ABORTION AND FREE SPEECH AT SCOTUS NEXT WEEK | Landmark Study Shows Abortions Are Safe | How Republicans Got Greedy
March 16, 2018
FACTS V. ADVERTISING V. SPEECH
|Mark Sherman with The Associated Press reports on the upcoming Supreme Court case that pits free speech against abortion. The state of California requires licensed pregnancy centers to let their clients know that abortions and other medical services are available elsewhere for little or no cost. The state also requires unlicensed facilities to post signs disclosing they are unlicensed. Tuesday, the justices will consider the case which has turned into a larger question about free speech. California thinks a neutral statement of fact about health care options for pregnant women doesn’t infringe on speech rights, whereas the opposition sees the law as forcing centers to advertise for “the abortion industry.”
THE SAFETY OF ABORTION
|A landmark new study confirms that abortions in the U.S. are safe and have few complications. The report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine says that all four major methods used for abortions are safe, although state laws and regulations can interfere with the safety of those procedures. Waiting periods, misinformation about health risks, pre-abortion ultrasounds and requirements around where abortions can take place can cause delays in women getting the procedure and increase the chance for complications. NPR’s Alison Kodjak reports.
POLICE PROTECTION
|David Savage with the Los Angeles Times notes that SCOTUS may decide to protect police from being sued, which has become something of a pattern for the court in recent years. He writes that the justices have done so “by extending a rule adopted in the 1980s that gave government officials ‘qualified immunity’ from being sued over constitutional violations unless they did something that the court already had clearly defined as illegal and unconstitutional.”
GONE AND GOT GREEDY
|Sam Levine writes in HuffPost that Republicans got greedy with their partisan gerrymandering practices—some 16 or 17 GOP-held seats in Congress are the result of gerrymandered districts—and now it’s coming back to bite them. Levine: “The reckoning Republicans are seeing now is one that could have been avoided, lawyers and redistricting experts say, had the GOP not been so ruthless.”
OTHER NEWS
The Court Case Making Gun Makers Anxious
The Wall Street Journal“A lawsuit in Connecticut against a leading maker of AR-15 rifles is awaiting a pivotal court ruling over whether the gun industry can be held legally responsible for mass shootings. The Connecticut Supreme Court is deciding whether to throw out a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by families of victims killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School against the manufacturer of the semiautomatic gun Adam Lanza used in the 2012 rampage.”