The U.S. Supreme Court failed to meet the moment on reproductive rights in this month’s ruling on Texas’ new restrictive abortion law, which nullifies a person’s constitutional right to control their own body. This decision, along with the Court’s Dec. 1, 2021 oral arguments on Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, indicates that reproductive rights are in jeopardy nationally.
The Texas law is designed to evade constitutional protections by empowering private individuals to enforce the law. The law allows anyone to bring a civil suit and collect a $10,000 fee plus costs and attorney fees against those who help someone obtain an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy. Spouses, friends and health care providers must pay the fee to complete strangers who have no connection to the health care of the pregnant person. There are no exceptions for cases of rape, abuse or incest.
The Court’s majority let the case advance at the trial level, but allowed the law to be enforced during the appeal. Mississippi’s law, on the other hand, is on hold during the appeal process. Both laws violate a person’s constitutional rights and reproductive freedom, recognized in Roe v. Wade and repeatedly affirmed in the nearly 50 years since that ruling. By June, the Supreme Court will determine whether all pre-viability bans on elective abortions violate the Constitution, and could eliminate a person’s constitutional right to control their own body.
Texas and Mississippi are not the only states restricting access to abortion. This year state legislatures across the country considered over 500 bills to restrict abortion access. Last year I joined almost 900 state legislators on an amicus brief imploring the Supreme Court to uphold Roe v. Wade in its ruling on Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban.
Constitutional rights and reproductive freedom faced threats in Maine as well. Six bills to restrict abortion access were introduced to the Legislature. The bills included a repeal of insurance coverage for abortion services for a MaineCare member, medically unnecessary tests, and a requirement that doctors and nurses give patients false and harmful information about the so-called “abortion reversal” drug. These proposals would have forced health care providers to violate the standards of medical care. They would have endangered pregnant people and overburdened them with expenses.
The most extreme bill submitted last year would have eroded reproductive rights by intruding on the grief that is sometimes part of pregnancy. It proposed a state mandate that anyone who miscarries or has an abortion provide individual burial or cremation services for fetal remains. Failure to do so would have been a Class D crime. For example, a family dealing with the grief of pregnancy loss would have to collect blood and tissue during a miscarriage, arrange a burial or cremation, and pay for those expenses in addition to medical bills that have accumulated. No legitimate state policy justifies this mandate. Democratic legislators led the way in rejecting these attempts to restrict constitutional rights and reproductive freedom.
Abolishing constitutionally protected abortion rights will have emotional, physical and financial impacts on people across the country and our state.
As Justice Sonia Sotomayor stated: “(T)his law will acutely harm vulnerable populations. Texas’ judicial bypass process for minors seeking abortion care and services cannot realistically happen before six weeks into a pregnancy. Consequently, pregnant minors who cannot confide in their own families or guardians, as well as unaccompanied migrant teenagers who cannot contact their families, will be forced to choose between a full pregnancy and taking matters into their own hands.”
Even if Roe v. Wade is overruled, the right to abortion, privacy and reproductive freedom in Maine will continue so long as our existing state statutes remain in place. But as we saw last year, Maine is not immune from legislation that seeks to violate people’s bodies and rights to privacy and reproductive freedom. There’s only one way to get through these unconstitutional attacks: together. From the State House to the voting booth, we must stand firm in our commitment to protecting reproductive freedom in Maine.
— Special to the Press Herald
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