October 2011

by Jeremy Leaming

Making life impossible for others is sometimes just not enough. There’s a desire among some zealots to also make it miserable.

For example, the right to an abortion is a privacy right protected by the Constitution. But a number of states this year have bowed to the pressure of special interest groups, many of them Religious Right outfits, to enact laws restricting the ability of women to obtain abortions. But, as reported by The New York Times, a group called Personhood USA is trumpeting measures that would give legal rights to embryos that would effectively brand “abortion and some forms of birth control as murder.”

In Mississippi, as the newspaper notes, it is already nearly impossible for a woman to obtain an abortion. And because of the push by Personhood USA, Mississippians will vote in November on a proposed constitutional amendment providing an embryo the same rights as a human.  

Personhood USA’s website reveals that its ballot initiative drive is invasive – it’s apparently being pushed in “all 50 states.” The group’s website also reveals this is yet another Christian Right effort to limit other people’s rights. (Many of the efforts to defeat marriage quality are driven by Religious Right activists.) Personhood USA states on its About Us, page, that it is “working to respect the God-given right to life by recognizing all human beings as persons who are ‘created in the image of God’ from the beginning of their biological development, without exceptions.”

Personhood USA, moreover, “desires to glorify Jesus Christ in a way that creates a culture of life so that all innocent human lives are protected by love and by law.”

Civil liberties groups are not knocking the free speech or religious liberty rights of Personhood USA, but many are attacking its effort to circumvent Supreme Court opinions that have upheld the right to abortion.

Nancy Northrup, head of the Center for Reproductive Rights, told the newspaper, “This is the most extreme in a field of extreme anti-abortion measures that have been before the states this year.”

In an interview with ACSblog, earlier this year, the ACLU’s Louise Melling noted the troubling string of state efforts to further restrict abortion, citing as one of the most egregious a North Carolina law that required physicians to encourage pregnant women seeking an abortion to view ultrasound images of their fetuses. (Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagle issued a preliminary injunction of that portion of the law. The law was enacted over the opposition of the state Gov. Beverly Perdue, who called it an extreme measure that interfered with the doctor-patient relationship, The Associated Press reported.)   

Former U.S. Solicitor General Walter Dellinger (pictured), during this year’s ACS National Convention, also took a shot at state laws requiring doctors to try and influence a woman’s decision to have an abortion.

Dellinger said, “We hear the talks about government intrusions into health care – that this represents an extraordinary step about liberty. And I just cannot, any longer, refrain from making the observation that it is really ironic and disturbing to hear that liberty lecture come from people talking about [a] government takeover of medical care, many of whom would legislate the imposition upon women of unnecessary waiting periods, government scripted lectures, compulsory sonogram viewings, and government mandated unsafe medical procedures.”

By Wm. T. (Bill) Robinson III.  The author (pictured) is president of the American Bar Association and member-in-charge of the Northern Kentucky offices of Frost Brown Todd, LLC.

It is a shocking and deeply worrisome story that says everything about our beleaguered economy.  It reflects a wider crisis that touches every community in our nation. Facing a 10 percent budget cut, the Shawnee County District Attorney’s office recently announced that inadequate resources meant cases like domestic violence would no longer be prosecuted at the county level. In early October (Domestic Violence Awareness Month, incidentally) the Topeka City Council voted to decriminalize misdemeanor domestic battery. 

At first glance, this may seem like an isolated case. It is not. Across our nation, our justice system is in crisis -- it is being starved.

Last year, the American Bar Association created the Task Force on Preservation of the Justice System,co-chaired by Theodore Olson and David Boies. Under their bi-partisan leadership, the task force discovered just how badly our state courts are hurting financially. 

According to the National Center for State Courts, which is working closely with the ABA on these issues, 40 out of 50 states cut court funding in fiscal year 2010. Budgetary cuts have continued in 2011 from New York to California. Some states, including Maine and Oregon, will need to find ways to operate without 10 percent of their already withered budgets. Remember, we are talking about a third co-equal branch of government. Yet across the United States we see that each and every state judiciary must try to operate on less than some individual departments in the executive branch.

Across this great nation, too, many of our judiciaries receive as little as 1 percent or less of the state budget pie, and few states receive more than 3 percent.

We know that at least six states, including Alabama, close their courthouses at least one day each week because of inadequate funding. Fifteen states have reduced the number of hours that courts are open to serve the public. Compounding the backlog of cases and consequent delay in our courts, 32 states have delayed filling much-needed court administration positions. Twenty-six states have delayed filling critical judicial vacancies. Like many government employees, staff in 16 states and judges in nine states are being furloughed without pay. Fourteen states have laid off judicial staff.

Still, other states around the country confront uniquely challenging circumstances.