Can states actually outlaw traveling out of state for an abortion?

[Anonymous]

Right-wing states always try to imprison their residents in the 19th Century but they can’t stop people from traveling to other states. States made it hard to get married and harder to get divorced so Nevada created a whole economy as an elopement and quick divorce destination. Other states couldn't prevent their residents from going to Nevada and had to accept Nevada marriages and divorces.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Right-wing states always try to imprison their residents in the 19th Century but they can’t stop people from traveling to other states. States made it hard to get married and harder to get divorced so Nevada created a whole economy as an elopement and quick divorce destination. Other states couldn't prevent their residents from going to Nevada and had to accept Nevada marriages and divorces.

Sure, but those were individual people making individual decisions for themselves. The state will say that the fetus is not able to make a decision for itself to leave the state and become aborted.

If an embryo gets personhood status, a woman could leave the state but she would have to leave the embryo behind. Which she can’t do, so she’s stuck in the state until the embryo is out of her body. And they won’t allow her to abort the pregnancy in that state because the embryo has personhood status. And they won’t allow her to move her body containing the embryo into another state because that embryo has personhood status and is protected. So effectively the woman is stuck in the state.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am reading about bills being introduced to make it illegal for a woman to leave the state in order to get an abortion.

So if one of these actually passes, how could it realistically be enforced?

Would pregnant women from the state outlawing travel be refused permission to travel to a state which allows abortions?'

Or, would pregnant women need to certify their pregnancy status with a doctor before leaving, and again upon return?

What about international travel?

The bills floating around that I’m aware of would not actually “prevent” anyone from traveling to get an abortion. They are more targeted at the providers of out of state abortion. So if it’s illegal in, say Kentucky, but legal in Illinois, Kentucky would purport to have jurisdiction over Illinois providers for performing abortion on a Kentucky resident. It’s not like they are going to have checkpoints at every state crossing giving pea stick tests.

They could do a pee test at the state line. It would be similar to DWI checks.

Please! Millions commute "over state lines" just to get to work every day. This is a non-starter.

I want to agree with you that this is all hyperbole and has no chance of ever happening. Five years ago, I would have. And yet, so much of the past several years has been a slow creep of what would have been unimaginable a decade ago. At this point it’s hard to rule out anything a decade or two from now and to dismiss posts like the one you replied to as impossible is how it happens. I don’t mean to single you out specifically, just that I’ve been thinking a lot in light of recent events about what I imagined as impossible and how hard it is to rule anything out now.

Unfortunately I feel the same way. So many things that I previously believed impossible have come to pass. On the abortion front, these past few weeks have been truly shocking. The pregnant 10 year old; doctors being told they can’t use their judgment to care for pregnant women; states criminalizing a woman crossing state lines to get an abortion. I will no longer be told that I’m being hysterical. I’m being realistic and we all need to start paying attention and fighting for our rights.

Then provide reliable sources for all of these claims you are making. You lose any credibility by making these wild assertions.

Which assertions are “wild”? The Texas bounty law? The 10 year old rape victim? The Texas AG suing to prevent doctors from performing abortions to save a woman’s life?

And if the Republicans take congress they will most certainly make abortion illegal throughout the country.

Pp here. Still waiting to hear which of these assertions is “wild”

[Anonymous]

There is also precedent for a state to "punish a crime committed by its citizens in another state, so long as the conduct is criminal in both states," said Gabriel (Jack) Chin, a law professor at the University of California-Davis. If abortion was legal in the second state, the state passing the out-of-state abortion restriction might be on safer legal ground if it could demonstrate some form of harm to the state, he added.

"State A could argue that, unlike traveling to engage in gambling or smoking marijuana, an abortion has continuing effects in State A, namely, the death of a citizen or future citizen of the state," Chin said.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/jun/29/can-states-punish-women-traveling-get-abortion

[Anonymous]

Chilling.. Chilling that a medical professional organization needs to issue this report.

https://www.the-rheumatologist.org/article/challenges-in-reproductive-health-in-rheumatic-disease/

In a series of prescient comments, Dr. Talabi encouraged rheumatologists to consider the ways they may be personally and professionally affected by changes to abortion access. One month later, on June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court voted to overrule Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion. Dr. Talabi highlighted instances in which elective termination may be medically important for a patient, especially in our population of patients at increased risk of adverse events in pregnancy. Dr. Talabi also discussed the fraught area of teratogenic or abortifacient medications used in rheumatic diseases and legality concerns for rheumatologists as prescribing physicians.

Methotrexate is widely used as a safe medication to treat a variety of rheumatic diseases, but it can also function as an abortifacient. Although mifepristone and misoprostol are the most commonly used medications for medical abortion, methotrexate can also be used in this capacity. Patients are turning to Twitter and Facebook to share their stories of being denied refills of their methotrexate prescription because of legality concerns by their doctor or pharmacy.

The ACR has assembled a task force of medical and policy experts to determine the best course of action to ensure our patients keep access to the treatments they need. In the meantime, the ACR is asking members and patients who have experienced challenges accessing methotrexate to email [e-mail] with details.

This growing problem is also on the radar of rheumatic disease advocacy groups. The Arthritis Foundation ([800]283-7800), the Lupus Foundation of America ([e-mail]) and Creaky Joints ([845]348-0400), for example, have issued calls for patients to contact them if they are having trouble with access to methotrexate due to these recent legal changes.

In an effort to clarify legality concerns among physicians, the Department of Health & Human Services has issued guidance on the disclosure of information related to reproductive healthcare. It makes clear that physicians are not required to disclose private medical information to third parties and provides patients with tips on protecting private health information on personal cell phones and tablets. The AMA has identified and recommended additional actions to increase transparency on what apps are doing with medical information. Technology companies are taking their own actions.

On July 1, tech giant Google announced steps it is taking to help protect privacy, stating: “Some of the places people visit—including medical facilities like counseling centers, domestic violence shelters, abortion clinics, fertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics, cosmetic surgery clinics, and others—can be particularly personal. Today, we’re announcing that if our systems identify that someone has visited one of these places, we will delete these entries from Location History soon after they visit. This change will take effect in the coming weeks.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am reading about bills being introduced to make it illegal for a woman to leave the state in order to get an abortion.

So if one of these actually passes, how could it realistically be enforced?

Would pregnant women from the state outlawing travel be refused permission to travel to a state which allows abortions?'

Or, would pregnant women need to certify their pregnancy status with a doctor before leaving, and again upon return?

What about international travel?

The bills floating around that I’m aware of would not actually “prevent” anyone from traveling to get an abortion. They are more targeted at the providers of out of state abortion. So if it’s illegal in, say Kentucky, but legal in Illinois, Kentucky would purport to have jurisdiction over Illinois providers for performing abortion on a Kentucky resident. It’s not like they are going to have checkpoints at every state crossing giving pea stick tests.

They could do a pee test at the state line. It would be similar to DWI checks.

Please! Millions commute "over state lines" just to get to work every day. This is a non-starter.

If personhood begins at conception though, women could be smuggling people over state borders all the time.

Do you honestly believe this is the direction red states are going?

Texas is challenging the federal law allowing abortion to save the mother’s life. The way some of the anti abortion laws are written, they would get rid of some birth control and IVF-whether that’s because people want to eliminate these options or because they’re too stupid to understand consequences, I can’t say. States are trying to make it hard for women to go out of state for abortion, and want to punish someone if not the women seeking abortion. Women are being arrested for miscarriages. A federal agency was tracking women’s cycles while they were detained and withholding medical care in order to force them to carry out their pregnancies. A 10yo had to travel out of state for an abortion after being raped, and someone who helps craft anti abortion laws lied to Congress saying that wasn’t an abortion. The Supreme Court says a lot of rights might not be rights. The man who authored the TX abortion law is now involved in a lawsuit against PrEP because it promotes homosexuality. They’re literally burning books at school board meetings.

Where do you think the line is, PP? I used to think things like, they can’t take away abortion rights, or of course no one’s going to storm the capitol to try to prevent a peaceful transfer of power, or the sky won’t turn orange instead of blue. But now I’ve lived through all those things. These states are showing us what they want to do. I don’t know where the line is, but some states are trying to make it illegal for women to cross state lines to get healthcare. I don’t know how far they’ll go to achieve that goal, but they’ve already fooled me once and I’m not eager to go for twice.

+1 all of this. Wake up, people!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right-wing states always try to imprison their residents in the 19th Century but they can’t stop people from traveling to other states. States made it hard to get married and harder to get divorced so Nevada created a whole economy as an elopement and quick divorce destination. Other states couldn't prevent their residents from going to Nevada and had to accept Nevada marriages and divorces.

Sure, but those were individual people making individual decisions for themselves. The state will say that the fetus is not able to make a decision for itself to leave the state and become aborted.

If an embryo gets personhood status, a woman could leave the state but she would have to leave the embryo behind. Which she can’t do, so she’s stuck in the state until the embryo is out of her body. And they won’t allow her to abort the pregnancy in that state because the embryo has personhood status. And they won’t allow her to move her body containing the embryo into another state because that embryo has personhood status and is protected. So effectively the woman is stuck in the state.

In response to the dissent, Alito added this little gem to the final opinion (wasn't in the draft):

“According to the dissent, the Constitution requires the states to regard a fetus as lacking even the most basic human right—to live—at least until an arbitrary point in a pregnancy has passed. Nothing in the Constitution or in our Nation’s legal traditions authorizes the Court to adopt that ‘theory of life.’”

So, yes, it's definitely possible that Court would uphold fetal personhood laws, and then guess what? It would be like the Fugitive Slave Laws, where states exerted jurisdiction over people in other states (except this time it would fetuses in pregnant women's bodies).

Good discussion here in the WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/14/what-pre-civil-war-history-tells-us-about-coming-abortion-battle/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am reading about bills being introduced to make it illegal for a woman to leave the state in order to get an abortion.

So if one of these actually passes, how could it realistically be enforced?

Would pregnant women from the state outlawing travel be refused permission to travel to a state which allows abortions?'

Or, would pregnant women need to certify their pregnancy status with a doctor before leaving, and again upon return?

What about international travel?

The bills floating around that I’m aware of would not actually “prevent” anyone from traveling to get an abortion. They are more targeted at the providers of out of state abortion. So if it’s illegal in, say Kentucky, but legal in Illinois, Kentucky would purport to have jurisdiction over Illinois providers for performing abortion on a Kentucky resident. It’s not like they are going to have checkpoints at every state crossing giving pea stick tests.

They could do a pee test at the state line. It would be similar to DWI checks.

Please! Millions commute "over state lines" just to get to work every day. This is a non-starter.

I want to agree with you that this is all hyperbole and has no chance of ever happening. Five years ago, I would have. And yet, so much of the past several years has been a slow creep of what would have been unimaginable a decade ago. At this point it’s hard to rule out anything a decade or two from now and to dismiss posts like the one you replied to as impossible is how it happens. I don’t mean to single you out specifically, just that I’ve been thinking a lot in light of recent events about what I imagined as impossible and how hard it is to rule anything out now.

Unfortunately I feel the same way. So many things that I previously believed impossible have come to pass. On the abortion front, these past few weeks have been truly shocking. The pregnant 10 year old; doctors being told they can’t use their judgment to care for pregnant women; states criminalizing a woman crossing state lines to get an abortion. I will no longer be told that I’m being hysterical. I’m being realistic and we all need to start paying attention and fighting for our rights.

Then provide reliable sources for all of these claims you are making. You lose any credibility by making these wild assertions.

Which assertions are “wild”? The Texas bounty law? The 10 year old rape victim? The Texas AG suing to prevent doctors from performing abortions to save a woman’s life?

And if the Republicans take congress they will most certainly make abortion illegal throughout the country.

Pp here. Still waiting to hear which of these assertions is “wild”

There are no wild assertions. These are all being openly talked about by conservatives and you know it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am reading about bills being introduced to make it illegal for a woman to leave the state in order to get an abortion.

So if one of these actually passes, how could it realistically be enforced?

Would pregnant women from the state outlawing travel be refused permission to travel to a state which allows abortions?'

Or, would pregnant women need to certify their pregnancy status with a doctor before leaving, and again upon return?

What about international travel?

The bills floating around that I’m aware of would not actually “prevent” anyone from traveling to get an abortion. They are more targeted at the providers of out of state abortion. So if it’s illegal in, say Kentucky, but legal in Illinois, Kentucky would purport to have jurisdiction over Illinois providers for performing abortion on a Kentucky resident. It’s not like they are going to have checkpoints at every state crossing giving pea stick tests.

There is absolutely no way in hell that Kentucky should be able to have jurisdiction over Illinois.

One, I think that these laws are patently unconstitutional, even under this SCOTUS.

But even if this statute survives judicial review for a few weeks, what exactly is Kentucky's recourse here? They are going to have their state troopers march into Illinois to try to arrest and drag away an out-of-state OB-GYN? Illinois is going to love having its sovereignty mocked so much that it extradites? The enforcement difficulties further underscore how ludicrous this whole thing is (though I suppose the nightmare scenario is that the Illinois OB unwittingly decides to vacation in KY and... ...)

A Kentucky judge will issue an arrest warrant based on a funding of probable cause (a grand jury indictment will also work). It will then fall upon the Illinois resident to fight extradition and prosecution. This is designed by the Republican Attorneys General to create a constitutional crisis. Koch, Lowes, Comcast (NBC), Walmart, GM and Johnson & Johnson sponsor these extremists.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/07/14/republican-ag-group-holds-private-retreat-for-corporate-donors-at-swanky-palm-beach-resort-.html

What good is an arrest warrant floating around KY? Absent cooperation from IL law enforcement and/or courts, it is not self-executing. Thus my question re: enforcement (and this isn’t even getting to question of the many blue states who have passed or otherwise indicated non-extradition policies here)…

[Anonymous]

Another question. What if a pregnant person seeking abortion out-of-state simply never returns? (Something probably wise given the insane police state her home has become regardless!) Or just indicates to the out of state service provider that she is uncertain of her future residency plans? On what basis would the (former) home state have jurisdiction then (assuming it ever had it)? Certainly eg VA doesn’t have jurisdiction over my activities after I’ve moved to MD (again, assuming, implausibly, it ever retained jurisdiction over my activities in MD while I was a VA resident)…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right-wing states always try to imprison their residents in the 19th Century but they can’t stop people from traveling to other states. States made it hard to get married and harder to get divorced so Nevada created a whole economy as an elopement and quick divorce destination. Other states couldn't prevent their residents from going to Nevada and had to accept Nevada marriages and divorces.

Sure, but those were individual people making individual decisions for themselves. The state will say that the fetus is not able to make a decision for itself to leave the state and become aborted.

If an embryo gets personhood status, a woman could leave the state but she would have to leave the embryo behind. Which she can’t do, so she’s stuck in the state until the embryo is out of her body. And they won’t allow her to abort the pregnancy in that state because the embryo has personhood status. And they won’t allow her to move her body containing the embryo into another state because that embryo has personhood status and is protected. So effectively the woman is stuck in the state.

In response to the dissent, Alito added this little gem to the final opinion (wasn't in the draft):

“According to the dissent, the Constitution requires the states to regard a fetus as lacking even the most basic human right—to live—at least until an arbitrary point in a pregnancy has passed. Nothing in the Constitution or in our Nation’s legal traditions authorizes the Court to adopt that ‘theory of life.’”

So, yes, it's definitely possible that Court would uphold fetal personhood laws, and then guess what? It would be like the Fugitive Slave Laws, where states exerted jurisdiction over people in other states (except this time it would fetuses in pregnant women's bodies).

Good discussion here in the WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/14/what-pre-civil-war-history-tells-us-about-coming-abortion-battle/

Yes, but even assuming we are back to Fugitive Slave Law days (shudder) that article does not support the horror story version of cross-state authority PPs suppose. Basically the northern states ignored the southern states (as would happen again, on the same geographic lines no less) until federal laws were passed allowing for federal enforcement (and even then such enforcement was patchy).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right-wing states always try to imprison their residents in the 19th Century but they can’t stop people from traveling to other states. States made it hard to get married and harder to get divorced so Nevada created a whole economy as an elopement and quick divorce destination. Other states couldn't prevent their residents from going to Nevada and had to accept Nevada marriages and divorces.

Sure, but those were individual people making individual decisions for themselves. The state will say that the fetus is not able to make a decision for itself to leave the state and become aborted.

If an embryo gets personhood status, a woman could leave the state but she would have to leave the embryo behind. Which she can’t do, so she’s stuck in the state until the embryo is out of her body. And they won’t allow her to abort the pregnancy in that state because the embryo has personhood status. And they won’t allow her to move her body containing the embryo into another state because that embryo has personhood status and is protected. So effectively the woman is stuck in the state.

In response to the dissent, Alito added this little gem to the final opinion (wasn't in the draft):

“According to the dissent, the Constitution requires the states to regard a fetus as lacking even the most basic human right—to live—at least until an arbitrary point in a pregnancy has passed. Nothing in the Constitution or in our Nation’s legal traditions authorizes the Court to adopt that ‘theory of life.’”

So, yes, it's definitely possible that Court would uphold fetal personhood laws, and then guess what? It would be like the Fugitive Slave Laws, where states exerted jurisdiction over people in other states (except this time it would fetuses in pregnant women's bodies).

Good discussion here in the WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/14/what-pre-civil-war-history-tells-us-about-coming-abortion-battle/

So in other words, if you’re a liberal living in Arkansas, it might be a good idea to take that job offer in Connecticut and get the hell out?

[Anonymous]

Texas doesn’t “own” people who are in Texas. They aren’t citizens of Texas. They are citizens of the US or some other nation. Texas can require residents to pay state and local taxes, get a Texas drivers license, etc. but those things don’t give Texas control over those people. I can have a Texas ID, pay taxes, vote, etc. in Texas and none of that gives Texas any authority to prevent me from leaving the state. They have no legal basis to even ask why anyone is leaving.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Texas doesn’t “own” people who are in Texas. They aren’t citizens of Texas. They are citizens of the US or some other nation. Texas can require residents to pay state and local taxes, get a Texas drivers license, etc. but those things don’t give Texas control over those people. I can have a Texas ID, pay taxes, vote, etc. in Texas and none of that gives Texas any authority to prevent me from leaving the state. They have no legal basis to even ask why anyone is leaving.

You need to read up on Texas’ bounty law. Which is being copied by other states.

I’m not understanding why people are refusing to believe what is already happening. The objective is to turn back the clock.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Texas doesn’t “own” people who are in Texas. They aren’t citizens of Texas. They are citizens of the US or some other nation. Texas can require residents to pay state and local taxes, get a Texas drivers license, etc. but those things don’t give Texas control over those people. I can have a Texas ID, pay taxes, vote, etc. in Texas and none of that gives Texas any authority to prevent me from leaving the state. They have no legal basis to even ask why anyone is leaving.

Yup, even if you did pee on a stick at the border, and you were pregnant, and the embryo was deemed a “person,” the state still has no authority to prevent either of these “persons” from interstate travel.