In New Jersey, some protections from abortion criminalization and liability

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The New Jersey legislature has passed two bills designed to mitigate the state criminalization of abortion and state-authorized vigilante fascism enabled by the Supreme Court.

A3974 bars extradition from New Jersey for any "crime" as defined in other states that "relates to reproductive health services."

A3975* Bars New Jersey abortion providers and facilitators from disclosing any communication from those seeking reproductive services and any information obtained by examination. In particular, providers are barred from providing information or expending effort "in furtherance of any interstate investigation or proceeding seeking to impose civil or criminal liability upon a person or entity for receiving, providing, or abetting reproductive health services. It also provides that professional licensing boards in the state cannot penalize any provider for providing reproductive health services barred in another state if those services are legal in New Jersey.

The budget that goes to Governor Murphy for signature today includes $5 million for abortion provider training, $5 million for clinic security, $10 million for facility upgrades, etc. and $10 million more than allocated last year to family planning services. 

What did not pass, though some of its provisions and variations of those provisions are reflected in the items above, was a bill  (A4350/S2918) that would have mandated that health plans cover abortion (most in the state do), provided free abortions to the uninsured and undocumented, criminalized intimidation of those seeking or providing abortions, and provided even more robust legal protections to those seeking or providing abortion in the state. 

The language in the two bills described above, protecting out-of-state abortion recipients from extradition or disclosure of information to fuel criminal investigations or civil suits brought by vigilantes or other state governments, throws into sharp relief the patchwork hellscape of sexual fascism unleashed by the Supreme Court. 

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* I earlier summarized a superseded version of this bill. Apologies for the error. 

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The Pope's swift turns of thought

I knew before this week that the Pope is a man of good will. As I read his speech to Congress, it dawned too that his is a mind of extraordinary subtlety.

He is the opposite of a fundamentalist. He sees the mix of good and evil in all -- in persons, political systems, historical events.  As he speaks, he keeps flipping the Janus head:  Every chastisement is an affirmation. Every affirmation -- of, say, an inherited national virtue -- is a challenge.

The Pope's paragraphs take swift turns.You think he's headed one way, and he goes into reverse -- present to past, praise to reproach, abortion to death penalty.  He sees six sides to everything.

Follow the switchbacks in this passage appealing to our better angels:

Some quick politicized thoughts at the checkout counter

At a Duane Reade checkout counter this morning, the young Asian woman behind the register asked me in halting English if I'd like to donate a dollar for cancer, gesturing with her eyes to a flier. I saw a familiar blaze of pink, then the Komen Foundation logo, and said "no." As my receipt ticked out, I thought of saying something about abortion and quickly nixed that, thinking that my co-transactor might very well be against abortion herself. What came out was, "that group defunded Planned Parenthood." The woman made a vague noise of probably-feigned comprehension, and that was that.

Dept. of unpublished letters, cont.

To the Times, on Monday:

In his contrast of marriage, sex and childbirth patterns in red  and blue states, Ross Douthat notes that more liberal states' lower rates of teen and out-of-wedlock birth depend in part on heavier recourse to abortion. 

 

How can blue states retain their more stable marriage and childbirth practices while reducing abortion? One partial answer is universal health care. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine this March finds that abortion rates declined significantly during the first two years that Massachusetts implemented its comprehensive health insurance plan.  In the same vein, T.R. Reid observed in a Washington Post op-ed that wealthy countries with universal health care all have far lower abortion rates than those prevalent in the U.S. 

In a March 21 column, Douthat grouped Reid's implicit claim that the health reform bill would reduce the U.S. abortion rate with other "liberal" claims about the bill's likely good effects and concluded, "As a conservative, I suspect they're wrong." He did add that as an American he hope that he himself was wrong, since the bill would become law. 

I trust that as an opponent of abortion, Douthat particularly hopes he's wrong about the new health reform law's long-term effects on that front.