Federal Judges Block States From Limiting Abortions During Wuhan Coronavirus Pandemic
UPDATE: Federal appeals court temporarily reinstates ban in Texas.
***UPDATE: The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily reinstated the abortion ban in Texas:
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay on a ruling from a lower court that had blocked Texas from enforcing the ban. State officials argue the ban is intended to conserve medical supplies for health workers on the front lines of the coronavirus response. But abortion rights advocates say states are using the pandemic as an excuse to block access.
In a 2-1 opinion, the appeals court ruled that the order from the lower court be stayed until an appeal from Texas is considered. The two judges who ruled in favor of a stay were nominated to their posts by President Trump and former President George W. Bush.
“The temporary stay ordered this afternoon justly prioritizes supplies and personal protective equipment for the medical professionals in need,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement Tuesday.
Circuit Court Judge James Dennis, a Clinton appointee, dissented, writing “a federal judge has already concluded that irreparable harm would flow from allowing the executive order to prohibit abortions during this critical time.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) issued a directive earlier this month suspending nonessential medical procedures in an effort to conserve masks and gloves for health workers on the front lines of the pandemic.
Alabama, Ohio, and Texas limited abortions due to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. With hospitals filling up the medical community needs to have as many doctors and nurses on hand.
***Previous Reporting…
Alabama, Ohio, and Texas limited abortions due to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. With hospitals filling up the medical community needs to have as many doctors and nurses on hand.
But abortion fanatics want special treatment for abortion and fought the orders. Federal judges agreed with them.
From The Wall Street Journal:
Abortion providers are challenging restrictions in several states. In addition to Monday’s court orders, cases also are pending in Iowa and Oklahoma. Texas was an initial legal battleground, and U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel on Monday issued a temporary restraining order against the state.
Judge Yeakel wrote that delaying abortions causes irreparable harm because, as pregnancies progress, abortions become less safe and eventually illegal. The judge, who was appointed by former GOP President George W. Bush, added that the providers’ lawsuit is likely to be successful.
“The Supreme Court has spoken clearly,” Judge Yeakel wrote of a woman’s right to an early-term abortion. “There can be no outright ban on such a procedure. This court will not speculate on whether the Supreme Court included a silent ‘except-in-a-national-emergency clause.’ ”
The judge is expected to consider a longer-term injunction on April 13. Texas vowed an immediate appeal.
U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett said that “Ohio hadn’t yet shown that banning surgical abortions would save ‘any beneficial amount’ of protective medical equipment for other uses.
Therefore, the ban in Ohio created “a substantial obstacle in the path of patients seeking pre-viability abortions, thus creating an undue burden on abortion access.”
Absolutely ridiculous. Unless the mother’s life is in extreme trouble I do not see how abortion is anything but an elective procedure.
A virus is spreading across the country. People are dying. The medical community is reaching out to retired doctors and nurses to help out.
God forbid we do not put infanticide front and center.
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Comments
Liquor store, pot store and killing babies are essential services now? While gun shops can be close. Not sure what part of SHALL NOT BE INFERNEGED needs explaining.
These Leftist Judges are definitely NON-Essential!
Well, they have a point. Abortionists aren’t medical personnel, they’re butchers, and nobody’s arguing against keeping butcher shops open.
I’d disagree, not because I think abortion should be legal, which at the moment unfortunately it is, but that if they’re allowed to suspend it then the other amendments are subject to suspension. We already have to fight like hell to keep them from shutting down the 2nd, if this stands do you think dem governors won’t suspend the 2nd at a moments notice?
Let’s just get two more originalist judges on the supreme court and bring back Roe for another look and hopefully some common sense rule ending the practice as well as an end to the bullschiff anti 2nd laws.
You lost me with “other amendments” – in which amendment do you imagine the so-called “right” to an abortion exists?
The 2nd Amendment acknowledges an absolute RIGHT to bear arms, and is the only one that specifically precludes any limitations whatsoever “shall not be infringed” <- no such language for any other Right.
SCOTUS invented the "right" to abortion out of whole cloth. Absolutely nothing in the Constitution supports it. Even leading liberal law professors, like Harvards Lawrence Tribe, acknowledge that Roe can't stand on its merits. It has none. There was never any Constitutional argument, much less textual support in the Constitution, in support of it.
“Judge Yeakel wrote that delaying abortions causes irreparable harm because, as pregnancies progress, abortions become less safe and eventually illegal.”
For the doomed child any abortion is unsafe.
The PC, selective, opportunistic religion and State.
Pro-Choice is four choices too late. What would it take to tamp down the planned parenthood morbidity rate and pandemic? Nearly a million Fetal-Americans are cancelled annually in America alone.
Every life matters. Think of the children (our Posterity)!
Child Murder/Abortion is the Religion of the Leftist State.
How odd. Democrats have been arguing for years abortions were safe, and elective, up to the date of birth.
Hear Hear!
It’s an odd ruling. One I hope is appealed.
What if the Governors ignored the Federal Judges orders?
They’ll be impeached. Just like Pres. Trump will be if he takes some people’s advice and defies the kritarchs’ rulings.
Impeached by whom? Their legislatures?! Generally these governors’ legislatures are more pro-life than they are. Why would they impeach them?
And I think the Dems would be wary of a repeat performance.
So….either these judges are wrong and the states can define abortion as not essential or by their logic (that there is no “except in an emergency” clause) all of the state shelter in place orders are also unconstitutional and should have injunctions filed on them.
And my son’s tonsillectomy, to remove body parts that have been giving him trouble for years, was cancelled.
I understand both sides of the arguments, and our hospitals have also banned all elective surgery. However I have not seen a risk assessment of COVID 19 contagion at an abortion clinic.
On a related note, 3 of the 4 counties do surgical termination of pregnancies in hospitals. On Oahu private clinics are available, and oddly enough for the State with the most liberal laws in this regard, provide full and complete gynecological and OB services, inclusive of all options, ultrasound, and real medical care. Each of the clinics have doctors with hospital privileges, something found unusual in some states.
Reproductive rites are a PC religious sacrament offered for social progress, social justice, medical progress, and Democrat leverage.
Planned Parenthood a.k.a. selective-child a.k.a. wicked solution = around 100% excessive deaths. War is less efficient. Even Gaia is less morbid in the near-term. What is She batting with the Wuhan virus (SARS-CoV-2) and Covid-19 disease and pandemic?
I have no clinical basis for my opinion but, I would think that a woman’s auto-immune system would be affected by an abortion thus putting her in a high-risk category with any exposure to the Wuhan/Chinese virus.
I agree with the court. Get your restrictions in by popular vote, when the vote comes back to the people someday.
The reasoning is that a fetus of a few cells is not a human (it’s human. e.g. not wolf, but not a human). If the pregnancy must progress, the situation changes, and the choice is no longer available that the couple should be entitled to.
So, elective abortion within the first month following conception. Perhaps following the last period? One month should be sufficient time to decide whether their… her child is worthy of life or if it is a “burden” and should be cancelled.
It’s human but not a human… the tortured logic of the death cult.
rhhardin has a point. The planned parenthood choice may, for one reason, be considered for life deemed unworthy of life a.k.a. “the not cute” factor. Think polar bears, lions, and tigers, oh my. But, curiously, not birds, that have to brave the wind turbine gauntlets to get to the other side, or seals, walruses, bats, etc through corporate environmentalist preferences.
Probably after judge-shopping for Obama appointees.
Didn’t know any rights whether in or out of constitution are absolute. Learn something new every day.
Also been waiting for Libby judgee to put injunction on stuff like djt suspending fda rules or whatever to to use presently the drugs libs dislike because they could work.
There has to come a time when someone tells the courts “No”.
Suppose a state defies one of these purported orders; does anyone suppose Trump would send in the National Guard to enforce it?!
Been done…
https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-politics/federal-judge-blocks-texas-from-temporarily-closing-abortion-clinics-as-part-of-states-coronavirus-response/
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — An appeals court has upheld Texas’ decision to close abortion clinics as part of the state’s response to COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has blocked a lower court’s decision Monday that prevented Texas from temporarily closing abortion clinics.
No, I’m talking about someone simply taking a stand against judicial supremacy by simply telling the courts “No, we will not comply”. This is not Arkansas in 1957, and this is not segregation. Trump will not send in armed feds to enforce an arrogant court edict.
Well I’ll be interested to see who appointed the judge who overruled it. The answer may be in the link I posted, but I’m going to bed now, so for now I’m too lazy to look it up…..
But I digress… Many of us share that fantasy, but I see that as a potential tipping point…
“We have to save lives at all economic costs. But you can take lives too. We’ll keep paying for that.” -Big Gov
My father-in-law has been in excruciating pain for months and had a hip replacement scheduled for last week. It was of course postponed. But by all means PP can continue taking human lives.
There is a pandemic in progress. Every life matters. Think of the children!
Never let a crisis go to waste. After all a Covid-19 patient might be able to use one of those rooms in the abortion clinic.
You have hospitals cancelling elective surgeries–e.g. knee replacements, to be sure that all beds in the hospital(s) are reserved for possible Covid-19 use.
You’ve got the two big USNS Hospital Ships Mercy and Comfort docked in Los Angeles and Manhattan so you can use their hospital beds and surgical centers for non Covid-19 patients.
So you have a plausible “excuse” for shutting down abortion clinics–after all there’s no “elective surgery” that is more elective than an abortion.
Reproductive politics ain’t beanbag.
You’re right. Their argument is not to save life specifically, but to ensure available resources, presumably to limit the choice that one of them should be deemed nonviable.
“”This court will not speculate on whether the Supreme Court included a silent ‘except-in-a-national-emergency clause.’ ” “”
I’ll bet “this court” doesn’t have a problem with a silent “except-in-a-national-emergency” clause to the Constitution.
Reversed for now
https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-politics/federal-judge-blocks-texas-from-temporarily-closing-abortion-clinics-as-part-of-states-coronavirus-response/
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — An appeals court has upheld Texas’ decision to close abortion clinics as part of the state’s response to COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has blocked a lower court’s decision Monday that prevented Texas from temporarily closing abortion clinics.