The Courier Journal
Cameron wants Kentuckians' out-of-state abortion records to be available to authorities

699
Joe Sonka, Louisville Courier Journal
Mon, July 17, 2023 at 10:56 AM MDT·4 min read



Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron speaking to supporters May 16, 2023 at the Galt House Hotel in Louisville, Ky. after he won the 2023 Kentucky Republican primary nomination for governor. He faces Democrat incumbent Gov. Andy Beshear in November.

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron signed onto a letter last month opposing a proposed federal privacy rule that would block state officials from obtaining information on residents' reproductive health care services obtained outside the state.

Cameron was one of 19 Republican attorneys general who signed onto the June 16 letter, opposing the change proposed in April by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to amend HIPAA patient privacy rules.

The rule change would block state authorities from obtaining protected information about reproductive health care services obtained lawfully out of state "for criminal, civil, or administrative investigations or proceedings" against those individuals or regulated entities.


Such protected patient information on reproductive health care services would include, but not be limited to, those related to pregnancy, contraception, fertility, prenatal care, miscarriage management and abortion.

In the proposed rule change, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra wrote that after the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs decision — which allowed many states like Kentucky to ban most abortions — the department has heard concerns about "instituted or threatened" investigations of health care information in states where abortion remains legal, saying that "is likely to chill individuals' willingness to seek lawful treatment or to provide full information to their health care providers when obtaining that treatment."

However, the letter of Republican attorneys general that Cameron signed onto in June accuses the Biden administration of seeking to "wrest control over abortion back from the people in defiance of the Constitution and Dobbs," based on "a false narrative that States are seeking to treat pregnant women as criminals or punish medical personnel who provide lifesaving care."

The letter, led by Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, argues the rule change would upset the balance of safeguarding patient privacy with "permitting disclosure of information to state authorities to protect public health, safety, and welfare," along with unlawfully interfering with states’ authority to enforce their laws.

Fitch and the GOP attorneys general also wrote that the broad definition of reproductive health care in the rule change may allow the Biden administration "to advance radical transgender-policy goals" and "obstruct state laws concerning experimental gender-transition procedures for minors (such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgical interventions).”

Kentucky and 19 other states have passed laws banning gender-affirming care for minors. The new ban on hormone treatments and puberty blockers in Kentucky was temporarily stopped by an injunction last month, but it went into effect last week when that injunction was stayed, pending a ruling on an appeal at the 6th Circuit.

Announcing his signing of the letter in a June press release, Cameron said the new rule "could incentivize healthcare providers to break state laws on everything from protecting unborn life to gender-altering surgeries."

“The Biden Administration’s repeated attempts to seize power from the people and their elected representatives defies the Constitution and must be met with strength," Cameron said. "I am proud to defend Kentuckians’ right to govern themselves without unlawful interference from the federal government.”

Kentucky is one of 16 states that now have a near-total ban on abortion since the Dobbs decision. The state has no law or regulation in place preventing residents from obtaining reproductive health care services in others states, including abortion.

Asked if Cameron's office has sought or requested information on Kentuckians' reproductive health care from other states since the Dobbs decision last summer, his spokespersons did not immediately reply with an answer.

Democratic attorneys general, ACLU of Kentucky support rule change
Also in June, all 23 Democratic state attorneys general signed onto a letter in support of the proposed HHS patient privacy protections, saying the Dobbs decision "has created a climate of uncertainty and fear in the provision of reproductive health care throughout the country."

They added that "rapid technological advances have transformed how health care providers and individuals collect and store their personal health information, including reproductive health data," while existing privacy protections "have not kept up with these changes and fail to contemplate circumstances in which basic health care is subject to civil liability and criminal penalties."

"The Department’s proposed modifications would help to ensure that private health information is not used against people for seeking, obtaining, providing, or facilitating lawful reproductive health care, and would give individuals confidence that their protected health information (“PHI”) will be kept private," says the letter, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

The Democrats' letter also calls on the HHS to clarify that the privacy protections would include information on gender-affirming care.

Angela Cooper, the spokeswoman for the ACLU of Kentucky, also issued a statement Monday calling Cameron's decision to sign on to the opposition letter "another in a long line of actions indicating Daniel Cameron's unwillingness to stay out of Kentuckians' private medical decisions."

"This instance is particularly galling, since Kentuckians voted down a measure in 2022 that would have added anti-choice language to the commonwealth’s constitution, sending a clear message to lawmakers: Kentucky needs comprehensive reproductive healthcare," Cooper said. "The government has no place inserting themselves between families and their doctors, whether the issue is reproductive care or medically necessary care for transgender youth."


https://www.yahoo.com/news/cameron-wants-kentuckians-state-abortion-165618568.html

 

But thankfully they gave the decision over to the states.

 

Then why do they oppose the privacy rights of these women?

Funny how there is no mention of any man who goes out of state for a medical procedure. These women wouldn't have to go out of the state if they only had reasonable laws that allowed a doctor to treat their patients without government interference.

 

The decision that has caused much harm and suffering.

 

The American Taliban enforcing Sharia Law For Christians.


Nebraska Teen Sentenced to 90 Days in Jail for Self-Managed Abortion
411
Susan Rinkunas
Thu, July 20, 2023 at 10:30 AM MDT



Photo: AP

On Thursday, a Nebraska judge sentenced 19-year-old Celeste Burgess to 90 days in jail and two years of probation on charges related to ending her pregnancy with abortion pills, according to News Channel Nebraska. She was 17 at the time of the incident in April 2022 but was charged as an adult last August; she pled guilty this spring to one felony charge of concealing or abandoning a dead body in exchange for prosecutors dropping two misdemeanor charges. She had faced up to two years in prison. Her mother, Jessica, ordered the abortion pills and is awaiting sentencing on separate charges.

Self-managed abortion isn’t illegal in Nebraska—it’s only explicitly banned in two states, Nevada and South Carolina—but prosecutors can and do criminalize people for abortion, miscarriage, and stillbirth by charging them under other statutes. States have criminalized people for their pregnancy outcomes for decades even while Roe v. Wade stood, but advocates worry these types of charges will only become more frequent as millions of people live under state abortion bans.


Jessica Burgess faces two years in prison after pleading guilty to three charges in exchange for dropping two others. She will be sentenced on September 22. Tanner Barnhill, the 21-year-old man who helped them bury the remains, got probation.

The Burgess case illustrates how it’s often other people who kick off the pregnancy criminalization process. An If/When/How report from 2022 found that, in 61 cases where adults were investigated for pregnancy outcomes, 26 percent were reported to police by friends or family, while 45 percent were reported by care professionals, including doctors, nurses, and social workers.

Elizabeth Ling, senior helpline counsel at If/When/How, told Jezebel in a statement she was “disturbed” and “appalled” that, despite self-managed abortion not being illegal in Nebraska, prosecutors chose to punish a young person by weaponizing other laws against them. If/When/How runs the Repro Legal Helpline that offers legal information to U.S. abortion seekers with questions and can help connect people who’ve been arrested with resources.

“Every day I speak with people who are terrified that their abortion decision might put them at legal risk. That fear is pervasive, even in states that do not ban abortion, and in states like Nebraska that do not make it a crime to self-determine one’s own care,” Ling said. “People are reluctant to seek support from their communities, or share information with their health care providers, out of fear of criminalization. Today, the prosecutors in Nebraska have added to that climate of fear that keeps people from seeking healthcare, and proven again that the greatest danger to people who choose to self-determine their care are state actors that misuse their power.”

Ling added that no one should be criminalized for their pregnancy outcome. But the sad fact of the hyper-policed United States is that such arrests will continue.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nebraska-teen-sentenced-90-days-163000162.html

 

And we see how a carefully edited article can provide less than all the facts and completely change the issues.
Prosecutors Want You to Judge the Nebraska Teen Who Took Abortion Pills (yahoo.com)
Members who care can compare the post about Jessica Burgess above with the article we find when we click the link.
We can see the parts of the story carefully edited out to hide some really important facts.

"So people focusing on the gestational age in this case and others are walking right into the trap law enforcement has set for us. “Prosecutors are much more likely to try to ‘make an example’ of someone who seeks an abortion later on in pregnancy because they deem that less morally acceptable, and they may seek charges in the hope that the public will find the facts of the case egregious and will welcome a prosecution,” she said. “But the risk, of course, is that any type of precedent that a prosecutor sets when bringing a case against someone who sought a later abortion can be applied against somebody seeking an earlier abortion.” All it takes is rogue prosecutors bringing these charges and right-wing activist judges accepting those interpretations of state law, she said.

Prosecutors are in effect moving the Overton Window on acceptance for locking people up for abortion when self-managed abortion isn’t a crime. “It is not illegal to self-manage an abortion in the vast majority of states, irrespective of gestational age,” but, she said, “this is speaking to the court of public opinion rather than the court of law.” The prosecutors in this case “tried to paint a portrait of this mother and daughter in a negative light and to deprive them of their humanity and to erase the fact that we’re talking about a teenager who was not ready to have a child.”

The Burgess investigation began in April 2022 after someone tipped off the police about a stillbirth and the disposal of remains. Madison County prosecutors claim that Celeste was about 29 weeks pregnant when she had the stillbirth. She and her mother burned and buried the remains with the help of another person last spring before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe.

According to a search warrant affidavit obtained by Jezebel, police obtained Celeste’s medical records and noted one appointment in early March 2022 where she was estimated to be 23 weeks and two days pregnant. (It’s not known when Celeste first learned she was pregnant or when she told her mother.) At the time, Nebraska banned abortions 22 weeks after the last menstrual period, or 20 weeks post-fertilization, which meant care after that point was unavailable in clinics or hospitals. (The state has since passed a 12-week ban that’s currently in effect but facing legal challenges.) Still, these laws apply to licensed abortion providers, not people self-managing their own terminations.

Police said that, when they questioned Celeste and Jessica in late April 2022, Celeste checked Facebook messages with her mother to confirm the date of the stillbirth. Police then sent a warrant to Meta and the company complied and shared the messages, in which the pair allegedly discussed ending Celeste’s pregnancy with abortion pills that Jessica had ordered. (Meta said the warrant did not mention abortion, only an investigation into a stillbirth.) A friend also told police she was there when Celeste took the first pill and said there were several computers at the Burgess home. Following that conversation, police sought additional warrants on June 15, 2022, for computers, phones, and tablets. Police charged Celeste and Jessica in early August 2022.​

Turns out, the fetus we're talking about here was 23-29 weeks old, and in Nebraska at the time, an abortion after 20 weeks was illegal.
And after Jessica aborted her baby, her boyfriend took it and burned it and buried it in a field.
And all this happened BEFORE the Dobbs decision.
Now Shooter is conflicted about abortion. His sympathies lie with women who have to make a horrific decision that has no right answer.

That isn't the case here. This is a case of infanticide. A case that happened BEFORE DOBBS. A case of murder, and abuse of a corpse, and of tossing away that baby like so much trash. Even at 23 weeks, that baby had a chance of survival with medical care. What it got was a bonfire, like it was S'mores (hopefully for it it was already dead) and dumped in a hole in a field.

And that is horriffic.
And careful editing of the article to hide the real facts is classic despicable behavior.

 

I am not sure there is much sense playing a rigged game against a fair haired boy.

 

One final note about Jessica Burgess. In one of her e mails she remarked that she just wanted that "thing" gone so she could wear her favorite Levis again.

That wasn't in the original post about the story either.

 

If you go back through this thread you will see some raving lying hypocrites trying to say the Supreme Court did not outlaw abortion. They just made it state's rights. And if a woman needed or wanted an abortion in a state where it was outlawed they could just go to another state to get one. Of course they were just being stupid ignorant liars just trying to make excuses for the Supreme Court taking away a woman's right to abortion subjecting the nation to Shari'a Law for Christians enforced by the American Taliban.



AG Cameron wants ability to search medical records of patients who get out of state abortions

Timothy D. Easley/AP
784
Alex Acquisto
Wed, July 19, 2023 at 4:00 AM MDT·5 min read




Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron wants to retain the option to access the medical information of Kentuckians who leave the state for reproductive health care services, such as abortion and gender-affirming health care.

Cameron joined 18 Republican state attorneys general in co-signing a June 16 letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, arguing that its rule change proposal to shield this patient information from officials in states that have banned or criminalized abortion and gender-affirming health care would “unlawfully interfere with states’ authority to enforce their laws and does not serve any legitimate need.”

The letter asks HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra to halt a proposed HIPAA privacy rule change, which was floated after federal abortion protections were overturned last year as a way to “better protect sensitive information related to reproductive health care and bolster patient-provider confidentiality,” according to HHS.

The rule change would make it harder for officials in states that have restricted access to reproductive health care, like abortion, to obtain patient medical information if it’s for the purpose of investigating a civil or criminal law violation. The type of reproductive health care shielded by the HHS rule change includes pregnancy and post-natal care, abortion, miscarriage management, contraception, and the gamut of gender-affirming health care options, regardless of the patient’s age.


For example, if a pregnant person in Kentucky, a state where abortion is illegal, traveled to get an abortion in Illinois, a state where abortion is legal, the proposed federal rule change would block the disclosure of their protected health information to a Kentucky state official, like Cameron, should he go seeking it as part of an investigation into a violation of Kentucky law.

“This proposed rule would thus curtail the ability of state officials to obtain evidence of potential violations of state laws,” the AGs wrote, adding that the proposed policy change “has deep flaws and should be withdrawn.”

Cameron — who is running for governor this year against incumbent Democrat Andy Beshear — and other co-signers accused the Biden Administration of pushing a “false narrative that states are seeking to treat pregnant women as criminals or punish medical personnel who provide life-saving care. Based on this lie, the administration has sought to wrest control over abortion back from the people in defiance of the Constitution and Dobbs,” the AGs said.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is the U.S. Supreme Court case that became precedent over Roe v. Wade in 2022 and overturned half a century of federal abortion protections.

Kentucky’s trigger law banning abortion except to save a pregnant person’s life took immediate effect after Roe fell last June. That law, coupled with a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy (a fetal heartbeat law), means pregnancy termination of any kind has been largely inaccessible in Kentucky for the last year. The trigger law’s vague wording and lack of clear exceptions have pushed health care providers to send pregnant patients who require medically-necessary terminations to find care out of state, as reported by the Herald-Leader.

The commonwealth this year also outlawed gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. Gender-affirming care is a broadly-applied term that, in this context, outlaws the prescription of hormones, puberty blockers and gender-reassignment surgery for trans individuals under age 18.

In a statement announcing that he had signed the letter last month, Cameron said the proposed rule change would “incentivize health care providers to break state laws on everything from protecting unborn life, to gender-altering surgeries.” While HIPAA “authorizes HHS to set standards for protecting privacy . . . (it) does not empower HHS to shield from authorities evidence of legal wrongdoing based on a claimed connection to ‘reproductive health care,’” Cameron said.

Among the arguments Cameron helps to make is that HHS’s own policy recognizes that “privacy interests” must be balanced against the public’s interest to use identifiable health information for “vital public and private purposes.” According to the letter, “the privacy rule thus sets standards for using and disclosing (protected health information) in certain circumstances without an individual’s authorization.”

Circumstances cited in the letter that warrant such a scenario include for a court order, subpoena, discovery request, to a “health oversight agency for oversight activities authorized by law,” as well as for criminal and civil investigations.

The same day Cameron and other Republican AGs publicly penned their opposition to HHS, all 23 Democratic state attorneys general penned a letter supporting the federal rule change. It acknowledged how the growing network of state laws criminalizing abortion “discourage pregnant people from utilizing health care and endanger the patient-provider relationship. Given this rapidly-changing backdrop of extreme legal risks and increasing uncertainty, it is critical that additional guardrails be added to the privacy rule to protect against the disclosure of reproductive health information,” they wrote.

Angela Cooper with the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky criticized Cameron’s decision to sign the letter on Tuesday, calling it “another in a long line of actions indicating (his) unwillingness to stay out of Kentuckians’ private medical decisions.”

The government “has no place inserting themselves between families and their doctors, whether the issue is reproductive care or medically necessary care for transgender youth,” Cooper said.

The Kentucky Democratic Party was also quick to chide Cameron.

“What reason could Daniel Cameron have for wanting access to the private medical records of patients, except to be able to prosecute those patients?” said Kentucky Democratic Party spokesperson Anna Breedlove.

“State officials should not be able to rifle through patient’s medical records,” Breedlove said. “What’s next, getting a permission slip signed by Cameron to get access to reproductive health care?”



https://www.yahoo.com/news/ag-cameron-wants-ability-search-100000044.html

 

@stumbler
And of course the goal of the left is abortion at any time, for any reason, at no cost. As long as that baby is still attached to the mother she's welcome to murder it and toss it in a fire like a hot dog, eh?

Is that why you so carefully edited out the parts of the article you posted on Jessica Burgess?

We can see the parts of the story carefully edited out to hide some really important facts.
"So people focusing on the gestational age in this case and others are walking right into the trap law enforcement has set for us. “Prosecutors are much more likely to try to ‘make an example’ of someone who seeks an abortion later on in pregnancy because they deem that less morally acceptable, and they may seek charges in the hope that the public will find the facts of the case egregious and will welcome a prosecution,” she said. “But the risk, of course, is that any type of precedent that a prosecutor sets when bringing a case against someone who sought a later abortion can be applied against somebody seeking an earlier abortion.” All it takes is rogue prosecutors bringing these charges and right-wing activist judges accepting those interpretations of state law, she said.

Prosecutors are in effect moving the Overton Window on acceptance for locking people up for abortion when self-managed abortion isn’t a crime. “It is not illegal to self-manage an abortion in the vast majority of states, irrespective of gestational age,” but, she said, “this is speaking to the court of public opinion rather than the court of law.” The prosecutors in this case “tried to paint a portrait of this mother and daughter in a negative light and to deprive them of their humanity and to erase the fact that we’re talking about a teenager who was not ready to have a child.”​

The Burgess investigation began in April 2022 after someone tipped off the police about a stillbirth and the disposal of remains. Madison County prosecutors claim that Celeste was about 29 weeks pregnant when she had the stillbirth. She and her mother burned and buried the remains with the help of another person last spring before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe.​

According to a search warrant affidavit obtained by Jezebel, police obtained Celeste’s medical records and noted one appointment in early March 2022 where she was estimated to be 23 weeks and two days pregnant. (It’s not known when Celeste first learned she was pregnant or when she told her mother.) At the time, Nebraska banned abortions 22 weeks after the last menstrual period, or 20 weeks post-fertilization, which meant care after that point was unavailable in clinics or hospitals. (The state has since passed a 12-week ban that’s currently in effect but facing legal challenges.) Still, these laws apply to licensed abortion providers, not people self-managing their own terminations.​

Police said that, when they questioned Celeste and Jessica in late April 2022, Celeste checked Facebook messages with her mother to confirm the date of the stillbirth. Police then sent a warrant to Meta and the company complied and shared the messages, in which the pair allegedly discussed ending Celeste’s pregnancy with abortion pills that Jessica had ordered. (Meta said the warrant did not mention abortion, only an investigation into a stillbirth.) A friend also told police she was there when Celeste took the first pill and said there were several computers at the Burgess home. Following that conversation, police sought additional warrants on June 15, 2022, for computers, phones, and tablets. Police charged Celeste and Jessica in early August 2022."
​

The left's fake twirling about protecting kids apparently only applies to ILLEGAL immigrants.
American kids can be used for target practice for all liberals care.

 

And no matter how many times you tell it, it refuses to understand the reason for keeping late term abortion legal is so a doctor can treat a mother who has complications and requires an abortion. Rare but real! Jessica is an outlier, and deserves to be charged. A mother that loses her child shouldn't be forced to carry any longer than necessary, and it is necessary long before she develops other issues.

Doctors should be making these decisions, not Republicans.

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...ent-a-test-case-for-other-states/70413318007/

Go Ohio!

 

@manuel42
We see that the point of the post on this forum was about Jessica Burgess was how the evil state persecuted her for aborting her baby.
When the article has to be edited to remove the parts about murder and infanticide and tossing the body on a bonfire like a hotdog, we can see the despicable obsession with winning, no matter what it takes.

The post was dishonest, misleading and carried evil intent.
Like almost all despicable posts on this forum.
It's why the credibility of the left does not exist.

Tell Shooter you remembered the coffee pot.

 

I am also going to hit this latter. The American Taliban in Ohio did everything they could to cheat and rig the game to try and keep people in Ohio from being able to vote on abortion.

So they tried to change the way they can get something on the ballot requiring 60% of voters and requiring signatures from all counties.

Then they put the constitutional amendmrnt on an August speci
al election even though outlawed August elections the year before.

It was all designed to hopefully turn the anti abortion voters out while the left stayed home.

But it doesn't look like worked. The story today is early voting and absentee ballots are off the charts. And it could surprass the number of votes in the general election

 

Apparently since I first posted this story and copied the Yahoo link Jezebel has updated it and added new details and a new headline. I copied and pasted the entire article when I took it off Yahoo. But since then the story has a new headline and more details.

But I do not edit any articles I post and with the exception of vary rare instances I always copy the entire article.

 

If the girl got pregnant Alabama would probably make her give birth.





Alabama Anti-Abortion Leader Indicted on Child Sexual Abuse Charges
1.3k
Kylie Cheung
Mon, July 24, 2023 at 8:45 AM MDT



Photo: Montgomery County Detention Facility

The former chair of the Alliance for a Pro-Life Alabama, who more recently served as an official in the Alabama State Department of Education, was ousted from the education department last week after being indicted on child sexual abuse charges, the Alabama Political Reporter first reported on Friday. Marty Decole “Cole” Wagner is accused of sexually abusing a child under the age of 12 and was indicted by a grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, on June 30. An unnamed source familiar with Wagner’s case told the outlet that the child victim in question is actually under 10 years of age.

Per the outlet, Wagner became the chair of the Alliance for a Pro-Life Alabama in 2018 to mobilize voters to vote for a constitutional amendment to recognize fetal personhood and clarify that there’s no right to an abortion in the state. In his capacity as chair, Wagner told the Alabama Political Reporter in 2018 that his role was to “[refute] falsehoods and misinformation that may be disseminated by pro-abortion forces within the state.” The anti-abortion ballot measure was successful, and four years later, shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion is now banned in the state.


Wagner was released from jail on $60,000 bond. He now faces up to 20 years in prison, as sexual abuse of a child under 12 is a Class B felony in Alabama.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/alabama-anti-abortion-leader-indicted-144500449.html

 

Early votes cast in Ohio August election are blowing expectations out of the water

Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal
July 24, 2023, 5:08 AM ET




Early voting figures for the Ohio Aug. 8 special election are surpassing even the most optimistic expectations. Through seven days of early voting more than 116,000 Ohioans have shown up at their local board to cast a ballot. Another 38,000 absentee ballots have made their way in as well.


As Secretary of State Frank LaRose noted in a press release, it represents a “five-fold increase” in compared to last year’s August election.

For additional context, the sum total of early in-person votes cast in last year’s May primary election — which included a hotly contested GOP U.S. Senate primary — was only about 138,000. The current trajectory of early in-person votes is on track with or even surpassing the 2022 general election. Through nine days of early voting, roughly 136,000 voters cast a ballot for last November’s election. That’s only about 20,000 more than the votes compiled so far in seven days. On average, another 16,000 ballots are cast each day polls are open.

The constitutional amendment, Issue 1, has apparently struck a chord with Ohio voters. The proposal would raise the threshold to pass any future amendment from a simple majority to 60%. In addition, it would require initiative backers meet signature requirements in all 88 counties rather than the current 44-county standard. Also, organizers would only get one shot, as the amendment eliminates the period for making up any shortfall in signatures.

Critics blasted Republican lawmakers for advancing their constitutional amendment, Issue 1, during a traditionally low turn-out, odd-year special election. They further criticized lawmakers for reversing course on a law passed just months earlier abandoning August elections.

The measure got the required votes in the Statehouse to make the ballot without a single Democrat’s support. Many of the proposal’s backers — though not all — were animated by an attempt to thwart a potential abortion rights amendment in November. Meanwhile, Issue 1’s opponents include a vast array of state and local organizations as well as current and former politicians from both sides of the aisle.

Campaign response
One Person One Vote spokesman Dennis Willard said they’re “encouraged” by the early vote totals.

“Extreme politicians are trying to sneak this $20 million special election for special interests pass the voters but it’s not working,” he said. “Voters are foiling their plans because Ohioans are outraged, are showing up early requesting absentee ballots and voting no on Issue 1.”

The League of Women Voters of Ohio has made no secret of its opposition to Issue 1. But the non-partisan organization’s officials were a bit more circumspect about the early voting numbers. Policy affairs manager Nazek Hapasha described her reaction as “cautiously optimistic,” and insisted they’ll continue working “until the last moment” to encourage voters to weigh in.

She emphasized how unprecedented it is to put a constitutional amendment before voters in a special election.

“When I spoke to boards of elections from around the state, about expectations, I was getting turnout numbers anywhere from 8% to more than 50%,” she said. “So even boards of elections were all over the place in terms of their expectations.”

Issue 1 supporters meanwhile remain confident. Spokesman Spencer Gross insisted, “when Ohioans hear the facts about Issue 1, they strongly support it, because they want to protect our constitution against the very type of big money, out-of-state influence we have been seeing from the no side.”

Notably, right-wing Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein has put more than $1 million behind the yes campaign.

Good omens and bad
Digging into the county level turnout figures, both sides can find reasons for optimism. Reliably blue counties like Franklin, Hamilton and Cuyahoga have seen the biggest turn out thus far. Lucas, Lorain, Summit and Montgomery counties, all of which went for Democrat Tim Ryan in last year’s Senate race, made the top ten. But Republican leaning Butler, Medina and Delaware counties round it out.

Delaware and Medina Counties are both punching above their weight. Of the top ten counties for turnout, they’re the only two that fall outside the 2020 census’ ten most populous counties.

Recent polling however suggests strong Republican turnout might not be that helpful for Issue 1 proponents.

A Suffolk University/USA Today poll found Ohioans oppose Issue 1 by a more than 2 to 1 margin. Pollsters found just 26% of respondents support the proposal as opposed to 57% against it. Another 17% of respondents were undecided. The survey of 500 likely Ohio voters carries a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percentage points.

The demographic data doesn’t get much better for the Yes on 1 campaign. Majorities in every age group, region and income bracket oppose the idea. Even gun owners — a group they hoped to bring onside with warnings of gun control amendments — reject Issue 1 by almost 30 points.

There were only two subsets in the entire survey where supporters got to 50%. But those categories were so narrow that the number of respondents was in the single digits. Among those who told pollsters they’d vote for Libertarian Jo Jorgensen (six) or the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins (two) in the 2024 presidential election, half support issue 1.

The yes on 1 spokesman brushed it off.

“Though the multiple millions spent by special interests on false ads against Issue 1 has impacted the media’s polling,” Gross said. “Our polling shows that the momentum our grassroots campaign is building across all 88 counties of the state will show up in force on Election Day.”


https://www.rawstory.com/ohio-election-2662328870/

 

The Dobbds decision was about state's rights. If you see any treasonous conservative/America Hating/Republicans saying that just call them a non-fucking liar to their face.


Republicans target abortion pill access as government shutdown threat looms
284
Nick Robins-Early
Tue, July 25, 2023 at 12:00 PM MDT



Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

A Republican-backed spending bill threatens to end national access to mail-order abortion pills and cut billions from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) that provides low-income families with food benefits.

The legislation is part of a spate of appropriations bills that lawmakers will debate this month, and which Congress must reach a decision on by the end of September in order to pass a budget for the 2024 fiscal year and avoid a federal shutdown. It was already approved by a House appropriations subcommittee in May, while being condemned by Democrats and causing internal rifts among Republicans. Republicans have added several provisions to the bill that would have wide-ranging effects on reproductive rights, health policy and benefits.

Related: McCarthy raises Biden impeachment threat during Fox News interview


The food and agriculture spending bill is the latest front in the rightwing campaign against reproductive rights. In the year since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, Republicans have passed bills in more than a dozen states that ban or severely restrict abortion access. Ending access to mail-order pills that induce abortions would complicate and limit efforts from abortion rights groups and physicians to provide care for people in states with abortion bans.

Specifically, the bill would reverse a 2021 Food and Drug Administration policy that allowed people to get the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone – which can be used up to 10 weeks after conception – through the mail rather than via in-person visits to providers. The FDA had temporarily lifted restrictions on the drug during the Covid-19 pandemic, before later making those changes permanent. But the drug, which is widely used for abortion and can also be used for managing miscarriages, has been the center of legal challenges and rightwing attempts to prevent its use ever since.

House Republicans’ messaging on the bill claims that their provision “reins in wasteful Washington spending” and “protects the lives of unborn children”. The bill would also decrease the Snap benefit program – formerly known as food stamps – by $32bn compared with 2023 levels, as well as prevent the health and human services department from putting limits on the maximum amount of nicotine in cigarettes.

The approaching fight over spending bills has echoes of the standoff over debt ceiling negotiations earlier this year, when Democrats accused Republicans of holding the government hostage in an attempt to exact sweeping cuts to federal programs. Hardline Republicans similarly pushed to shift their party towards far-right policies during those negotiations as well.

Democrats are eager to prevent a government shutdown such as the one in 2018 during the Trump administration that left about 800,000 government workers without pay and lasted longer than any previous closure in US history. But some have called for establishing red lines around what compromises they are willing to make, with a number of House Democrats such as the Massachusetts representative Jim McGovern pushing back against attempts to cut Snap funding and other conservative provisions in recent legislation. House Democrats previously tried to add two amendments to the food and agriculture spending bill that would have eliminated the anti-abortion provision, but both failed.

Several Republicans have also spoken out against the food and agriculture bill, including the New York representative Marc Molinaro, who told Politico he will vote against the legislation if it comes to the floor. Molinaro, along with another New York Republican lawmaker, previously denounced a conservative Texas judge’s ruling that threatened to remove FDA approval of mifepristone.

Molinaro’s opposition to the bill highlights a rift within the Republican party over just how far to push an anti-abortion agenda that has proven nationally unpopular and contributed to electoral losses in many states.

Abortion policy has divided the GOP as hard-right Republicans, as well as powerful Christian conservative activist groups, have demanded far-reaching bans on abortion access. Others, such as the South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace, have warned that Republicans need to “read the room” on abortion or face defeat in elections.

The Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, has meanwhile been left scrambling to manage the different factions of his party as votes on must-pass appropriations bills loom. In addition to limiting abortion access and benefits, far-right Republicans have sought to use spending bills to greatly reduce military aid to Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion.

An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll from earlier this year saw that support for abortion access was at an all-time high, and included a finding that about one-third of Republicans also broadly back the right to abortion access.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/republicans-target-abortion-pill-access-180044048.html

 

I am going to have to retract this entire article. Both the headline and the article was changed after I posted it. And it has very serious omissions that have a direct impact on the validity of what they originally said. And this story can no longer be found on the link or the site.


The changes to the headline and content are actually pretty dramatic and change what they originally said. As seen below.



Close this content


Prosecutors Want You to Judge the Nebraska Teen Who Took Abortion Pills

1.6k
Susan Rinkunas
Thu, July 20, 2023 at 2:25 PM MDT·5 min read



Photo: AP

On Thursday, a Nebraska judge sentenced 19-year-old Celeste Burgess to 90 days in jail and two years of probation on charges related to ending her pregnancy with abortion pills, according to News Channel Nebraska. She was 17 at the time of the incident in April 2022 but was charged as an adult last August; she pled guilty this spring to one felony charge of concealing or abandoning a dead body in exchange for prosecutors dropping two misdemeanor charges. She had faced up to two years in prison. Her mother, Jessica, ordered the abortion pills and is awaiting sentencing on separate charges.

Self-managed abortion isn’t illegal in Nebraska—it’s only explicitly banned in two states, Nevada and South Carolina—but prosecutors can and do criminalize people for abortion, miscarriage, and stillbirth by charging them under other statutes. States have criminalized people for their pregnancy outcomes for decades even while Roe v. Wade stood, but advocates worry these types of charges will only become more frequent as millions of people live under state abortion bans.



So people focusing on the gestational age in this case and others are walking right into the trap law enforcement has set for us. “Prosecutors are much more likely to try to ‘make an example’ of someone who seeks an abortion later on in pregnancy because they deem that less morally acceptable, and they may seek charges in the hope that the public will find the facts of the case egregious and will welcome a prosecution,” she said. “But the risk, of course, is that any type of precedent that a prosecutor sets when bringing a case against someone who sought a later abortion can be applied against somebody seeking an earlier abortion.” All it takes is rogue prosecutors bringing these charges and right-wing activist judges accepting those interpretations of state law, she said.

Prosecutors are in effect moving the Overton Window on acceptance for locking people up for abortion when self-managed abortion isn’t a crime. “It is not illegal to self-manage an abortion in the vast majority of states, irrespective of gestational age,” but, she said, “this is speaking to the court of public opinion rather than the court of law.” The prosecutors in this case “tried to paint a portrait of this mother and daughter in a negative light and to deprive them of their humanity and to erase the fact that we’re talking about a teenager who was not ready to have a child.”

The Burgess investigation began in April 2022 after someone tipped off the police about a stillbirth and the disposal of remains. Madison County prosecutors claim that Celeste was about 29 weeks pregnant when she had the stillbirth. She and her mother burned and buried the remains with the help of another person last spring before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe.

According to a search warrant affidavit obtained by Jezebel, police obtained Celeste’s medical records and noted one appointment in early March 2022 where she was estimated to be 23 weeks and two days pregnant. (It’s not known when Celeste first learned she was pregnant or when she told her mother.) At the time, Nebraska banned abortions 22 weeks after the last menstrual period, or 20 weeks post-fertilization, which meant care after that point was unavailable in clinics or hospitals. (The state has since passed a 12-week ban that’s currently in effect but facing legal challenges.) Still, these laws apply to licensed abortion providers, not people self-managing their own terminations.

Police said that, when they questioned Celeste and Jessica in late April 2022, Celeste checked Facebook messages with her mother to confirm the date of the stillbirth. Police then sent a warrant to Meta and the company complied and shared the messages, in which the pair allegedly discussed ending Celeste’s pregnancy with abortion pills that Jessica had ordered. (Meta said the warrant did not mention abortion, only an investigation into a stillbirth.) A friend also told police she was there when Celeste took the first pill and said there were several computers at the Burgess home. Following that conversation, police sought additional warrants on June 15, 2022, for computers, phones, and tablets. Police charged Celeste and Jessica in early August 2022.

Jessica Burgess faces two years in prison after pleading guilty to three charges in exchange for dropping two others. She will be sentenced on September 22. Tanner Barnhill, the 21-year-old man who helped them bury the remains, got probation.

The Burgess case illustrates how it’s often other people who kick off the pregnancy criminalization process. An If/When/How report from 2022 found that, in 61 cases where adults were investigated for pregnancy outcomes, 26 percent were reported to police by friends or family, while 45 percent were reported by care professionals, including doctors, nurses, and social workers.

Elizabeth Ling, senior helpline counsel at If/When/How, told Jezebel in a statement she was “disturbed” and “appalled” that, despite self-managed abortion not being illegal in Nebraska, prosecutors chose to punish a young person by weaponizing other laws against them. If/When/How runs the Repro Legal Helpline that offers legal information to U.S. abortion seekers with questions and can help connect people who’ve been arrested with resources.

“Every day I speak with people who are terrified that their abortion decision might put them at legal risk. That fear is pervasive, even in states that do not ban abortion, and in states like Nebraska that do not make it a crime to self-determine one’s own care,” Ling said. “People are reluctant to seek support from their communities, or share information with their health care providers, out of fear of criminalization. Today, the prosecutors in Nebraska have added to that climate of fear that keeps people from seeking healthcare, and proven again that the greatest danger to people who choose to self-determine their care are state actors that misuse their power.”

Ling added that no one should be criminalized for their pregnancy outcome. But the sad fact of the hyper-policed United States is that such arrests will continue.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nebraska-teen-sentenced-90-days-163000162.html


There are also several other serious problems with this. Apparently one the article was published Nebraska prosecutors must have complained because the article gave a false impression. So Jezebel must have updated it with what the prosecutors said and gave it a new headline.

But I cannot confirm that because Jezebel did not include a correction and retraction that I can fine. Or offer any other explanation for the dramatic and substantial changes. Which makes the site very untrustworthy. And one I do not plan on using in the future. Because if the information from the Nebraska prosecutors was in the original article I never would have posted it because the defendants actions are very serious and the opposite the innocence the original portrayed. In fact when those actions which I most certainly do not condone are considered the teenager got off pretty easy. And we do not yet know what her mother will be sentenced to.

And even though I had no way of knowing any of this in advance I still regret posting it and apologize for it.

 

Shooter already pointed out the dishonesty of cutting out key information from an article before posting it.
As a despicable trait, it forces one to be more vigilant when hearing the latest talking heads news about the issues of the day.
You know, like Nancy Antoinette's star chamber thingy, and abortion and Trump.

Well, this pundit has said better than Shooter can why this story in particular is indicative of why the media are no longer considered valuable sources for news and the key facts of an issue.

Here’s a great example of why people distrust the media (msn.com)