Vulva La Resistance
You shouldn't have to hit the road to get an abortion
With Roe v. Wade overturned, there are currently more questions than answers for women seeking abortions in states with so-called “trigger laws,” which were set up to ban abortions once Roe was history.
One of the big questions is whether or not individual states could enforce their laws to cover those who left their jurisdiction to seek an abortion in another state where it’s legal. For example, could a woman living in Idaho cross the border into Oregon to obtain an abortion without being prosecuted in her home state?
There are currently no abortion bans that attempt to prosecute women who cross state lines to seek an abortion.
However, states could try in the future, said David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University. “There is no guarantee that an aggressive prosecutor might try to stretch the law as much as they can.”
In his concurring decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that women who travel to neighboring states to receive an abortion would be protected by the constitutional right to interstate travel.
However, states could try in the future, said David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University. “There is no guarantee that an aggressive prosecutor might try to stretch the law as much as they can.”
Legislators in Missouri have discussed making it illegal for Missouri residents to access abortion services in states where abortion is legal, but can someone be prosecuted for leaving a state to obtain a service where it’s legal?
The Supreme Court (yes, that Supreme Court) considers an individual's right to travel between states to be fundamental, though where that right derives from has been the subject of some scholarly legal debate, which I’ll spare my readers.
Of course, once an individual travels from one state to another, the state they departed from no longer has legal authority over them unless there’s an outstanding warrant to be enforced. So if I leave Oregon, where I may have smoked a ton of weed, and go to Idaho, I can’t be arrested for the weed I smoked in Oregon, even though it’s illegal in Idaho. If I’m still under the influence of said weed and am arrested for driving erratically, that’s a different story because I committed the offense while in Idaho.
Oregon can’t pass a law governing my behavior while I’m in Idaho just because I carry an Oregon driver’s license. Their authority ends at the border. Likewise, if I’m from Idaho, I can stand two feet over the Oregon border and blow marijuana smoke in the face of an Idaho state trooper. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but I can do it without fearing being arrested by the state trooper because what I’m doing is legal in Oregon.
All that said, that doesn’t mean there won’t be an aggressive, zealous prosecutor out to make a name for himself who will push the edge of the legal envelope as far as possible. Or that a red state legislature won’t try to take the “party of small government” philosophy to ever newer and more ridiculous lengths by trying to outlaw leaving South Shithole to obtain an abortion.
Of course, the constitutionality of such a law will be suspect and is likely to be immediately challenged and, I suspect, tossed out on its ear. While I’m not a legal scholar, there’s no way for South Shithole to prosecute someone for what they do in East Bumfuck.
A few years ago, Kansas and Nebraska filed a joint lawsuit against Colorado because their residents were returning from Colorado with marijuana (where it’s legal) to their home states (where it’s not). They couldn’t stop every car at the Colorado border (an unconstitutional impingement upon the right to interstate travel), so Nebraska and Kansas wanted Colorado to stop selling weed to their residents.
No can do, the court told them. It’s not the responsibility of Colorado businesses to police the residents of other states just because they’re subject to different laws at home. The same would hold for abortion. Why should any state be able to regulate what its residents do while in another state? It’s none of Oregon’s damned business- or jurisdiction- what I do when visiting family in Minnesota.
When you break it down, this is all about power and control. Republicans want political power so they may control what people- in this case- women may or may not do. And at the state level, they don’t want to control women only when they’re in South Shithole; Republicans want to control women wherever they might be, whether it’s East Bumfuck or any other state. So wherever women go, if they call South Shithole home, Republicans want them to be subject to its laws.
No one deserves to have that kind of power over another person. At least not in a just society that is still (at least for the moment) free.
No matter how you slice it, Friday, June 24, 2022, was a dark and sad day for America. This country shouldn’t be in the business of taking rights back; it should be finding ways to EXPAND rights. We should always be exploring ways to make Americans freer and better able to be what they wish to be and to do what they’d like to do.
Sadly, the GOP has become the party of haters, small minds, and those who get off on controlling others. Unable to find joy in their lives, Republicans endeavor to keep others from finding happiness in theirs. It’s a pretty miserable philosophy of life, but if you have nothing but hatred and disdain for others in your heart, it’s what you do. Especially if you call yourself a “Christian.”
For God so loved the world that He gave us Republicans, so they could forever piss in our sandboxes and work to harsh our mellow because they had no joy in their own lives. And so they endeavored to control the lives and decisions of others so that they could force them to feel the misery and emptiness they experienced in their own life.
Pathetic. Miserable. Disagreeable. And yes, Virginia, Republicans are built to stay that way.