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☆ Missouri and South Dakota Move Toward Abortion Rights Ballot Questions
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-03 | by ( Kate Zernike | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Two more states with near-total abortion bans are poised to have citizen-sponsored measures on the ballot this year that would allow voters to reverse those bans by establishing a right to abortion in their state constitutions. On Friday, a coalition of abortion rights groups in Missouri turned in 380,159 signatures to put the amendment on the ballot, nearly double the 172,000 signatures required by law. The Missouri organizers’ announcement followed a petition drive in South Dakota that announced on Wednesday that it, too, had turned in many more signatures than required for a ballot amendment there. Groups in about 10 other states have secured spots on the ballot for abortion rights measures or are collecting signatures to do so. Those include Arizona and Nevada, swing states where Democrats are hoping that voters who are newly energized around abortion rights will help President Biden win re-election.

Persons: Roe, Wade, Biden Organizations: United States Locations: Missouri, South Dakota, Arizona, Nevada

☆ A Utah Mountain Town Brings Back an Old Idea: The One-Room Schoolhouse
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-21 | by ( Kate Zernike | Ruth Fremson | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

WHY WE’RE HEREWe’re exploring how America defines itself one place at a time. In Utah, a one-room schoolhouse has helped preserve the family atmosphere of a cult-favorite ski town. They come for the powder snow, which regularly tops lists of the deepest and lightest in the country. They discover the simplicity and warmth of life in a town at the dead end of a box canyon with a year-round population of roughly 300. Young people who had children left because there was no school, and the closest school district would not send a bus up the narrow canyon road.

Persons: — Locations: Utah, Alta , Utah, Alta

☆ Wyoming Banned Abortion. She Opened an Abortion Clinic Anyway.
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-10 | by ( Kate Zernike | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It was not such an implausible idea, back in 2020, when a philanthropist emailed Julie Burkhart to ask if she would consider opening an abortion clinic in Wyoming, one of the nation’s most conservative states and the one that had twice given Donald Trump his biggest margin of victory. Dr. Tiller’s work had drawn the wrath of the nation’s anti-abortion groups — his clinic had been blockaded, bombed and flooded with a hose before he was shot to death while ushering his regular Sunday church service. When she reopened it instead of moving, the death threats and stalkers shifted to Ms. Burkhart, or, as they called her, Julie Darkheart. Running a clinic in a red state had worn her down, and she was looking to put Wichita and all it represented behind her. But if Wyoming was even more conservative than Kansas, she understood that it was more Cowboy State conservatism, shaped by self-reliance and small government, less interested in regulating what people do behind their drapes.

Persons: Julie Burkhart, Donald Trump, Burkhart, George Tiller, Tiller’s, stalkers, Julie Darkheart Locations: Wyoming, Wichita, Kan, Kansas

☆ The Campus Wars Aren’t About Gender … Are They?
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-28 | by ( Kate Zernike | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the first weeks of the war between Israel and Hamas, Nancy Andrews read about American college presidents under fire and something nagged at her. Why, she wondered, did it seem like so many of those presidents were women? The vast majority — 80 percent — were against universities led by women, even though just 30 percent of colleges and universities nationwide have female presidents. Of the seven complaints filed in the weeks after the war began, all were seeking investigations of schools led by women. “Four women presidents, all new in their roles, far too new to have shaped the culture on their campuses, called before Congress?

Persons: Nancy Andrews, Andrews, Elizabeth Magill, Claudine Gay, Sally Kornbluth, Dr, “ Organizations: Duke Medical School, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Republicans, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Locations: Israel, Columbia

☆ Abortion-Rights Backers in Missouri Start Ballot Initiative to Undo Ban
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-18 | by ( Kate Zernike | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A coalition of reproductive-rights groups in Missouri kicked off a campaign on Thursday to establish a right to abortion in the state constitution, setting up the nation’s next big test of public support for legalized abortion. Missouri was the first state to officially outlaw abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade 18 months ago. A successful ballot measure there could make it the first state where a citizen-led initiative reverses a near-total ban. Abortion-rights supporters have prevailed on all seven ballot measures put before voters since Roe was overturned, and groups in roughly 10 other states are attempting to pass similar abortion-rights measures this year. In Missouri, though, they face a tight timeline, fierce opposition from the Republicans who control state government, and a long tradition of anti-abortion politics.

Persons: Roe, Wade Locations: Missouri

☆ Sandra O’Connor’s Extraordinary Final Chapter
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-01 | by ( Kate Zernike | More About Kate Zernike | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Sandra Day O’Connor gave up lifetime tenure on the Supreme Court — a job she loved and one with extraordinary power — to care for her husband of 52 years as he deteriorated from dementia. That decision, in 2005, began a poignant final chapter of her extraordinary life. Justice O’Connor, who died on Friday at the age of 93, had hoped to care for her husband at their home in Arizona. He was unhappy about the move, but then something remarkable happened: He found romance with another woman who lived there. The justice kept up her regular visits, beaming next to the happy couple as they held hands on a porch swing.

Persons: Sandra Day O’Connor, Justice O’Connor, O’Connor, ”, Scott Locations: Arizona

☆ South Carolina Supreme Court Upholds Abortion Law, Reversing Earlier Decision
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-23 | by ( Kate Zernike | More About Kate Zernike | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The South Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the state’s new near-total ban on abortion by a 4-1 vote, reversing a decision it had made in January that struck down a similar ban and declared that the State Constitution’s protections for privacy included a right to abortion. The court’s decision was not unexpected, because the makeup of the bench had changed, and Republicans in the State Legislature had passed a new abortion law in the hopes that it would find a friendlier audience with the new court. The decision in January was written by the court’s only female justice; she retired and South Carolina now has the nation’s only all-male high court. The decision repeated what the justices said in January about a right to privacy in the State Constitution, but said the Legislature had addressed the concerns in the first law and “balanced” the interests of pregnant women with those of the fetus. “To be sure, the 2023 Act infringes on a woman’s right of privacy and bodily autonomy,” Justice John Kittredge wrote for the majority.

Persons: John Kittredge Organizations: South Carolina Supreme, Legislature, South Locations: South Carolina, State

☆ Texas Judge Says Doctors Can Use ‘Good Faith Judgment’ in Providing Abortions
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-04 | by ( Kate Zernike | More About Kate Zernike | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A Texas judge ruled on Friday that the state must allow doctors to provide abortions to pregnant women whose health or lives are in danger, or whose fetuses have little likelihood of survival. The ruling broadens and clarifies the limited exceptions granted in the state’s bans, among the strictest in the country. And it temporarily bars state officials — until the full case is decided — from prosecuting doctors who, in their “good faith judgment and in consultation with the pregnant person,” determine that an abortion is medically necessary. In her ruling, Judge Jessica Mangrum, elected as a Democrat in 2020, wrote that “the uncertainty regarding the scope of the medical exception and the related threat of enforcement of Texas’ abortion bans has created an imminent risk” for doctors who “will have no choice but to bar or delay the provision of abortion care” to women who require the procedure to prevent death or serious health risks. The ruling was in response to a lawsuit from 13 women who had been denied abortions despite pregnancy complications that they said caused grave and potentially fatal risks to their health.

Persons: Jessica Mangrum, ” Locations: Texas

☆ Ohio Moves Closer to Ballot Issue That Would Protect Abortion Rights
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-06 | by ( Kate Zernike | More About Kate Zernike | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights said on Wednesday that it had collected roughly 710,000 signatures across all of the state’s 88 counties over the last 12 weeks. Under state law, the coalition needed 413,466 to qualify for the ballot. Supporters of abortion rights are turning to ballot measures in the aftermath of the ruling last year by the United States Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, which for 50 years had guaranteed a right to abortion in the federal Constitution. They are betting on polls showing that public opinion increasingly supports some right to abortion, and opposes the bans and stricter laws that conservative state legislatures have enacted since the court’s decision. Voters in six states, including conservative ones such as Kentucky and Kansas, voted to protect or establish a right to abortion in their constitutions in last year’s elections, and abortion rights advocates in about 10 other states are considering similar plans.

Persons: Ohio, Roe, Wade Organizations: Ohioans United, Reproductive Rights, United States Locations: state’s, Kentucky, Kansas

☆ How a Year Without Roe Shifted American Views on Abortion
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-23 | by ( Kate Zernike | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For decades, Americans had settled around an uneasy truce on abortion. Even if most people weren’t happy with the status quo, public opinion about the legality and morality of abortion remained relatively static. As the decision triggered state bans and animated voters in the midterms, it shook complacency and forced many people to reconsider their positions. In the year since, polling shows that what had been considered stable ground has begun to shift: For the first time, a majority of Americans say abortion is “morally acceptable.” A majority now believes abortion laws are too strict. They are significantly more likely to identify, in the language of polls, as “pro-choice” over “pro-life,” for the first time in two decades.

Persons: Roe, Wade

☆ South Carolina House Passes Six-Week Abortion Ban
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Kate Zernike | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

His approval, if granted, would dramatically reduce abortion access for women in the state and across the region. Most Southern states have passed abortion bans since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last June. But because the South Carolina legislature has not been able to agree on the terms of a ban, the state still allows abortion up until 22 weeks of pregnancy. BackgroundThe bill will test a South Carolina Supreme Court ruling in January, which found a right to abortion in the state Constitution and struck down a previous six-week ban. Henry McMaster, a Republican who supports a six-week ban, called the Senate into its own special session next week to debate the House version of the bill.

☆ The Unexpected Women Blocking South Carolina’s Near-Total Abortion Ban
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-07 | by ( Kate Zernike | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, advocates on either side presumed that the country would divide along the bright color lines: red states completely banning abortion, blue states protecting it. That prediction failed to anticipate the Sister Senators. The Sisters, as they call themselves, are the women in the South Carolina State Senate — the only women, three Republicans, one Independent and one Democrat, in a legislature that ranks 47th among states in the proportion of women. As a block, they are refusing to allow the legislature to pass a near-total ban on abortion, despite a Republican supermajority. Three times in eight months, Republican leaders in the chamber have tried to ban abortion beginning at conception.

☆ Opinion | Republicans Did Something Most People Don’t Like, So They’re Changing the Rules
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-25 | by ( Jamelle Bouie | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

There’s still room for innovation, however, and in the past year Republicans have opened new fronts in the war for minority rule. One element in these campaigns, an aggressive battle to limit the reach of the referendum process, stands out in particular. It’s an abrupt change from earlier decades, when Republicans used referendums to build support and enthusiasm among their voters on both social and economic issues. If they get their way, the measure could go to voters in an August special election (previously, Ohio Republicans had opposed August special elections). One proposal would require 60 percent of the vote; the other two would require a two-thirds vote.

☆ Losing Ballot Issues on Abortion, G.O.P. Now Tries to Keep Them Off the Ballot
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-23 | by ( Kate Zernike | Michael Wines | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Mr. King has joined a lawsuit seeking to strike down the new restraints on ballot initiatives in Arkansas. The chief sponsor of the measure, State Representative Mike Henderson, did not respond to phone and email requests for comment. Legislatures began accelerating bans and other restrictions on abortion beginning a decade ago, after Republicans took control of more statehouses. It was among the first states to attempt a so-called heartbeat law, banning abortion after roughly six weeks of pregnancy, when many women do not realize they are pregnant. (That law passed in 2019 and went into effect after Roe was overturned but has been temporarily blocked by a state court.)

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