Nearly two years after it was first proposed by Republican lawmakers, an Idaho law that, as one rights advocate said, essentially “traps” people in the state to stop them from getting abortion care, was permitted to go into effect on Monday after a federal appeals court ruling.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Idaho can prohibit people from “harboring or transporting” a minor who needs to leave the state to obtain an abortion, which is still legal in the surrounding states of Oregon, Washington, and Montana.
The law, originally proposed as House Bill 242, makes the so-called crime of “abortion trafficking” punishable by two to five years in prison, even if the pregnant person obtains an abortion in a state where the procedure is legal.
The law was blocked in its entirety in late 2023 by a judge who found it violated First Amendment rights, because it also included a ban on “recruiting” teenagers to obtain abortion care across state lines.
The appeals court on Monday found that the “recruitment” portion of the law did violate […]
As an expat, I do not keep up with the idiotic pronouncements from the US judiciary. But this story caught my eye because it demonstrates how the Federal judicial bench has destroyed the past 2000 years of western juridical thought. The US Constitution says a lot of things, especially to those people who believe that the Bill of Rights is part of the document. But it also leaves out a lot of things. For example, until some time in the 2000s, it was considered elementary that people had a right to travel among the states, unrestricted by government encumbrances. There are some exceptions, narrowly defined by law, such as bringing a minor across state lines for immoral purposes (if that law is still on the books!), which were primarily intended to bring a Federal presence into traditional state matters. But freedom of movement was an unwritten but well understood principle.
What this case says to me is that US law has been so debased by the post-Nixon judicial appointments process conducted by the US Congress that fundamental law has been subverted.
The First Amendment is the absolute last resort argument for anything that neither the facts nor case law supports. In sports, this would be called a “hail mary pass.”
What this decision says to me (assuming competent lawyers were assisting the plaintiff) is that American law has been so stripped of reliable precedent and principled decisions that there is nothing left for an individual to use to challenge a law that directly affects them.
This is an unprecedented failure of the US judicial system, and specifically, Federal judges.
The Congress had better set up a Permanent Committee on Impeachment to get the clowns out of the system before the US is completely destroyed. The now 50-year project to re-make America into a Christofacist Kingdom (with liberty only for the powerful) started with the unchecked appointment of Federal judges, and it would appear that the project has (nearly?) reached it’s goal.
That is the worst decision I have ever heard by a Federal court!!!! How dare they? And it makes no sense. Since abortion is legal in a number of states, how can this be illegal for a woman to travel to a place where abortion is legal and then her home state wants to prosecute her? Absolutely ridiculous and I’m sure unconstitutional.
This is now really getting out of hand—-and stupid Americans who put in these jurists and Congress people are really going to suffer for the next four years and even longer with a Supreme Court and Federal courts!!!!
As if we needed another argument against life long appointments to the federal bench. No government job, no matter how lofty, should be life long including the Supremes. Pick a number maybe ten to be the maximum then up and out no matter how beloved RBG was or any other.
Secondly are we not US citizens first and therefore can do as we will outside whatever state we call home? What will be done to counter this absurd totalitarian dictate? An underground railroad of safe houses and volunteers to protect their identities as they move from one place to the other to hide from the zealots. It really is starting to sound like dealing with the Taliban.