Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows

[Syt]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/02/georgia-embyros-tax-dependents-fetus

Embryos can be listed as dependents on tax returns, Georgia rules

Taxpayers in the state will be able to claim tax exemption for 'any unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat'

Georgia taxpayers can now list embryos as dependents on their tax returns.

In a news release on Monday, Georgia's department of revenue said it would begin to "recognize any unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat ... as eligible for [an] individual income tax dependent exemption".

The announcement follows the supreme court's ruling on 24 June that overturned the landmark Roe v Wade ruling that established the nationwide right to an abortion nearly 50 years earlier. A lower federal appellate court had also decided on 20 July to let the Georgia law banning most abortions in the state take effect.

Officials added that taxpayers filing returns from 20 July onward can claim a deduction of up to $3,000 for any fetus whose heartbeat could be detected. That "may occur as early as six weeks' gestation", before most women even know they are pregnant, the statement said.

Taxpayers must be ready to provide "relevant medical records or other supporting documentation ... if requested by the [revenue] department".

Legal analysts and advocates for abortion rights greeted the announcement with dismay and skepticism.

Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor and political scientist, tweeted that some pregnancies detected within six weeks of gestation "result in natural miscarriages", which could leave the Georgia's treasury "handing out a lot of cash for pregnancies that would never come to term".

auren Groh-Wargo, manager of Stacey Abrams's campaign for Georgia governor, tweeted: "So what happens when you claim your fetus as a dependent and then miscarry later in the pregnancy, you get investigated both for [possible] tax fraud and an illegal abortion?"

The Georgia revenue department's announcement Monday came less than a month after a pregnant woman in Texas memorably argued to police that her unborn child should count as an additional passenger upon receiving a traffic ticket for driving alone in a high-occupancy – or HOV – lane. The woman didn't talk her way out of the ticket but has said she plans to go to court to try out her argument there.

More than half the states in America have either banned or are expected to ban abortion after the supreme court returned regulation of abortion to the state level. Bans like Georgia's have forced patients seeking abortions to travel hundreds of miles from home, at times placing them, their friends, their families and abortion rights organizations in legal jeopardy as some states seek to criminalize helping people terminate pregnancies

[garbon]

That sounds like a mess.

Good news on Kansas - a phrase I never thought I'd type.

[Admiral Yi]

No skin off my ass if Georgia collects less revenue.

[Josquius]

Is there a way to exploit this via continuous impregnation and abortion?

[garbon]

Is there a way to exploit this via continuous impregnation and abortion?

Lauren Groh-Wargo, manager of Stacey Abrams's campaign for Georgia governor, tweeted: "So what happens when you claim your fetus as a dependent and then miscarry later in the pregnancy, you get investigated both for [possible] tax fraud and an illegal abortion?"

[Admiral Yi]

Is there a way to exploit this via continuous impregnation and abortion?

Pretty sure they're gonna pro rate it.

[Josquius]

So, kansas rejecting a abortion ban by a large margin.
I've seen this ad credited. Rather awesomely frames objecting in a way the crazies can relate to.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3hNaOFXevd0&feature=youtu.be

[Gups]

Is there a way to exploit this via continuous impregnation and abortion?

Accroding to google, maximum tax rate in Georgia of 5.75% so maximum annual saving would be $172.50. Seems likely a pretty small saving for being permanently pregnant.

[Eddie Teach]

Not sure how this differs from a deduction for the pregnant woman.

[The Larch]

Not supreme court related per se, but also deals with judicial challenges to abortion in the US.

US abortion pill access in doubt after Texas judge suspends approval

Ruling on mifepristone, widely used for medical abortions, sets up legal showdown as Washington state issues conflicting order


A federal judge in Texas on Friday suspended US approval of the abortion medication mifepristone, one of the two drugs commonly used for medication abortions, in a closely watched case brought by anti-abortion activists.

But shortly after, a conflicting ruling came out of another federal court in Washington state, ordering the Food and Drug Administration to refrain from taking any action that would affect the pill's availability. The two rulings throw the future of the drug into question, increasing the chances that the supreme court will ultimately decide its fate.

The Texas decision, a preliminary injunction issued by US district judge Matthew J Kacsmaryk, orders the FDA to pause mifepristone's approval while a lawsuit challenging the safety and approval of the drug proceeds.

His ruling, however, doesn't immediately go into effect, as he gives the federal government seven days to appeal, which federal lawyers representing the FDA are expected to do so swiftly.

President Joe Biden said his administration would fight the Texas decision. "If this ruling were to stand, then there will be virtually no prescription, approved by the FDA, that would be safe from these kinds of political, ideological attacks," he said in a statement.

Vice-president Kamala Harris said the ruling "threatens the rights of women nationwide to make decisions about their healthcare and the ability to access medication prescribed to them by their doctors".

The attorney general, Merrick Garland, said in a statement: "The justice department strongly disagrees with the decision of the district court for the northern district of Texas in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v FDA and will be appealing the court's decision and seeking a stay pending appeal. Today's decision overturns the FDA's expert judgment, rendered over two decades ago, that mifepristone is safe and effective."

The conflicting Washington decision came in a lawsuit brought by Democratic state attorneys general seeking to remove federal restrictions on how the pill can be distributed.

The Texas case against the FDA was brought by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian conservative legal advocacy group, arguing that the FDA exceeded its regulatory authority when it approved mifepristone more than two decades ago, in 2000.

The Trump-appointed judge didn't go as far as the plaintiffs wanted by withdrawing the approvals of chemical abortion drugs and removing them from the list of approved drugs. But he put a "stay" or hold on approval of the drug.

The plaintiffs included widely disputed claims in their case, arguing the FDA's decision to extend the gestational age up to which mifepristone could be prescribed put pregnant women and girls at risk; and that the FDA's 2021 decision to remove the in-person dispensing requirement over mifepristone during the pandemic put pregnant people at risk. They also claimed the FDA "failed to acknowledge and address the federal laws that prohibit the distribution of chemical abortion drugs by postal mail", invoking a 19th-century law which made it illegal to send "obscene, lewd or lascivicious" items through the mail, including pornography and abortifacients.

"Simply put, FDA stonewalled judicial review – until now," Kacsmaryk wrote in his 67-page ruling.

Mifepristone has been repeatedly found to be safe and effective and is used across the world. Joe Biden's administration, responding to the lawsuit, has said the drug's approval was well supported by science and that the challenge to the FDA comes much too late.

The US justice department has also argued that a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would undercut trust in the FDA, the agency that signs off on the safety of food products and drugs in the US and would increase the burden on surgical abortion clinics already overcrowded with women coming from states that now ban abortion.

The FDA warned in legal arguments in January that a decision in favor of the ADF would do "longstanding scientific determination based on speculative allegations of harm", and would "upend the status quo and the reliance interests of patients and doctors who depend on mifepristone, as well as businesses involved with mifepristone distribution".

Jenny Ma, senior counsel to the Center for Reproductive Rights, warned that "if plaintiffs can just bring lawsuits like this, based on junk science, the impact goes far beyond medication abortion. It really seeks to undermine the entirety of FDA authority over drug approval."

Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointed judge, is thought to have been targeted by the ADF in a process known as "judge shopping" because of his work with far-right organizations. He previously worked for the First Liberty Institute, a conservative Christian organization that focuses on litigation against LGBTQ+ and abortion rights.

Clinics and doctors that prescribe the two-drug combination have said that if mifepristone were pulled from the market, they would switch to using only the second drug, misoprostol. That single-drug approach has a slightly lower rate of effectiveness in ending pregnancies, but it is widely used in countries where mifepristone is illegal or unavailable.

The decision represents major victory for the anti-abortion movement less than a year after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, which guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion and led to full abortion bans in 13 states, while 16 states have laws specifically targeting abortion medications.

Advocates and progressive states have been bracing for the national reverberations of Kacsmaryk's decision. This week the governor of Washington state said it had purchased a three-year supply of the leading abortion medication in anticipation.

Jay Inslee, a Democratic lawmaker, said he ordered the department of corrections, which has a pharmacy license, to buy 30,000 doses of the generic version of mifepristone at a cost of about $1.28m, or $42.50 each pill. The shipment arrived in late March.

"This Texas lawsuit is a clear and present danger to patients and providers all across the country," Inslee said in a statement. "Washington will not sit by idly and risk the devastating consequences of inaction."

Mifepristone is also the subject of lawsuits in West Virginia and North Carolina seeking to expand access to the drug by arguing that state restrictions conflict with federal law.

[Hamilcar]

US lawyers: how relevant is it that this judge is effectively removing the FDA's authority here? If I was a pharmaceutical company, shouldn't I be very concerned that the US regulatory body no longer has the final say on approval of my multi-billion dollar investment?

[celedhring]

Also, who gets to decide on the competing rulings (the one in Texas and the one in Washington) - the SCOTUS?

[Hamilcar]

US lawyers: how relevant is it that this judge is effectively removing the FDA's authority here? If I was a pharmaceutical company, shouldn't I be very concerned that the US regulatory body no longer has the final say on approval of my multi-billion dollar investment?

Maybe to follow on: who would still develop any drugs even vaguely related to female reproductive issues in the US? Seems like the downstream risks are too high... and isn't that the game here?

[The Larch]

An article I read yesterday was absolutely fuming at the Texas' judge, basically claiming that the guy made up stuff that is nowhere in the law when making his ruling in order to further his own arch-conservative views. I assume that he'll still be immune to consequences anyway.

[grumbler]

Also, who gets to decide on the competing rulings (the one in Texas and the one in Washington) - the SCOTUS?

Both will likely be appealed to the relevant Circuit Courts of Appeal (Fifth, for Texas, Ninth, for Washington) and, if both circuit rulings survive that, can be appealed to the USSC.  The USSC does not legally have to hear that case, as I understand it, but is in practice obligated to do so by the principal of equal protection under the law.  This is especially true when, as in the Texas case, the circuit judge claims to have the power to establish law nationally, not just in his district.