Analysis: Theory vs. reality. The Dobbs ruling, abortion bans and women's health

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

53% : Within hours of the Dobbs decision, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost got the courts to lift a stay on enforcement of Senate Bill 23.
52% : By mostly ignoring abortion as healthcare, the conservative justices seemed in important ways to do more to protect a fetus than the life and health of the person carrying it.
47% : But just limited examples over 11 weeks of enforcement in a single state show strict laws such as Ohio's can have profound medical and emotional implications for women and even young girls:Just a week after enforcement of SB 23 began came news that a 10-year-old rape victim had to travel from Columbus to Indianapolis for an abortion.
47% : It says simply:"Abortion presents a profound moral question.
47% : In granting a preliminary injunction earlier this week, Judge Christian Jenkins agreed, saying "Abortion is safe healthcare to which Ohioans have a right."
45% : Much of the legal argument over abortion revolves around whether one is entitled to it in at least some circumstances under the Equal Protection Clause -- the part of the 14th Amendment that says the government can't "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
45% : The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion."
45% : "In Roe and in the subsequent decision Casey v. Planned Parenthood, past Supreme Courts said women were entitled to abortion access under the Equal Protection Clause and they tried to balance those rights against those of their fetuses.
44% : As in the 26 states that have or are likely to severely restrict abortion, the majority in the Dobbs decision seemed unmoved by the advice of medical professionals.
44% : Supreme Court Dobbs Supreme Court Law Medicine Legislation Criminal Law Civil Law Judge Christian Jenkins BanOriginally published on azmirror.com, part of the TownNews Content Exchange.
42% : But News 5 Cleveland reported earlier this month that the three -- Sharon Kennedy, Pat DeWine (Gov. DeWine's son) and Pat Fischer -- told Cincinnati Right to Life in candidate surveys that women don't have a constitutional right to abortion.
41% :Data visualization made with FlourishUnder Dobbs, in other words, state legislatures can ban abortion altogether or give only the weakest, most ineffective protections of women's health -- even if they're less than what laws provided between 1868 and 1973, when Roe was decided.
40% : However, even though one has to have a uterus to get pregnant, the conservative majority in Dobbs said "a State's regulation of abortion is not a sex-based classification."
39% : In making that argument, Alito leaned on two precedents: one that said the Equal Protection Clause did not require that normal pregnancies be covered by the California disability insurance system; and another saying that protestors at Washington, D.C.-area abortion clinics weren't engaged in class-based discrimination by blocking access; they were expressing their opposition to abortion.
39% : "First, if the 'long sweep of history' imposes any restraint on the recognition of unenumerated rights, then Roe was surely wrong, since abortion was never allowed (except to save the life of the mother) in a majority of States for over 100 years before that decision was handed down," the Dobbs decision says.
38% : But while surveyed history and made nuanced arguments about settled law, the opinion spent almost no time talking about the role abortion plays in 21st-century medicine, or whether the Constitution protects women's right to avail themselves of that care.
38% : A judge in Cincinnati temporarily stopped enforcement of SB 23 on Sept. 14.
34% : Earlier this month, an appellate panel temporarily blocked enforcement of the law until the courts rule on the contradictions posed by nearly five decades of laws regulating abortion and allowing the practice.
34% : At least one of the three Republican justices who are up for re-election on Nov. 8 has said he can't take a public position on abortion because the issue is likely to come before them.
30% : Brnovich went to court to lift a nearly 50-year-old injunction that stopped the state from banning abortion in most cases, effectively allowing enforcement of a law that was written in 1864 -- before doctors regularly washed their hands.
27% : In addition, Alito's opinion acknowledges the right "to live" as "the most basic human right" while paying almost no attention to the idea that by denying access to abortion, states might deny that right to women and girls.
17% : By ignoring abortion as health care, the majority in Dobbs seems ignore the fact that just being pregnant subjects women to far more danger than does abortion.
16% : The 76-page opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, delves deeply into what he sees as the flaws in the Roe decision and subsequent rulings upholding its central tenet: that at least some right to abortion is inviolable.

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