Janine Jackson interviewed Jessica Mason Pieklo about the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling for the July 8, 2016, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Jessica Mason Pieklo: “This is a decision that really has the potential to be a big pivot for reproductive rights advocates.”
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Janine Jackson: When a wire piece headlined “Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Abortion Law, Dooms Women to Substandard Care” is bylined Operation Rescue, readers are tipped off as to how genuinely to take the piece’s stated concern that by reversing a Fifth Circuit ruling that upheld restrictions Texas placed on abortion providers, the Supreme Court “relegated women to second-class citizens when it comes to abortion by allowing abortionists to evade meeting basic safety standards that are proven to save lives.”
Well, Operation Rescue’s interest in women’s safety is discernible from their involvement in clinic bombings, doctor murders and screaming “I pray for your death” in the faces of women seeking to terminate a pregnancy for any reason.
But what about the line from other abortion opponents, like National Right to Life, whose representative, in a column for USA Today, described the ruling in a case called Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt as “a setback that settles nothing.” Could that be a bit of hand-waving, too, in the wake of a ruling that actually does appear to have settled a thing or two?
We’re joined now by Jessica Mason Pieklo. She’s vice president of law and the courts at Rewire, formerly RH Reality Check. She joins us now by phone from Colorado.
Welcome to CounterSpin, Jessica Mason Pieklo.
Jessica Mason Pieklo: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
JJ: Listeners may have heard that Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt is very important, even if they didn’t hear too much about it before it came down. On the face of it, it struck down two provisions from a Texas statute, so-called House Bill or HB 2. Before we get to what we think might be the wider repercussions, what were those provisions that were struck down, and what did the Court in its majority have to say about them?
JMP: HB 2 is what we refer to as an omnibus bill. In this case, HB 2 was an anti-abortion omnibus bill, something I refer to as sort of like the Frankenstein’s monster of anti-abortion legislation. And two provisions that were attacked and ultimately struck down involved what we call a TRAP law, or targeted restrictions on abortion providers. They are increased regulations that are designed to make providing abortions or accessing abortion care extra expensive and extra difficult.
So those specific provisions: One requires doctors who perform abortions in the state to have admitting privileges at hospitals nearby. The other required abortion clinics to operate under the same architectural standards as stand-alone surgical centers. Proponents of those measures had insisted that they were necessary to advance patient safety, that abortion is and was a dangerous medical procedure that justified increased and excessive regulation.
And the fact of the matter is, the evidence shows exactly the opposite, that these regulations decreased access to care by closing clinics, leaving some places in Texas with as far as 400 to 500 miles, and a border checkpoint to get to–to just access a reproductive healthcare clinic.
And what the Supreme Court said was, no, the evidence is not on your side. And if you are anti-abortion and are a state legislator, you don’t get to pass laws that restrict access and pinky swear that they’re going to make patients’ safety better, because they don’t.
JJ: It seemed very powerful, and folks even noted that the dryness of Stephen Breyer’s ruling seemed to make the case stronger, in the sense that it really said, this isn’t about emotions, this isn’t about how you feel about things, there are facts that the Court can take on board here, and that the Court has to take on board here.
JMP: Well, I certainly was happy to see that it was Justice Breyer writing the opinion, because he’s sort of the data nerd of the Court. Court watchers like myself knew that getting an opinion from Breyer was going to be chock full of statistics and comparable analysis, which, from an abortion rights standpoint, is very, very important. Because what we have, for the first time, in my opinion, even since Roe, which, you know, was affirming a right to choose as a fundamental right but not necessarily embracing of the idea that abortion is a fundamental component of a full spectrum of healthcare. Those are two very different things.
And in terms of it being a less-emotional opinion, I also think that that is beneficial, but, you know, on the other hand, that kind of bothers me, because we have some real historical moments with this case. For example, for the first time in Supreme Court history, we had a friend of the Court brief filed by over a hundred women attorneys who themselves had had abortions, telling their abortion stories to the Court as to why it mattered. And so while I don’t think that laws should necessarily be hinged and focused on emotional pleas, I do think it’s still kind of troubling that the most significant abortion rights decision that we’ve got in decades still kind of leaves women voiceless in the opinion.
JJ: Right, right. And I had heard that as well. You have to sort of be careful what you’re wishing for.
But anyway, it does seem like a kind of direct counter to the Fifth Circuit’s thinking. Linda Greenhouse in the New York Times pointed out that they had in fact rebuked the district court judge for daring to insist on evidence for the state’s health claims. As a counter to that, I suppose the dryness is preferable.
JMP: Oh, absolutely. And, I mean, the Fifth Circuit opinion was just bananas. What they effectively said was the courts have no power, and not only no power, but no constitutional role in double-checking legislatures on certain constitutional matters. And that’s just a failure of fundamental civics; that’s just not even, like, bad judicial opinion.
And Greenhouse is right on the money with her point. You know, one of the other things that the Fifth Circuit decision was really trying to do was give lawmakers a path to legislate broadly. I mean, this is about abortion rights, most certainly, but think of other areas where conservatives consider the evidence up for debate, right? Like climate change.
JJ: Well, you talked about this earlier. This is a response, in a way, to all of these TRAP laws. It says they actually aren’t about women’s safety, they’re just about stopping abortion, which, of course, I think many of the proponents would have acknowledged, really, that that was what they were about. But that’s been the strategy, is to not go after Roe directly, but to kind of make it meaningless by chipping away at access, right? So does this have an immediate impact in other states? I mean, everybody has to litigate it separately, don’t they?
JMP: Well, yes and no. So we have seen some immediate domino effect; almost immediately after the Court released its decision in Whole Woman v. Hellerstedt, it turned away two similar cases, one from Wisconsin, where the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals had struck similar provisions in that state, and then another from Mississippi, where, to your point, lawmakers were very clear that their goal was to regulate out of existence the only abortion provider in the state.
Shortly after that, the attorney general from Alabama announced that he was going to drop his state’s appeal of an Eleventh Circuit decision striking their TRAP laws. And shortly after that, the Center for Reproductive Rights announced a new lawsuit challenging regulations in Louisiana. There’ll be, I anticipate, litigation in states like Missouri. So, yes, some of these places will need to be litigated step by step, but some of them did fall.
So in terms of a sea change, this is a decision that really has the potential to be a big pivot for reproductive rights advocates, in terms of the way the Court and the law rhetorically considers abortion restrictions.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with Jessica Mason Pieklo, vice president of law and the courts at Rewire. Find them online at Rewire.news. Jessica Pieklo, thanks so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
JMP: Always a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
Contraceptives and abortion rights tend to make women cheap, accessible, and exchangeable to wicked men who could care less for them, their children, or their future.
As opposed to girls staying “pure” for their proper master? ::insert eye-roll::
Listen, either women own our own bodies, or we don’t. This is true whether we have many sexual partners, or none. Women are not commodities, we are people.
Women actually tortured as sex slaves by isis fighters have reported being forced to take contraceptives and forced to abort their children in order to remain of use and valuable for resale. Maybe women would have better ownership of their own bodies if they didn’t make themselves so available to juvenile men with the use of contraceptives.
Abortion rights protects the Bill Clintons of this world and gives women choices like whether she wants to be used like Hillary or like Monica. What of the woman who wants to own a faithful husband and have her children about her? Do we trample her rights so a bunch of juvenile men can sleep around without any responsibility for forcing her to abort or carry?
Fourced abortion and forced contraception are not choice, but the opposite, and hardly relevant to this discussion.
What about a woman like me, married 20 years, who almost died in my last pregnancy? Should my husband and I become celibate so that I don’t risk my life in another pregnancy? It would be kind of nice for my children to be raised by both their mother and father. Contraceptives let me plan my family so that I don’t have more children than I can care for.
Women are betrayed by abortion rights. 84% feel forced to abort for one reason or another. I want people to recognize how our society asks women to abort their children to make the women more useful. In our society we have clear parallels to the Isis sex slave market all around us. Wicked men legally get women addicted to alcohol or drugs so that they can keep them coming back and make them sexually useful. Contraceptives and abortion are big tools for these people. Even men who aren’t as overtly wicked, push their partners to agree to abort their children so the sex can be without any risk of responsibility. So what of all the women who would like to have children, but are basically forced not to?
So, you choose the worst of the worst human beings to stand in as a normal example for the rest of society, obviously you’re a’FORCEDBIRTHER’ and oblivious to a rational argument. Pregnancy as a choice means you accept the risks associated with it, as well as the risk in giving birth. If YOU are against abortion don’t have one, that is your only concern, otherwise it is none of your business.
The rest of your point is plainly moralising about an activity that humans do, and there’s no shame in that. Whether a woman has 10 sexual partners per day, well, guess what…AIN”T nonya business.AND your shaming them changes nothing. SEX is a healthy activity and pregnancies is not what everyone wants but is a possible consequence, and protecting oneself is just smart. Go back to the 18th century where mind lives. AND read Emma Goldman’s Victims of Morality. You may find yourself back there being lectured by her as well..
I imagine Ms. Goldman would do more than just lecture him, lol…
I’d sure like people to be able to make good choices when they consider sleeping around like run the other way…….As for morality, that’s really the key isn’t it. I find it rather revealing that belief systems which are fine with aborting the child before first breath are also fine with homosexuality, promiscuity, and now transgendering. I want people to recognize what they have chosen to believe, the belief systems they have bought hook line and sinker. If you don’t recognize your dependence on your belief system, you’ll never question it.
Keeping the pregnancy I had would have locked me into longterm interaction with a man I now find contemptible. My stepgrandmother divorced her first husband, aborted an unwanted pregnancy, and later found love with my grandfather and they have been together happily for forty years with no children. My nana never once aborted and had two children, but she never found longterm happiness with a man. My aunt had a string of sexual partners (almost forty) before meeting her husband with whom she has two children and a third from a previous relationship, and they couldn’t be happier. My sister chose not to abort and now she is stuck in a relationship with an asshole.
My lived experience tells me you are wrong, sir. Men cheapen women because that’s what they’ve always done. Babies are and have been born in brothels and the sex slaves there have never been treated any better than those who found ways to abort or keep from getting pregnant. Forced abortion is exactly the same as forced birth, it is men claiming ownership of women’s bodies. Both forms are not new. Abortion is not new.
Mr. Knox believes he is a good guy because he would treat his prize better than the Daesh. He does not understand that most women would rather be treated like human beings, not prizes.
He still has never explained how I am supposed to maintain my marriage in a state of celibacy, rather than risk another life endangering pregnancy.
My problem is that I see abortion serving the interests of selfish men more than the needs of women.
Two women havve just told you that they need to have full control of their bodies. Do you take us for imbeciles?
Abortion serves the needs of selfish men when they are the ones forcing women to abort. Childbirth does exactly the same thing when men force it, and if you think there are no selfish men who intentionally impregnate women to keep them locked into a relationship they might otherwise, you are wrong.
An egg is not a chicken; a seed is not an oak; a fetus is not a person. Get the government out of the bedroom, out of the doctor’s office, and out of the bathroom while you’re at it.
I have an idea, instead of going after women’s choices after they’ve become pregnant, and forcing them to undergo the risks of pregnancies and giving birth, just force all fertile men to get a vasectomy, it’s reversible, and the abortion argument goes out the door, and women’s choices are no longer owned by gov’t, as some want.
Sorry, ernest, for the round about way of agreeing with you, as both forcedbirth and forced vasectomies are equally absurd for gov’t decision making.
Oh, and BTW, love that succinct point, true across the spectrum of the entities you mentioned. The egg,seed,and fetus all are potentialities.
You have not adressed any of my points.
Again, it is disingenuous to look at forced contraception and forced abortion as opposed to choice. And, of course women feel ‘forced’ by circumstance to abort. Those circumstances are called a woman’s life. Poverty, maternal health, number of children already, and lack of real world support are all reasons a woman might choose abortion over delivery. Do you really think women make these choices in a vacuum? Is forced birth preferable? I am pro-choice. That means a woman chooses how many children she has, using the method that is safest and most appropriate for her. If a woman chooses celibacy, I would caution her that it is incredibly difficult to remain celibate, especially in a long term relationship, but I recognise that the choice is her’s to make. If a woman chooses multiple pregnancies, even if that jeopardizes her health, again, her choice.
Finally, either women own our own bodies, or we don’t.