Vox, MSNBC, and PBS NewsHour explain 'Exactly how Trump could ban abortion'

I promised "an entry that will be good to share in October, like Emmy Award winners" and I'm following through, but it won't be Emmy Award winners. I'm not feeling like writing about entertainment today. Instead, I'm sharing Vox explaining Exactly how Trump could ban abortion.

Whether the US bans it completely is basically up to the next president.
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For decades, the anti-abortion movement in the United States worked toward one major goal: the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that established a federal right to abortion. In 2022, they finally succeeded, and states across the country began banning abortion immediately. Today about half the states either ban or severely restrict abortion. But now the anti-abortion movement is regrouping around a new goal: using the federal government to ban abortion in the rest of the country.

If Republicans take control of Congress in the 2024 election, it’s very possible they could pass a national abortion ban law. But experts don’t consider that the most likely way a national abortion ban could come about, for two reasons: Polling shows it would be extremely unpopular, and it would require the elimination of the Senate filibuster. Instead, they point to a different branch of the federal government — the president’s office and all the federal agencies it oversees.

In the federal agencies, opponents of abortion could fashion a de facto abortion ban by chipping away at abortion access in numerous ways, for example limiting access to medication abortion, which now constitutes two-thirds of all abortions in the US. The biggest way that the president’s office could limit abortion is by deciding to enforce something called the Comstock Act: a 150-year-old abortion ban killed by Roe v. Wade and brought back to life by its repeal.

The final way the next president could determine the future of abortion rights is through federal court appointments. The anti-abortion movement’s “next Roe v. Wade” is the national legal recognition of fetal personhood, an idea that would by definition outlaw all abortion. The current Supreme Court isn’t yet right-wing enough to endorse this idea. But after another Trump term, that could change.

Watch the video above for the details of how this all could happen.

No surprise, the plan involves the revival of the zombie Comstock Act through Project 2025. Follow over the jump for more.

Ali Velshi on MSNBC expands on reviving the zombie Comstock Act in Project 2025 seeks to resurrect a 151-yr-old law to subordinate women.*

The Dobbs decision overturning the constitutional right to an abortion marked the first step in a broader campaign by Christian conservatives to eliminate reproductive freedom for women in America. Their ultimate goal is a nationwide abortion ban, and the extremist blueprint, Project 2025, seeks to accomplish just that. The plan centers on resurrecting an outdated obscenity law, the 1873 Comstock Act, to target medication abortion, which is the most commonly used method of abortion today. “They want to revive this law from 1873 that was passed when women couldn’t even participate in the electoral process, and certainly weren’t represented in Congress,” says Leah Litman, professor at the University of Michigan Law School, adding that their goal is to “subordinate women's bodily autonomy to their preferred vision of gender roles.”

As Velshi explained, this is not only a revival of the Comstock Act, but an expansion, as he pointed out that it wasn't used to prosecute mailing of materials used in legal abortions when it was actively enforced. My, the Heritage Foundation and the anti-abortion activists are getting ambitious — all the more reason to repeal the Comstock Act!

Speaking of ambitious expansions of laws and legal doctrines, part two of the plan outlined by Vox involves federal recognition of fetal personhood, a concept I've never blogged about here before. I guess it hadn't come up and even doomer me thought was too outlandish to consider. I wasn't pessimistic enough! That written, PBS NewsHour covered it in The role of fetal personhood in the anti-abortion movement and legislation six months ago.

The all-Republican Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February that embryos created using in-vitro fertilization are legally children, a move that was hailed by many in the anti-abortion movement. John Yang speaks with Julie F. Kay, a human rights attorney who defends reproductive rights in cases globally, to learn more about a recent legislative push to give fetuses the legal rights of a person.

I don't recall Yang or Kay mentioning the 14th Amendment and searching the video's transcript doesn't retrieve any mention of it, either, but Vox explained that an expanded interpretation of it forms the basis for fetal personhood. I have very little respect for that idea, since the same people pushing for fetal personhood on that basis are not supporting enforcing Section 3, the Insurrection Clause, on convicted criminal Donald Trump and favor ending birthright citizenship, guaranteed by Section 1. They want to pick and choose which parts of the 14th Amendment to enforce. Hmph. May my complaint from Stephen Colbert returns after his illness with Liz Cheney stand in their way: "I think the insurrection clause applies, but, like much of the rest of the 14th Amendment, the courts are too timid or ideologically opposed to enforce it."

Returning to PBS NewsHour, that fetal personhood resulted in a ban on IVF, at least temporarily, puts the lie to the anti-abortion movement being consistently "pro-life." Banning IVF will result in less human life, not more. Like a lot of the U.S. Right's labels, it's just branding, not truth in advertising.

That's a wrap for today. Stay tuned to see if I'm in a mood to blog about entertainment tomorrow. If not then, definitely on Sunday.

*Since I posted Project 2025's plans for labor and unions, part 7 of MSNBC examines Project 2025, a Labor Day special earlier this month, including this video technically makes this entry part 8 of the series. I'll save that for when I put together a post of nothing but MSNBC videos.