Hello,
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reinstated a ban on virtually all abortions during the coronavirus outbreak.
Despite a dissenting opinion from Judge James Dennis, who feared that “irreparable harm would flow” from the order, Texas joins a growing list of GOP-led states in refusing to classify abortion access as essential as they shut down access to non-essential services.
An emergency federal civil rights suit filed by groups including Planned Parenthood condemned this “blatant effort to exploit a public health crisis to advance an extreme, anti-abortion agenda, without any benefit to the state in terms of preventing or resolving shortages of PPE or hospital capacity.”
But any such lawsuit will eventually be decided by a conservative Supreme Court. Mitch McConnell, who ensured that breakdown of the Court when he blocked President Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland in 2016, told The Washington Post last week he would plan to fill a vacancy now if it arose. Another Trump appointee like Brett Kavanaugh could guarantee decades of a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, so we need to know now:
