ABORTION - Mississippi, Alabama, and WISCONSIN. So says the AP feed Strib puts online. Guv Walker and his idiot brigade keep distinguished statutory company. Aside from that necessary observation, the Fifth Circuit is positioned to give the Roberts court more raw meat for their biases.

Strib, here. Read it. Only quote here:

Many hospitals ignore or reject abortion doctors' applications, and won't grant privileges to out-of-state physicians. Both obstacles were encountered by the traveling doctors who staff Mississippi's last open clinic, the Jackson Women's Health Organization.

The ruling from the conservative 5th Circuit was narrowly crafted to address the situation in Mississippi, but it could have implications for the other states with similar laws and dwindling access to abortion, such as Wisconsin and Alabama, whose officials have said women could cross state lines if clinics close, said the center's litigation director, Julie Rikelman.

Yes the deep South, and Scott Walker's enclave - of a feather.

On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!  
Stand up, Badgers, sing!

Now, readers who have followed the above Strib link likely can see how two Fifth Circuit cases, from Texas earlier now from Mississippi, by different panels, can and do present conflicting positions within a single Circuit that the five zealots on the Roberts court may well seize as an opportunity to enlarge on their Hobby Lobby shuffle.

For further information, a Google search yields other coverage, and links to the actual two opinions online; e.g.: Reality Check on the Mississippi case linking in the item to its report of an earlier Seventh Circuit decision against the Walker Wisconsin measure, (source of the image); WaPo on the Texas case along with Guardian earlier reporting; NY Times Mississippi coverage; scotusblog.com on the Mississippi case; and the two fifth circuit cases online here (TX - 34 pages long)and here (MS - 37 pages).

The Wisconsin case is online here (50 pages - Judges must get paid by the word.) Reporting on oral argument prior to issuance of the opinion rejecting the Wisconsin legislation noted:

“Across the country, extremist politicians are trying to shut down women’s health centers and make it more and more difficult for women to access abortion care,” said Talcott Camp, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, in a statement following the decision. “These laws have nothing to do with women’s health and are designed to unfairly target medical professionals who provide safe and legal abortions.”

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals judges who heard Wisconsin’s appeal included Judge Richard Posner, a Reagan appointee; Judge Daniel Manion, also a Reagan appointee; and Judge David Hamilton, an Obama appointee.

During oral arguments, the justices expressed skepticism at claims made by attorneys for the state that the law was designed to protect patient safety, questioning why if patient safety was the priority providers were given a very short window of time to comply. Friday’s opinion reflects that skepticism. “Is there such urgency to implementing the law, because Wisconsin is rife with serious complications from abortion and requiring admitting privileges to hospitals within short distances of abortion clinics is essential to preventing such complications?” the court asked. “As noted earlier, the state has presented no evidence.”

Indeed, the ploy of the choice haters in those backwards state legislatures is to indirectly do all they can imagine to pressure closure of abortion providers; despite the Constitution, and Constitutional rights of women, as read by the Warren Court, in Roe v. Wade. What will the Roberts court be up to, with this opportunity dumped by the Fifth Circuit into their laps? At this point, we can speculate but time will tell.

Reality Check:

http://rhrealitycheck.org/

seems a good resource site worth bookmarking, on women's rights and the seemingly never-ending efforts to infringe them.

One writer there cares little for impassioned indirection in expressions of opinion,

I saw it on posters last summer at the Texas capitol, during protests against the state’s omnibus anti-abortion law: “TEXAS TALIBAN.” I’ve heard pundits and preachers on cable news, decrying the “American Taliban” that wants to take away birth control and abortion access.

These phrases aren’t clever, and they aren’t insightful. They’re racist, and they’re Islamophobic, and people—especially white people—who work in social justice movements and who do advocacy for women’s rights need to stop using them yesterday.

Because there is indeed a powerful, well-funded and rigidly patriarchal religious movement behind America’s most misogynist laws, and it isn’t any iteration of Islam.

It’s Christianity.

There’s no need to try and incite fear that right-wing lawmakers are going to turn America into an extremist Islamic theocracy when they’re doing just fine turning it into an extremist Christian theocracy. The answer to countering right-wing attacks on Americans with uteri isn’t to create a turban-wearing bogeyman looming half a world away, but to look at what’s happening right here in our own country, in our own statehouses, at our own national capitol.

Yup. A quite fine resource to engage in debate disarming any tendency toward name-calling matches with the rampant choice-hater blowhards populating our nation. Remember Truman's saying he does not give them hell, he only tells the truth and they think it is hell. Extreme rhetoric is not needed. Strength of will is. Voting smart is equally needed. Do it. Even if the two party system offers meager choice, go with what's available, and look for more like Wellstone to advance to elected positions of influence. Also, look for better appointed robe-wearing personnel in the courts. Ending the national embarrassment that is the Roberts court majority cannot happen too soon. "Clear and present danger," is a judicial cliche that somehow springs to mind. But - that's perhaps too close to name calling. So forget I wrote it.

____________UPDATE____________
A minor point, but the site is "rhrealitycheck" and not merely "realitycheck" as I referenced it in discussion [while giving the link properly, for bookmarking]. Presumably the "rh-" prefix is for reproductive health, i.e., reproductive health reality check, which fits the general scope of postings there.

___________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Privacy is most certainly a fundamental right, more so now in an electronic age differing from the inherently more private reality of the time our nation was founded and its Constitution written.

That core privacy notion, and a freedom of religion parallel, has to be understood as my having a freedom from your religion, i.e., folks can practice their faith and advocate and follow their belief system, so long as they do not presume it somehow entails a necessity to impose their stuff on the neighbors.

My privacy rights preclude that, in a proper Constitutional modern day world. RH Reality Check again, on that point this time, concluding text being:

The “offensive” thing that gay rights activists are doing is fighting for their own rights. At the end of the day, what this argument boils down to is suggesting that the religious freedom of fundamentalists can only be protected by taking away the freedom, religious and otherwise, of gay people to marry—that your same-sex marriage somehow deprives them of rights.

Obviously, people should support reproductive rights for the sake of women’s health and well-being. But it’s also important to understand that while the attacks on reproductive rights are quite sincere—antis really are upset that you have sex without their permission!—the issue is part and parcel of a larger campaign to end the long American tradition of religious plurality, of understanding that the best way for religious freedom to be protected is for everyone to stay in their own lanes. It’s about giving fundamentalists not just the right to practice their own faith but the “right” to foist their faith on you.

In '60s parlance, don't lay your bad trip on me.

That was how the core idea of nonintrusiveness was phrased; and if the basic and real fundamental right each sentient existing human has to demand being accorded privacy from religion-based intrusions by others means anything, it is that others have to be forced to respect the right by not being allowed the intruding.

Your right to hold your belief in no way means I must be forced to share it. You lose nothing fundamental by my refusal to play along, or to bow or kneel to any or all of your stuff.

_____________UPDATE____________

Feelings of sin, repentance, and redemption may be proper to you in your life, now, in the past, and for the future. Belief in codes of conduct you should pursue is something you have the right to follow. But do not erect a cross for others to hang themselves to, if they prefer not to. Live and let live is a clear and simple concept, with much in its favor. Some would phrase this as "liberty" of others requires your adherence to standards of respect and nonintervention. But then, yes, there is the criminal law, and notions of not criminalizing anything that does not in any real way victimize other sentient humans living their lives their way. It is not an attack on anyone's views, to hold different ones, and to conduct oneself lawfully, but differently. It is that good old politically correct "diversity" we all hear about and some dislike or fear. And, yes, devils do lurk in details. Beginning verses of Matthew 7 were left there for a reason, one of teaching. Yet each of us does judge, so the intent likely is to suggest tempering one's judgment of others, look first in the mirror, all that. Simple stuff really.