Ben Carson Calls For Abortion Ban — No Matter What

I heard about it on TV, one of the broadcast national news, but you can read about it on another NYT blog stealing another noncommercial blog's name:

Ben Carson Calls for Ban on Abortion in All Circumstances

The Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said Sunday that he believed that abortion should be outlawed even in cases of rape and incest, comparing the procedure with slavery.

“I would not be in favor of killing a baby because the baby came about in that way,” Mr. Carson said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” citing “the many stories of people who have led very useful lives who were the result of rape or incest.”

Mr. Carson, who has not been shy about using slavery and Nazi metaphors, held up what he said was a historic parallel with abortion.

“During slavery, a lot of the slave owners thought that they had the right to do whatever they wanted to that slave,” said Mr. Carson, a former brain surgeon. “Anything that they chose to do. And, you know, what if the abolitionist had said, you know, ‘I don’t believe in slavery. I think it’s wrong. But you guys do whatever you want to do.’ Where would we be?”

...

This statement proves just one thing... no matter how quiet-spoken he is,

Ben Carson is a RAVING, FULL-BLOWN BATSHIT CRAZY, WOMEN-HATING RIGHT-WING NUT CASE.

That is all. Actually, that is almost all...

'Oh, wait, abortion is the worst thing...'

The current second-ranking GOP candidate for president, himself a physician, advocates a policy that will KILL MILLIONS OF WOMEN. While the fetuses those women are carrying... in many cases, given how early most abortions are performed, fetuses at most a few cells in size... are in no meaningful sense human, THE WOMEN CARRYING THEM ARE INDISPUTABLY HUMAN BEINGS.

"It's a moral issue," a Catholic coworker once sententiously told me. "Yes, it is," I replied to her, "and I have contemplated the issue every bit as much as you have, and have concluded that IT IS IMMORAL TO KILL PREGNANT WOMEN WHEN THEIR LIVES CAN BE SAVED SO STRAIGHTFORWARDLY."

If you are female, you must have a deep-seated self-hatred if you vote for Ben Carson.

Now... that is all.

The GOP's [Not So] Great War On Women: The Party's Ongoing Attempt To Kill Planned Parenthood

There's no doubt about it: if you're an American citizen of the female persuasion, you do not want to live your life in the dystopian version of American society the Republicans are building.

And Republicans themselves, especially the ones who wrongly self-classify as "conservative" (they're actually radical as hell), feel freer every day to speak their misogyny right out in public. Any lie about women that serves their petty political purposes, they say it, often in front of a session of Congress. Any "document" that reflects their partisan position on a women's issue, however antiscientific that doc's content, they dredge it up in front of a House committee, post it all over the Web and talk endlessly about it on Fox, ABC, CNN, etc., who sometimes seem almost to be unofficial branch offices of the GOP.

It's really ugly out there these days, and I don't see Republican behavior improving until after the GOPers succeed in stealing the 2016 presidential election. If they don't succeed in stealing the White House, count on the anti-women rhetoric continuing until they steal an election, or go to ground trying (yeah, I know; wishful thinking on my part).

Planned Parenthood, as you know if you're reading this blog, is American women's essential health care resource: without its existence, its funding, its efforts, many American poor women, or even women of ordinary means, or adolescent or senescent women, or women deep in underserved rural areas, or college students, would never receive even the most basic of reproductive health care, and could and do die of the lack.

GOP leadership (what's left of it) is laying about itself with a broadsword, and it is women who get the worst of it. At its most malevolent, the GOP aims the blade at Planned Parenthood. For the record, and contrary to what you may have heard from Repub's like that chronic liar Carly Fiorina, about 1½ to 2 percent of Planned Parenthood's services are abortion-related. (UPDATE: NPR, which I've heard stands for "Nice Polite Republicans," uses the figure 3 percent. I'm not going to dispute over a 1 percent difference: by law, none of it is federal tax money anyway. But don't believe for one nanosecond those hostile women-hating antiabortion fanatics who would tell you it's 15 percent; that's a figure they made up out of thin air.)

---

Four women reporters at TPM... TPM regulars Sara Jerde, Caitlin Cruz and Caitlin MacNeal, along with the brilliant and seemingly omnipresent Amanda Marcotte... sample recent GOP output from what many of us appropriately label the GOP War on Women. You may want to read their articles listed below, some of which include videos... I thought I understood how bad GOP hatred of women is, how withering is the blatant public Republican assault pointed at American women, but these reporters' research has convinced me: whatever I imagined, the reality is even worse:

• Sara Jerde: GOP Chair Repeatedly Interrupts Planned Parenthood Head At Hearing
• Sara Jerde: WATCH: Did A GOP Rep Just Wink At Planned Parenthood's President?
• Sara Jerde: Planned Parenthood Head Shuts Down GOP Chair Over Abortion Chart
• Amanda Marcotte: The GOP's Great Mammogram Farce Of 2015
• Caitlin Cruz: Wilmore Debunks Bogus Chart At Planned Parenthood Hearings
• Caitlin MacNeal: GOP Chair Defends Using Chart From Anti-Abortion Group At Hearing

The "GOP chair" referred to is Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) (rut?), and I've often wanted to ask him: "Chaffetz, does your mother know what you do to women, not at night, but right out in broad... television lighting?" Then again, I'm sure I'd be a happier person if I never met that asshole...

Fiorina Lies, Or At Best, Is Grievously Mistaken About Planned Parenthood Videos... Nah. ‘Lies’

Via Sara Jerde at TPM yesterday, we have this:

Fiorina Defends Planned Parenthood Comment: I've Seen The Footage!

... which is damned peculiar, since...

Her campaign and the organization that released the "sting" videos can't point to the video that shows what Fiorina described.

What's ugly? It's not her face...
It's her baldfaced lies

Ah, well; all's fair in love, war, and kicking Planned Parenthood every time it offers necessary health care services to poor women. And lying certainly counts as part of that "all," not just for Fiorina but for all the GOPer presidential candidates.

TPM reader The_Mask points us in comments to a NYT article,

Planned Parenthood Videos Were Altered, Analysis Finds,

and a FactCheck.org article,

Unspinning the Planned Parenthood Video,

both of which do a lot to put the lie to what Fiorina and other Republicans are claiming.

It is a testament to the political extremism of the GOP: the actions of congressional Repubs (especially John Boehner and his uncontrollable tea-bagging crew) in reinforcing this blatant hit piece are yet more evidence that Planned Parenthood continues to exist because it provides basic health care services to women whom the government underserves or, more often, does not serve at all. And no, I'm not talking about abortion: the GOP clearly wants to prevent these women, mostly indigent women or women of color, from receiving basic exams for cancer and other diseases potentially fatal to them, and that same GOP is willing, nay, eager to destroy the organization that makes those services available. Write it large in your personal notepad:

The GOP kills poor women.

If accomplished by other means, these heinous acts would be called murder, or even gendercide. Does America want to be listed among the countries where that unconscionable crime is committed? The GOP is taking us there in a hurry!

Monday Miscellany On (Oops! Sorry!) Wednesday

• Kidnapped Abroad And Solitary Confinement: This Is What Due Process Looks Like For A Palestinian In Israel
  

  (Richard Silverstein at Shadowproof)

• Workers To Face Biosurveillance From Employers
  

  (Dan Wright at Shadowproof)

• A Texas Conservative Openly Calls For Violence Against LGBT People
  

  (Kossacks for Marriage Equality)

• The GOP’s deeply flawed field
  

  (Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation at WaPo)

• There was that time JEB! forced single mothers to post their sexual history in the newspaper...
  

  (SemDem at Kos)

• Krugman: Why All The Republican Candidates Are Attacking Social Security
  

  (Dartagnan at Kos refers to...)

• Republicans Against Retirement
  

  (Krugman at NYT)

TX DPS Agents Guarding State Senate Chamber Must All Be Suffering ‘Time-Of-Month’...

... What else could explain their confiscation of tampons from women entering the state Senate gallery? I mean, it's not as if they're protecting public safety; if they were, they'd be confiscating guns instead... oh, wait, if you have a CHP you can carry your piece right into the gallery. For a moment I mistakenly thought we were in the State of Sanity...

Bribe for
TX Senator?

If all those agents are in such desperate need of tampons, surely it would be a kindness on our part to send them a few, preferably for free (though I'll leave that up to you), preferably unused (though that, too, is optional).

Gift-wrapping is unnecessary. Indeed, the male senators would probably prefer your donation not be made in public (which may be a good reason for you to do exactly that...)

Friday Catch-Up

Too much celebration of Stella's 64^th left me in no condition to blog for a couple of days. Here's a list of... uh... stuff... to clear the desktop of things that accumulated:

• Appeals Court OKs Throwing Out Strict North Dakota Anti-Abortion Law
• Alito: Gay Marriage Ruling Could Allow Judges To End Minimum Wage Laws
• Mitch McConnell: 'Gender Card' Not Enough To Get Hillary Clinton To White House
• Planned Parenthood: Secret Video Part Of Years-Long Harassment Campaign
• The Constitutional Roadblock to Efforts to Fix Federal Elections
• Republican House and Senate Introduce Bills Allowing Companies To Fire Single, Pregnant Women

Supreme Court May Hear Texas Abortion Clinics' Appeal Of Lower Court Ruling That Would Have Immediately Closed More Than Half Of Texas's 19 Clinics

... or This?

This...

AP via ABC 13 Houston has the basics. I try hard not to quote AP if I can avoid doing so, so please go read it in situ. Or is it in shit‑ooh??

Rand Paul: Rights And Liberties For Me... But Not For Thee, Not If You Are Female

Are any women out there thinking Rand Paul might be the presidential candidate for them, based on his emphasis of the often-mentioned "right to be left alone" by the government? If so, you'd better read what Zoë Carpenter at The Nation has to say:

“The right to be left alone is the most cherished of rights,” Kentucky senator and presidential aspirant Rand Paul said over the weekend in San Francisco. He was there to sell himself to the young tech elite as a civil-liberties crusader; the only candidate willing to take an uncompromising stand against government surveillance. He cares so deeply about privacy that he’s planning to filibuster the renewal of parts of the Patriot Act.

"What every woman really needs is
one of my fingers." - Sen. Rand Paul

But the leader of “the leave-me-the-hell-alone coalition” is simultaneously, albeit more quietly, arguing that women should have little privacy in their healthcare decisions. “The government does have some role in our lives,” Paul said at a summit organized by the anti-choice Susan B Anthony List in April, by which he meant making abortion illegal. Paul describes himself as “100 percent pro-life.” Along with all of the other Republican presidential candidates he supports a bill that resurfaced this week in the House that would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

...

Oh, yes: Rights for him; no rights for you. Women of reproductive age, take note...

A Hell Of A ‘Compromise’ To Get Loretta Lynch Confirmed — UPDATED

Emily Crockett, Federal Policy Reporter at RH Reality Check, explains what Turtle McConnell has done:

Senators announced a compromise Tuesday that would move two long-stalled legislative items: a human trafficking bill that has been embroiled in a fight over abortion restrictions, and the confirmation of Loretta Lynch to be the nation’s first Black female attorney general.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had refused to bring Lynch’s confirmation up for a vote until the Senate passed the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (JVTA), despite Lynch’s undisputed qualifications and strong record on prosecuting human traffickers. The tactic enraged advocates and Black leaders, some of whom staged a hunger strike in protest.

McConnell said Tuesday that once the JVTA is passed, the Senate will move on to Lynch “in the next day or so.”

...

Lynch

Apart from the raw unmitigated arrogance Sen. McConnell displayed in his throw-away remark about "the next day or so," and (IMHO) the very real possibility he will get the bill he wants and then fuck the removal of the anti‑abortion language, the bad news here is that it establishes Turtle's ability to blackmail the entire US Senate... hardly any senator opposes the essence of the bill, or Ms. Lynch's confirmation... to get whatever he goddamned well wants. I am glad Lynch will be confirmed, but I am far from confident we will not live to regret this "compromise."

UPDATE: an agreement has been reached. The bill has passed; Ms. Lynch will be voted on... on Tuesday. It seems goddamned Turtle is in no hurry to fulfill his part of the bargain... what else is new?

How Six (6) Catholics On SCOTUS Can Be Bad For American Women's Rights

Pieklo

Kennedy

Jessica Mason Pieklo, senior legal analyst at RH Reality Check, explains in considerable detail how SCOTUS, in particular Justice Anthony Kennedy, has undertaken a proactive anti-abortion-rights stand in Gonzales v. Carhart. If you ever thought the Supreme Court was independent of politics and uninfluenced by the religion of its current members, particularly its old men, this story should disabuse you of that notion. Young American women, please take note: Kennedy is no moderate but rather your sworn adversary, and believe me, he won't let you forget it.

My State Rep, A Republican, Says Women Will Die If Texas Lege Renders Cancer Screening Unavailable By Forcing Planned Parenthood Clinics To Close

Sarah Davis
(R-TX134)

It is hardly news that the Texas GOP has made repeated attempts to impose the harshest strictures on women's health clinics that offer abortion in Texas, such as Planned Parenthood, no matter what other essential medical services those clinics offer women. It is news (from Tara Culp‑Ressler at Think Progress, March 10) that a Republican legislator has come out in opposition to her party's attempts to kill women by denying them high-quality cancer screening in an attempt to deny them constitutionally protected access to abortion.

That legislator, State Rep. Sarah Davis (R-TX134), represents my district.

I have long since taken a solemn vow not to vote for any Republican unless Abraham Lincoln rises from the grave and runs in a district in which I am registered to vote. At least Lege elections are in even-numbered years, so I have some time to think about this race.

The problem, of course, is not what Rep. Davis would do independently; rather, it's what she could be pressured into doing along with her party. And the R-dominated Texas Lege, under a new, presumably ideologically driven Repub governor, could make laws that could literally kill women by the thousands, and GOPers in the Lege have not been shy about attempting those very laws.

I have often wished for an active pro-choice or at least pro-women's-rights movement within the GOP. All that proves is that one should be careful what s/he wishes for!

The New Anti-Choice Claim In State Legislatures: ‘Abortion Isn't Healthcare’

"Keep abortion legal.
No exceptions.
No apologies."

Since the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), a woman's right to choose abortion in the first trimester of her pregnancy has been recognized as a constitutionally protected right. This explicit recognition by the nation's highest court has left abortion opponents to chip away at the edges of abortion: limiting its availability; imposing ridiculous building codes on abortion clinics and qualification restrictions on abortion doctors that do not apply to other kinds of clinics and doctors; and now, the most absurd of all: claiming that "abortion isn't healthcare" and therefore is not legally protected in the way most medical options are.

"Abortion isn't healthcare?" Try to tell that to the woman whose life has been saved by an abortion. The claim is, on its face, false.

That doesn't stop the nut-jobs from passing their nut-job laws in crazy state legislatures such as the one in Texas. Quoting Robin Marty at TPM in an article about the claim the crazies make repeatedly in North Carolina,

...

The logic behind North Carolina abortion clinics’ new regulations echo [National Right to Life's David] Andrusko, too. In 2013, anti-abortion legislators repeatedly inserted language that would allow the state board of health to write new medical standards for abortion clinics—and only abortion clinics—into multiple bills, finally getting it passed after inserting it into a proposal on motorcycle safety. Bill supporters said the new regulations would be written just to increase patient safety and not with an intention to shutter most of the abortion clinics in the state, as other similar regulation bills had done in other states that year.

...

"While the governor is trying to treat abortion like any other medical procedure, on one level that's a good thing, but he's really dismissing the important part," one abortion opponent told ABC 13 News.

That “important part” the governor apparently dismissed? That abortion is not supposed to be viewed as health care.

Even the allowable “exceptions” for obtaining termination when a ban is in place shows that every line of an abortion law is written with this express idea in mind. There are no mental health exceptions because an abortion can never be needed for mental health reasons. There is no medical exception because an abortion is never medically necessary. You can have one only if you will have “irreversible harm” or permanent damage to a “bodily function” because an abortion is never required to protect a pregnant person’s health.

Abortion is never healthcare. Once you recognize this assertion as the root of every piece of legislation, every bill suddenly makes complete sense.

Many anti-choice zealots see their opposition to all abortion as a matter of religion. It's impossible to argue with radical religious conservatives (and in this case I have to include most Catholics in that broad category): religion is itself not a matter for logic; any ordinary sane process of reasoning applied to problem-solving is readily tossed out the window in service of establishing the believer's "fact" for the greater good of his or her faith. Hence "abortion is not healthcare" ... a manifestly absurd claim... is accepted unquestioningly by the religious fanatics in conservative state legislatures for the explicit purpose of prohibiting abortion even in cases where abortion is indisputably healthcare, such as saving the pregnant woman's life.

O tempora, o mores!

Another Attempt At An Unconstitutional Abortion Ban, This One In Ohio

Robin Marty at TPM has the particulars. At least three similar bans in other states have already been ruled unconstitutional, so this one is unlikely to survive a costly court challenge. Why do they do it? Hey, 2016 is already on the radar; the evil woman-hating assholes have to appeal to the base...

Separate And Emphatically Unequal: Court Rulings Using An ‘Undue Burden’ Test, With Clinics In An Adjacent State, To Restrict Access To Abortion

Please read author/activist Robin Marty's article at TPM, "Is One Key Anti-Abortion Attack Beginning To Fall To Pieces?" (There's no need for me to repeat its extensive content, and it's too complex to summarize effectively.) You'll learn about the latest attempts to legislate de jure obstructions to abortions, access to which women are constitutionally guaranteed by Roe v. Wade, and possible changes in federal court responses to various "no undue burden" assertions used in recent decades by courts seeking grounds on which to vindicate various new state anti-abortion laws.

This is surely a risky business... but so is the whole process since Roe more than 40 years ago. Women's constitutional rights absolutely should not depend upon the votes of one or two federal district courts determined by a woman's state of residence, or (more recently) upon the religious affiliation of two-thirds (6 of 9) of the Justices of the US Supreme Court. But they do. The more such state laws are passed... the more federal district court rulings that validate those laws... the more women of reproductive age have a very real chance if living into a second era in which their constitutional right to control their own reproductive status is willfully destroyed by one or more of five aged men on SCOTUS. Ladies, keep your eyes open... and be prepared to take your arguments to the streets if nothing else works. In a just world, America should be faced with a simple choice: an uncompromising protection of the rights of ALL its citizens irrespective of gender, or a coordinated response to restrictions which brings America's male-dominant society to its knees. A baldfaced compromise of the civil liberties of half the American public is wholly unacceptable.

I will restate my fundamental principle on the matter: Every child a wanted child; every birth a healthy birth; every decision regarding a woman's reproductive status and health a decision affirming wholeheartedly the woman's own position. No exceptions!

In 24 Years, Texas GOP Governor Candidates Have Not Learned One Simple Fact: Rape Is No Joke

Republicans talk ceaselessly about "freedom 'n' democracy," but for women, under Republican rule, there is no freedom, not even freedom from violent personal assault:

Here's Planned Parenthood's assessment (NOTE: link goes to Facebook):

In 1990, Clayton Williams "joked" about rape while campaigning against Ann Richards. You might think that a few decades would be enough to teach politicians not to make light of rape, but that sadly isn’t so. This November there’s a collection of men running for state office who think that politicians know better than women – even victims of rape – about what decisions are best for them. This is why we organize. This is why we fight to #StopGregAbbott

Twenty-four years after Clayton Williams's infamous gaffe, Republicans are more determined than ever to wrest total control of women's bodies away from those women, right down to the most personal decisions a woman can make. A woman who votes for Greg Abbott is voting for her own enslavement. Save your personal rights instead: vote for Wendy Davis.

Claiming 'Freedom Of Speech,' Anti-Choice Zealots Continue To Intimidate, Threaten Patients, Medical Professionals, Staff At Women's Clinics

A great reminder... unfortunately
for Americans, she is in London

This has been going on for decades. And there are no signs I can see that the law enforcement and judicial systems are making even the least serious move to put a stop to the blatantly illegal activities of the fringe of the "pro-life" movement: they call themselves "pro-life" in much the same way Orwell wrote about a "Ministry of Truth." Please read what a practicing physician trying to provide health care to women, including poor women, has to say about the state of things.

A couple of memories from my own more active days in behalf of the local Planned Parenthood:

• One day I went to the clinic to install the latest version of some software I developed for use by Planned Parenthood. The clinic stank something awful: someone had tossed a stink-bomb through the window the night before. The smell lingered several more days.
  
  
• An incident with a local ABC TV "reporter" covering a clinic protest convinced me of how deeply dishonest the "pro-life" cabal can be: the clinic was surrounded by supporters linking arms to prevent protesters from crashing the clinic and disrupting medical services (which they had attempted before); the "reporter," himself Hispanic and I presume Catholic, rammed his camera crew straight through the protective circle, thereby letting the protesters into the building. "Reporter," my f^<kin' a$$!

I do not see any way this can end to the advantage of women and the benefit of their health. I DO see a large number of women dying as they are deprived of their one source of reproductive health care. The anti-choice zealots are the true murderers.

Events Affecting Mostly Women In The Workplace

America has always treated women who work worse than men. Now, some of the maltreatment that has gone on for decades that I personally know about is coming to light:

• Robbed on the Job: ... two former McDonald's managers break down how they were ordered to cheat their employees out of their pay
  
  
• Doctors at an Oklahoma Hospital Were Just Told They Can’t Prescribe Birth Control Anymore
  
  
• $2.13 an Hour? Why The Tipped Minimum Wage Has to Go

America, the land of opportunity... if you're male.

Women Factory Workers, 1911

Woman at War, WWI

Women at Work Today - Lucky

Woman at Work Today - Not so Lucky

Fifth Circuit Court Upholds Texas's Draconian Abortion Law

 Just... read about it at FDL. I am too angry to write.

---

Also this... "Murder this abortion doctor"? Doctors' names and addresses, sometimes on "Wanted"-style posters, including information on a doctor in Wichita, Kansas where Dr. George Tiller was murdered, are again being distributed by an anti-choice group. These people have proved before that they, not the doctors they intimidate, are the true murderers. Take their threats seriously.

'Pro‑Life' Legislation? 'Pro‑Rape' Is More Like It

Robin Marty at TPM discusses changes in Michigan law that makes it almost impossible for a woman to purchase private insurance with her own money that covers abortion... even when the pregnancy results from rape... without buying a separate "rider" explicitly covering the rape exception, a rider which is, effectively, utterly unavailable.

Marty says this:

Supporters called it “The Abortion Insurance Opt-Out Act.” Opponents referred to it as the “rape insurance” bill. ...

Of course, neither name reflects reality. What this law does in fact is authorize rapists to force their victims not only to have sex with them, but also to bear their child. "The Rapist Empowerment Act"? "The Woman As Reproductive Vessel Act"? Pick a name: under any name, this bill, which has passed in eight states including Michigan, point-blank deprives a woman not only of the right to decide whether to reproduce, but also of the right to choose the father of her children. Under such a law, a rapist off the street acquires the same parental rights as a consensual sex partner. And the woman... the woman has no rights at all.

These laws are being passed in states that have petition mechanisms by which citizens can introduce and pass laws, mechanisms which can completely circumvent the fundamental protection of a governor's veto. Government by the consent of the governed mutates into a kind of mob rule available to any large enough group of extremists. If you do not see the difference between laws created by this process and laws created by the more conventional legislative process, you are not thinking clearly. Only the latter laws really reflect the consent of the governed.

No one... no one... has a right to force a woman to bear a child conceived as a result of a sexual act in which her participation was involuntary... an assault, a rape. What's next... a reinstitution of droit du seigneur?

Supreme Court Refuses 5-4 To Block Texas Anti-Abortion Law While Challenge Is Heard By Fifth Circuit

Jessica Mason Pieklo, senior legal analyst at RH Reality Check:

Late Tuesday afternoon, the Supreme Court refused to intervene in the battle over HB 2, Texas’ massive omnibus anti-abortion law. The 5-4 ruling refusing to reinstate a lower court’s injunction blocking the hospital admitting privileges portion of the law not only lets that provision remain in effect, it sets the stage for a future battle over the question of just how much access to abortion services a state can cut off before rendering the right to abortion meaningless.

The ruling came in response to a November 4 emergency petition filed by abortion providers with Justice Antonin Scalia, asking him to temporarily block the Texas law while the case proceeds on appeal. On October 28, following a three-day trial, a district court permanently blocked the admitting privileges portion of the law. But on October 31, following an emergency request by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the law to take effect while the appeal continued. The Fifth Circuit is the only federal court to allow this kind of law to take effect. District courts in Alabama, Mississippi, Wisconsin, and North Dakota have all blocked similar laws. [Bolds mine. - SB]

...

Just for clarity, this is not the final word on the case. The Supreme Court has only intervened as far as allowing the law's challenged provision, the hospital admitting privileges requirement, to take effect while the case is heard before the Fifth Circuit. However, as Ms. Pieklo explains, quoting Justice Breyer:

The dissent also hones in on a key point underlying the fight over HB 2. Abortion opponents are able to accomplish through targeted clinic closures what they may not be able to do via judicial opinion: effectively overturn Roe v. Wade by rendering abortion impossible to access. “By putting Texas’ new law into immediate effect, it instantly leaves ’24 counties in the Rio Grande Valley … with no abortion provider because those providers do not have admitting privileges and are unlikely to to get them’ and it may substantially reduce access to safe abortions elsewhere in Texas,” Breyer wrote. “The longer a given facility remains closed, the less likely it is ever to reopen even if the admitting privileges requirement is ultimately held unconstitutional.” [Bolds mine. - SB]

We therefore have the effect of judicial process without ever having the due process itself. Time, tide and the progression of pregnancy wait for no man or (more to the point) woman; as a result of this ruling, some women will have unintended children, pregnancies leading to birth which, under Roe, the women were legally entitled to terminate. Worse, some women will surely die of pregnancies gone horribly wrong, with no way to terminate them. The blood of those women is on the hands of the Texas Legislature, Governor Perry and Attorney General Abbott... and the federal courts, if they insist on allowing this law to take effect while its constitutionality is being challenged.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Ed Kilgore at Political Animal has some clarifying thoughts.