For two days, a Michigan Court of Appeals heard from “abortion experts, providers, and the state’s chief medical officer,” The POLITICO reported. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) sent the nation into a state of confusion when it struck down Roe v. Wade. SCOTUS returned abortion laws back to the individual states but not to the counties. Indeed, Michigan Jacob Cunningham stopped county prosecutors from allowing a 1931 law banning abortions to be enforced on Friday.
The Oakland County prosecutors could not enforce a state law Judge Cunningham ruled:
‘The harm to the body of women and people capable of pregnancy in not issuing the injunction could not be more real, clear, present and dangerous to the court.’
A lawyer for two GOP prosecutors David Kallman came back with an immediate appeal, The Associated Press (AP) reported:
‘The judge ignored all of the clear legal errors and problems in this case, it appears to me, simply because the issue is abortion.’
Assistant Solicitor General Linus Banghart-Linn said of abortion services:
“If you need one, you need one today or very, very soon. If you need one, you need one today or very, very soon. We don’t want more confusion. We don’t want more confusion.’
Lawyers for Governor Gretchen Whitmer claimed that county prosecutors could not enforce the hundred-year-old law banning abortion, because doing so would just cause further problems. After the hearing, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said:
‘I’m relieved that everyone in this state knows that it doesn’t matter what county you live in now, you are not as a provider going to be prosecuted.’
Even so:
‘The state Court of Appeals later said that the preliminary injunction only applied to the attorney general’s office, meaning that providers could get charged with a felony by some county prosecutors.’
Michigan voters gathered 753,759 signatures in an attempt to place abortion rights in the state Constitution as Kansas had already done. The Michigan amendment now rests in the hands of the state Board of Canvassers to determine whether the amendment will pass.
Cunningham said this is “overwhelmingly in the public’s best interest:”
‘This court finds it is overwhelmingly in the public’s best interest to let the people of the great state of Michigan decide this matter at the ballot box.’
Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) have both made abortion rights central to their re-election campaigns: And Nessel released a statement after the judge ruled on Friday reading:
‘Absent this preliminary injunction, physicians face a very real threat of prosecution depending on where they practice.’
Michigan is an important swing state, and a woman’s right to control her own body including access to abortion appears to be the main campaign issue for many states in the 2022 midterm elections, according to The Washington Post:
‘The ultimate fate of abortion access in the state will have downstream effects on people seeking abortion in surrounding states given Michigan’s location.’
‘Illinois and Minnesota are the only other states in the Midwest that have protected abortion access, as of now. Wisconsin is in a similar situation as Michigan, with its purple electorate and a Democratic governor clashing with an antiabortion Republican legislature.’
A woman’s right to control her own body, not the government, has brought out crowds of women protesting.
Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
In Gloria Christie Reports & Three White Lions Substack newsletters, Gloria Christie includes her week’s most important news/ commentary stories in the liberal online newspaper The Bipartisan Report. Gloria Christie Report her newsletters are for people on the go. Written in her own unique style with a twist of humor in a briefer version of Bipartisan Report. Christie’s Mueller Report Adventures In Bite-Sizes a real-life compelling spy mystery (in progress). Find her here on Facebook. Or at Three White Lions her book on Amazon Kindle Vella.
