Remember how the Supremacist Court's Dobbs decision was simply going to return the matter of Abortion to the States and that solved and ended the abortion debate forever. Well, that was always a Stalking Horse for the Republican push to make abortion illegal Federally.
Already 19 Republican Attorney's General have issued a demand letter for access to privileged medical records across State Lines. The Attorney General of Alabama Steve Marshall isn't going to be satisfied with flogging sluts for going out of his jurisdiction and getting medical treatment. Oh no Marshall plans to charge, arrest, and punish everyone he can for the conspiracy of helping women not be brood mares and Alabama sex slaves and filed a Motion in the US District Court of the Middle District of Alabama;
Alabama’s Republican attorney general said in a court filing that he has
the right to prosecute people who make travel arrangements for pregnant
women to have out-of-state abortions.
In a court filing Monday, attorneys for Attorney General Steve Marshall
wrote that providing transportation for women in Alabama to leave
the state to get an abortion could amount to a “criminal conspiracy.”
I think I understand how this will work; The Alabama Attorney General will file charges based on the criminal conspiracy for solicitation to murder. The AL legislature in 2019 passed the Human Life Protection Act which determined a fetus is an unborn child and provided for the sanctity of that life. Thus the women having contacted or made arraignments to transport the "unborn child" across state lines are doing so for the express purpose of murdering them. Thus having entered into a criminal conspiracy according to Alabama "Law" to commit an abortion the out-of-state person(s) are guilty of the act of conspiracy.
What will follow is simple; an Alabamie Judge deep in the backwoods will issue a Nationwide arrest warrant demanding the people involved in this "criminal conspiracy" be taken into custody and transported forthwith to Alabama to face charges. Police Officers will always enforce a warrant and won't care about the underlying charges and certainly won't be dissuaded by pleas from women or doctors and will delight in forcibly taking into custody anyone who offers a scintilla of "resistance".
I have zero faith that Hospitals and medical insurance providers will not immediately buckle and give into Republican AG demands and provide all records with or without subpoena. And then the big test case will come when Alabama or some other rightwing slave state demands people be arrested by Democratic Governors and transported to them for Justice. Republicans obviously believe this is a winning play and will force the issue up to the SCTOUS where Amy Coat-Hanger Barrett will of course rule that State's have no right to deny to arrest and transport wayward women and their criminal co-conspirators and will face Federal sanction and order the President to send the US Marshall's out because always understand the cries of Biden's Weaponized Department of Justice is a bullhorn admission of what Republican plans to do if they have control of Government.
Already Alabama is pushing the extreme State's Rights" Trump card by eliminating federal child labor laws and by ignoring the Supreme Court ruling about their racist gerrymandered congressional district map. So, why wouldn't they simply declare Alabama gets to determine to arrest people across the Nation. I'm sure this is a calculated step in pushing for Supremacist Court ruling outlawing Abortion federally which with the trifecta of Presidency and Congress would quickly be written into law.
Remember though that this need not even get to the SCOTUS, the effect of announcing plans to arrest anyone and everyone, anywhere in the US is designed to make people frightened and to have them self-enforce Alabama's ban by declining to aid women in receiving medical care. The threat alone will have the chilling effect.
Abraham Lincoln had these people figured out in the 1850's. It's Rule or Ruin. It's a legal demand, backed by the threat of violence, that you agree with them. And if you don't well, state-sponsored terrorism is what Law Enforcement is for.
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