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Monday, December 05, 2011
Law - "Anti-Abortion Groups Are Split on Legal Tactics"
The NY Times published this long story by Erik Eckholm yesterday. A few quotes:
For decades, established anti-abortion leaders like National Right to Life and Catholic bishops have pushed for gradually chipping away at the edges of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, with state laws to impose limits on late-term abortions, to require women to view sonograms or to prohibit insurance coverage for the procedure.But now many activists and evangelical Christian groups are pressing for an all-out legal assault on Roe. v. Wade in the hope — others call it a reckless dream — that the Supreme Court is ready to consider a radical change in the ruling.
The rift widened last month over a so-called personhood amendment in Mississippi that would have barred virtually all abortions by giving legal rights to embryos. It was voted down but is still being pursued in several states.
Now, in Ohio, a bill before the state legislature that would ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detectable, usually six to eight weeks into pregnancy, is the latest effort by activists to force a legal showdown. The so-called heartbeat bill is tearing apart the state’s powerful anti-abortion forces. * * *
Officially, National Right to Life, the umbrella group for state chapters, has taken no position on the heartbeat bill or on the fracturing of the movement. The national spokesman, Derrick Jones, said, “This isn’t really something we want to get into.”
James Bopp Jr., a lawyer in Indiana who is general counsel to National Right to Life but did not speak for the organization, condemned both the personhood and the heartbeat proposals as futile and likely to backfire. But he played down the current split.
“There has always been a division between those who want to concentrate on what will make a difference, and those who are more interested in making a statement that makes them feel better,” he said.
The heartbeat bill, if not as sweeping as personhood, has a more visceral public appeal, its promoters argue, and avoids some of the pitfalls of the personhood proposal, posing no threat to contraception or critical medical care.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 5, 2011 10:33 AM
Posted to General Law Related