know” bill), Governor Perdue squashed a piece of legislation that would have required a 24-hour waiting period before a woman could obtain an abortion.

While waiting periods have become increasingly commonplace throughout the nation, HB 854 would also make patients undergo counseling by a health-care provider via phone or in person, see an ultrasound before the procedure (though the bill provided that patients could avert their eyes), and listen to a narrative account of the ultrasound image.

The counseling would also include information about adoption; the financial responsibilities of fathers to support their children; and health care or social services benefits that might be available to cover pregnancy or parenting assistance. It also would share unspecified information about the medical risks of abortion — another condition that raised the hackles of reproductive health advocates because abortion is widely considered by the World Health Organization and medical associations  a safe and simple medical procedure when performed by a trained clinician.

The veto is a skin-of-the-teeth and, perhaps, temporary victory for those advocates, who have been battling an onslaught of state bills designed to chip away at funding for reproductive health care, including but not limited to abortion care.

Buoyed by a new Tea Party-invigorated Republican majority in the state General Assembly, this year North Carolina lawmakers introduced a bevy of bills to limit access to abortion and, ultimately, redefine definitions of life.

Other proposed but unsuccessful laws would have limited abortion coverage in government insurance plans for teachers  and other state or local employees ; used fees generated from “Choose Life” license plates to fund crisis pregnancy centers, which avoid discussion of abortion as a viable option to deal with an unwanted pregnancy; and subjected abortion-providing facilities to multiple visits from regulators.

In addition, a successful budget provision stripped Planned Parenthood of state funding. That budget provision was also vetoed by Perdue, but it was overridden and will stand, unless it is struck down in a legal challenge. In North Carolina, state representatives and senators can override a governor’s veto if they marshal a three-fifths majority in support of the bill.  

Dr. Takey Crist, who owns the obstetrics-gynecology Crist Center for Women in Jacksonville, N.C., said that he “didn’t have any doubt that Perdue would veto [HB 854], but now we’ve just got to see if they will override this one, too.

“This is about men trying to control women's lives. What would happen if a man wanted Viagra or Cialis and we tried to make them wait for it? You can write these restrictions, you can make them law. But I'm telling you after 40 years of doing this, if a woman wants an abortion, she will find a way to get one.”

Crist is a longtime physician whose clinic opened in 1973, immediately after the legalization of abortion, and says that the political climate regarding abortion is worse now than it was after Roe v. Wade. He does not think it’s an exaggeration to say that, with the spate of anti-abortion bills in a more conservative state General Assembly, North Carolina is backsliding to the 1960s, when he regularly saw four to five women with complications from unsafe abortions every weekend in the Charleston, S.C., hospital where he was a resident.

“Then, we had the clinic demonstrations, and that stopped because of the rule that protesters can’t be on the property. I would tell the staff that protesters wouldn’t be here long. Then, it got worse with the deaths of [physicians] Barnett Slepian and George Tiller,” both murdered by anti-abortion individuals. “And now what I’ve seen in the last several years is the fanaticism of the Tea Party,” he said. “What they don’t understand is that when you kill funding for Planned Parenthood, what you’re killing is the ability to save women’s lives, women who can’t get a Pap smear that might detect cancer, and you’re killing the ability to stop sexually-transmitted diseases. You’re using more taxpayer money for unwanted pregnancies and Medicaid.”

Paige Johnson, vice president of policy for Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina (which, along with Planned Parenthood Health Systems, operates a total of nine clinics statewide), agreed. She said that lawmakers’ strange tunnel vision — where abortion is the only thing they see and Planned Parenthood is among the right’s favorite punching bags — is a blow to women’s health and wellbeing. Six out of 10 women who visit Planned Parenthood's North Carolina facilities will not see another health-care provider, which means that those Planned Parenthoods are providing primary care for many women, in the form of low-cost physicals and affordable birth control. Not all of the Planned Parenthood clinics offer abortion services, either.

She also emphasized that HB 854 could put abortion providers in danger. 

She said HB “is not just about women. You’ve got women calling to get counseling on the phone, there’s no confirmed pregnancy. Any woman who calls and says she’s pregnant, she gets the doctor’s name,” a requirement that could expose abortion providers to more targeted harassment.

HB 854 bill was co-sponsored by Rep. Patricia McElraft, a three-term Republican representing Jones and Carteret counties in North Carolina’s more rural east. Notably, in this legislative session, she was also the primary sponsor of a bill to create a board to provide low-income people spay and neutering services for their pets.

But she recently made headlines when she claimed that her niece went to a Planned Parenthood that was a dark house where staff refused to let the woman see the pre-abortion ultrasound and encouraged to her have an abortion due to her drug use.  After being confronted by Planned Parenthood’s Johnson, who approached McElraft immediately after the comments and asked where the alleged encounter took place, and her House colleague, Democratic Rep. Alma Adams, McElraft later clarified that the clinic was not in North Carolina.      

Anne Fischer of Morganton, N.C., said that HB 854 is another obstacle to poor women accessing reproductive health care. She is the founding director of the Southern Mountain Women's Health Alliance, the only abortion fund in the state according to the National Association of Abortion Funds (NNAF). Created in 1987 as an outgrowth of Fischer’s advocacy for battered women, the fund has assisted hundreds of low-income women by contributing an average grant of $100 toward the procedure. 

“Don’t they know that women have been waiting and waiting by the time they come to a clinic? It’s not only about money. They don’t have support, they don’t know what to do, or they're in denial. And we do such a bad job [at preventing pregnancy and publicizing free or subsidized contraception at places such county health departments]. The bad thing is that it will force women to make two trips, and some women are on the edge between first and second trimester.”

North Carolina allows abortions to 20 weeks but once women  pass that mark and there’s no medical reason for the abortion, they’ve got to travel to other states like Georgia, where the upper limit for elective abortions is higher at 26 weeks. Assuming that they have transportation, free time, and money for gas or hotels to cross state lines, they are likely to find that second-trimester abortions cost more far than the about $450 dollars average fee for a first-trimester termination in most clinics.

At Fischer’s fund’s peak, it subsidized about 140 abortions per year. Now, however, it’s out of money, which means that women in North Carolina and surrounding states — the fund has assisted women to get abortions in Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia — have even less access to abortions than in previous years. 

It’s a grim overall picture: a policy environment that is hostile to women's reproductive choices, the sole abortion fund drying up, the state government abortion fund for indigent women rendered inaccessible through a legislative sleight of hand since the mid-1990s, and dwindling numbers of abortion providers. A March 2011 report by researchers affiliated with the Guttmacher Institute reported a 16 percent decline in the number of abortion providers in North Carolina, down from 55 in 2000 to 31 in 2008.

Melissa Reed, Johnson’s counterpart with Planned Parenthood Health Systems, said that both Planned Parenthood organizations are organizing a phone bank targeting moderate Republican and conservative Democrats whose votes could determine whether an override of HB 854 passes; that all-important final vote could happen next month.

But in the meantime, Reed and her colleagues will be coping with a reduced budget.

“We will continue to offer services, “she said.  “But we may not be able to continue our adolescent parenting program in Wilmington, which has been operating for 15 years with state funding. We’ll still offer the full range of reproductive health services, but now women will have to pay out of pocket."

Clearly, the lives of the women, men, and adolescents in need of health care don't matter to the so-called pro-life contingent in North Carolina.

)

Legal in Name Only: How State Restrictions Deny Women Their Right to Abortion Care

by Sally Steenland, Center for American Progress

July 1, 2011 - 1:46pm (Print)

SOURCE: AP/John Hanna.

This article is cross-posted with permission from the Center for American Progress.

When does a legal right become theoretical instead of real? If you want to know the answer, take a look at what’s happening to reproductive rights. States across the country are denying women what they need to protect their health and plan their families. And they’re often doing so in the name of religion and God. The laws, which we review below, should concern any American who cares about women’s reproductive health.

Antichoice laws on the rise

More than 900 antiabortion laws have been introduced since the midterm elections last November, and more than 60 have been passed. For instance, in Kansas a new licensing law for abortion clinics mandates what size and temperature clinic rooms must be, requires that staff dressing rooms have toilets, that clinics stock particular medical equipment and supplies, and that they be connected to nearby hospitals. Antichoice legislators came up with 36 pages of regulations, which one doctor called “bizarre” and “out of date with modern medicine.”

Right now there are only three abortion clinics in the state of Kansas. Soon there may be none.

South Dakota enacted an antiabortion law with requirements so onerous they essentially deny a woman her legal right to an abortion. The bill mandates a waiting period of 72 hours before a woman can have an abortion and requires two separate visits to a doctor. It also requires that a woman get counseling at a “crisis pregnancy center,” a place explicitly created to oppose abortion. On top of these obstacles, South Dakota spreads across nearly 755,000 square miles and has only one abortion clinic. A doctor is flown in from out of state once a week to see patients.

Indiana recently defunded Planned Parenthood clinics throughout the state. The new law makes any organization that performs abortion ineligible for state funds. Lack of clarity in the state’s antiabortion law is affecting hospitals, too. Since its enactment, doctors in hospitals have stopped terminating pregnancies that pose a high risk to the health and life of a woman for fear of losing Medicaid patients.

According to Elizabeth Ferries-Rowe, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Wishard Memorial hospitals, the law has “tied the hands of physicians attempting to provide medically appropriate, evidence-based care.”

Dr. Ferries-Rowe gives this example: A woman loses her amniotic fluid at 16 weeks of pregnancy. If her pregnancy isn’t quickly terminated, she risks serious infection that can damage her organs and cause brain damage or death. Given Indiana’s law, however, doctors would not be able to terminate her pregnancy.

Twenty-week bans: An extremist trend

Among the most dangerous laws are those that restrict or ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. So far, six states—Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma—have passed 20-week laws, and more are likely to follow. Only about 1.5 percent of all abortions occur after 20 weeks of pregnancy, but those that do are often medically necessary.

Danielle and Robb Deaver felt the consequences of Nebraska’s law last fall. As reported by The New York Times, Danielle was 22 weeks pregnant when her water prematurely broke. Before passage of the law, it would’ve been routine for a doctor to induce labor to prevent serious infection. At 22 weeks the fetus is not viable outside the womb.

But the Nebraska law defines “inducing labor” as “abortion” if the goal is not to save the fetus. Danielle’s doctor and hospital lawyers determined that the procedure she needed would be illegal under the new law, so nothing was done. Danielle eventually did go into labor. The baby died within 15 minutes, and she developed an infection that required antibiotics.

What happened to Danielle Deaver could happen to women in other states that passed bills restricting abortion after 20 weeks.

Antichoice activists promoting the 20-week ban have a clear, determined strategy. Their alleged reason for the law is that a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks, though doctors strongly dispute such a notion. Their real strategy is to invalidate Roe v. Wade without actually having to overrule it. They hope that one of the state laws will be challenged, make its way to the Supreme Court, and be upheld. Linda Theis, a former president of Ohio Right to Life, believes her state’s so-called “heartbeat bill” offers the Supreme Court “an engraved invitation to overturn Roe.”

Once a threshold of fetal pain at 20 weeks is established, they believe it is only a matter of time before they can “prove” that fetuses can feel pain at 12 weeks, or four weeks, or three days. Indeed, the Ohio Assembly just passed legislation that would prohibit abortion after a doctor can detect a fetal heartbeat, which happens at six to seven weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant.

After the bill was passed, Janet Folger Porter, former legislative director of Ohio Right to Life, said, “For every battle-weary pro-lifer who didn’t see how children were going to be protected in our lifetime, come see what God is doing in Ohio.”

Attacking access to contraception

But it’s not just abortion that the radical right is attacking. Family planning is also under the gun.

Arguments that we need to cut the budget and prevent pregnancies by defunding programs like Planned Parenthood are wrong on both counts. Only a small percentage of Planned Parenthood’s work is abortion services. Most of it involves prenatal care, family planning, PAP smears, testing for sexually transmitted diseases, and more. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive health research and policy group, every dollar spent on family planning saves the government $4 in childbearing and child care costs for low-income women. What’s more, a bill in Louisiana to defund Planned Parenthood is clearly part of a larger campaign against women, since Planned Parenthood clinics in Louisiana don’t provide abortions at all. And common sense tells us that cutting funding for family planning increases unwanted pregnancies—and abortion.

Fighting back against extremism

It’s important to take a reality check amid such extreme attacks. Abortion is a common medical procedure. Nearly one in three women will have had an abortion by age 45. And virtually all (99 percent) sexually active women have used contraception at some point in their lives, including Catholic women (98 percent).

Unfortunately, such realities don’t fit right-wing rhetoric that equates moral complexity with sin, demonizes abortion and the women who have them, and claims a monopoly on conscience, family, and God.

But it may be that reality is catching up with the zealots endangering women’s health and lives. When conservatives in Congress threatened to defund all Planned Parenthood clinics as part of a budget-cutting deal, the public rose up, President Barack Obama stood his ground, and the provision was dropped.

The types of reproductive health services Planned Parenthood provides enjoy strong public support. A recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute shows that a solid majority of Americans support access to contraception, and 6 in 10 believe abortion should be both legal and available.

People of faith are among these majorities. That’s because they understand what it means to wrestle with moral issues and to rely on prayer and conscience for guidance in matters of deep importance. Many mainline Protestant churches and Jewish faith traditions formally support women’s moral decision making when it comes to abortion. But even women from faith traditions that oppose abortion have unwanted pregnancies that they prayerfully decide to end. In fact, the Guttmacher Institute recently reported that the majority of women who have abortions are religious.

That’s why it should be no surprise that reproductive rights and justice groups are working with faith communities to reclaim moral language on sexual and reproductive health and be vocal advocates on behalf of women.

We must also call out extremists who are using religion for their own narrow ideological ends. Until now they have been counting on the fact that they are more fervent in their cause even though their numbers are smaller. But their junk science and extremist agenda have triggered fervor in the rest of us to stand up for women’s health and moral decision making. The truth is that most Americans do not live on the extremes of the abortion debate but in the complicated middle, where abortion is more than a slogan or bumper sticker.

It is neither compassionate nor morally justified for politicians to intrude into the most intimate matters of conscience and the heart. And it is deeply wrong to do so in the name of religion. There is a better way.

Rabbi Dennis Ross has a suggestion that is compassionate and morally sound. “Once a woman weighs all her options, (adoption, carrying to term, abortion) and comes to her conclusion,” he says, “we should make sure she has the best medical care and the support that she deems right for her.”

Federal Judge Blocks Enforcement of Kansas TRAP Law

by Jodi Jacobson, Editor-in-Chief, RH Reality Check

July 2, 2011 - 7:58am (Print)

Late yesterday, U.S. District Judge Carlos Murguia temporarily blocked the state of Kansas from enforcing new regulations created under the guise of "protecting women," but in fact aimed at shutting clinics and medical offices providing abortion care.

The regulations, an example of what are known as Targeted Regulations for Abortion Providers or TRAP laws, would require clinics to meet medically unnecessary conditions to maintain their operating licences, by for example mandating specific sizes for a janitorial closet.

The new law would require hospitals, clinics and doctor's offices to obtain an annual license from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to perform more than five non-emergency abortions in a month. The regulations tell abortion providers what drugs and equipment they must stock and, among other things, establish minimum sizes and acceptable temperatures for procedure and recovery rooms. 

The injunction will remain in effect until a trial is held in a lawsuit challenging the Kansas rules. The new law and regulations would otherwise have taken effect on Friday and would have resulted in closure of two out of three clinics offering abortion in Kansas for failure to meet what were hastily crafted and changing regulations. The lawsuit was filed was filed earlier this week by Drs. Hodes and Nauser of the Center for Women's Health, Aid for Women in Kansas City, and Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri. PPKM withdrew from the suit yesterday when it was able to prove it met even the most unreasonable criteria and received a license from the state board.

In blocking the law, according to NPR, Murguia said evidence presented in court documents showed the providers would "suffer irreparable harm" through the loss of business and patients, and that at least two women currently seeking abortions would be harmed by not being able to go to the provider of their choice.

In response to the injunction, Julie Burkhart, founder and executive director of Trust Women PAC, and a former colleague of murdered Kansas doctor, George Tiller, said:

We are pleased that U.S. District Judge Carlos Murguia has put an injunction on the onerous rules and regulations put in place by the Kansas Legislature and Governor Brownback. This will enable the court system to adequately assess the true intent of this law. Currently, as the rules and regulations are written, they do very little to ensure equitable health care for Kansas women; but rather, these regulations prevent pregnant women from receiving quality health care.

Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, the organization which brought the lawsuit on behalf of Drs. Hodes and Nauser, said:

This is a tremendous victory for women in Kansas and against the underhanded efforts of anti-choice politicians to shut down abortion providers in the state. The facts were clear—this licensing process had absolutely nothing to do with patient health or safety and everything to do with political ideology.

Still, as Northup noted, the case isn’t over yet, and neither is the assault on women's most fundamental rights.

Court Blocks Anti-Choice Legislation in South Dakota

by Jodi Jacobson, Editor-in-Chief, RH Reality Check

June 30, 2011 - 9:00pm (Print)

A federal court this evening blocked implementation of South Dakota H.B. 1217, the law passed earlier this year that would require a woman seeking an abortion to wait at least 72 hours after first meeting her doctor before having the procedure, the longest and most extreme mandatory delay in the country.  During this "waiting period," women would be required to visit a so-called crisis pregnancy center.  These centers, which are by definition anti-choice, are not only opposed to women making the decision to terminate a pregnancy, they also oppose contraception and provide medically inaccurate information based on religious ideology, not science. 

The law was to have taken effect July 1.

South Dakota residents rejected an abortion ban in by referendum in 2008. Since that time, zealots in the South Dakota legislature have been engaged in trying to do what the voters overwhelmingly rejected.

Planned Parenthood called the court decision "a decisive victory for Planned Parenthood and the women and families of South Dakota."

“This law represents a blatant intrusion by politicians into difficult decisions women and families sometimes need to make,” said Sarah Stoesz, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota.

“We trust women and families in South Dakota to know and do what is best for them, without being coerced by the government. And we stand with them in our efforts to overturn this outrageous law.”

In granting temporary relief from the law, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Karen Schreier found that Planned Parenthood is likely to prevail on its challenge to each of the requirements of the law, including the 72-hour mandatory delay and the “pregnancy help center” requirement.

Judge Schreier cut right to the chase in underscoring the real intentions of this law.

In finding that the “pregnancy help center” requirement is likely unconstitutional, the Court said:  “Forcing a woman to divulge to a stranger at a pregnancy help center the fact that she has chosen to undergo an abortion humiliates and degrades her as a human being. The woman will feel degraded by the compulsive nature of the Pregnancy Help Center requirements, which suggest that she has made the ‘wrong’ decision, has not really ‘thought’ about her decision to undergo an abortion, or is ‘not intelligent enough’ to make the decision with the advice of a physician.  Furthermore, these women are forced into a hostile environment.”

In addition to humiliation, this law would have had the intended effect of making even early abortion much more expensive, especially since South Dakota has few abortion providers and many women in need of abortion must already take time off work, arrange for child care, drive long distances and make other economic sacrifices to obtain abortion care. 

Mimi Liu, an attorney with Planned Parenthood Federation of America who argued the case in court, said:

“This law takes restricting access to abortion to a whole new level. If implemented, it would have the practical effect of requiring many of our patients to drive the equivalent of halfway across the country to access an abortion. On top of that, it would force our patients to discuss their most private medical information with an unlicensed, non-medical group that is opposed to abortion.  We are happy and relieved for our patients that the court’s decision today means they will not have to suffer through these outrageous and demeaning requirements.”

Liu was joined in court by attorneys from the law firm Dorsey & Whitney and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“The law is an insult to the women of South Dakota,” said Brigitte Amiri, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, “and the court has rightly found that the government has no business egregiously inserting itself into what should be a personal matter between a woman and her doctor.”

Referring to referenda and other efforts to restrict the ability of individual women to make their own choices, Stoesz said: “Time after time, South Dakota voters have sent the clear message to their lawmakers that politicians should not interfere with personal medical decisions. And time after time, politicians have ignored the voters. It’s time that someone brought a stop to these costly, intrusive, burdensome and divisive measures. Women and families know their circumstances best, and they need to be able to make personal medical decisions, often very difficult ones, without the government intruding.”

Other women's rights organizations, such as NARAL Pro-Choice America and NARAL Pro-Choice South Dakota also applauded the decision.