You wanted a Left voice. In this matter, I’m Left, I suppose. I don’t think my health records (or yours) should be available across state lines for prosecution. I don’t think that an AG in Tennessee should be able to prosecute you for something done in another state that is legal in that state. If that makes me a Leftie, well, then I suppose it’s time for me to just go full on blue. Damn it.
Angry rant with links below the cut.
Post Dobbs, we (women) were told that all we had to do was travel to a state where it was legal. That’ll always be okay, because the SCOTUS told us that it was “up to the states”. Well, not anymore. Many women (myself included) made noise saying that was never going to happen, that states were going to try and reach out to OTHER states and prosecute. Well, now they are.
Privacy should be a must when it comes to medical health. It’s no one else’s business what I do with my body. While I HEAVILY disagree with making my abortion information available within my state to state prosecutors, I could live with it, as a compromise. But now they want to reach into other states. They are not just asking, they’re demanding.
Y’all (the Right, not any particular y’all here on GFZ) told me that state rights would be sure to keep this from happening. Well, it’s happening. And I’m pissed. It’s wrong, folks.
If I am going to fight (and I should) for the right for you to carry in all states, then why the hell would you not want to fight for me to have the right to get health care in all states? The fact that you carry a gun in NH but then go to New Jersey and cannot and don’t, doesn’t mean you should be able to be prosecuted for carrying that gun in NH. Where it’s legal. Same with abortion. Ban it in your own damn state, but stay out of my business when I’m doing it elsewhere.
Yes, I’m swearing and I’m not doing good citations today. I’m hot, exhausted from other stuff, and now I’m angry to boot. You can go read the laws yourself. It’s sickening. I’m so angry I can’t even talk about it rationally right now. Link dump at the bottom, if anyone actually cares to read it.
Hagar out.
Idaho and Alabama are above. Apparently there are others, but I didn’t have the stomach to do anymore searching today.
Tennessee:
Tennessee AG asserts right to out-of-state abortion, transgender care medical records
Mississippi:
https://www.mississippifreepress.org/34705/mississippi-attorney-general-wants-info-on-out-of-state-abortions-gender-affirming-care
Kentucky:
Without reading any of the links, and without researching this issue at all, I have a question about the states attempting to have access to their resident’s medical procedures out of state. Is it because of how those medical procedures are paid for. Who pays for those procedures? If it is the citizens tax dollars in any way which pays for those procedures, then I can understand why the states want to know and why they have penalties for attempting to do so.
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Again, I have no Kangal dog in this fight. Just curios.
It appears that the AG’s want to prosecute the women because they are having abortions that are illegal in their states. It doesn’t appear (at least in the actual laws of the states I skimmed through: Kentucky, Mississippi, Idaho) to have anything to do with insurance at all. These are AGs who want to stop abortion. I don’t have to agree or disagree with them… because I don’t live in their states and it isn’t my business. Until it IS my business, because they’ve made it so, because they’re attempting to prosecute outside of their own damn state.
Not their jurisdiction. NO!
Thanks for the research you did. The reason I mentioned insurance is because, due to individual state laws, insurance companies must comply with each state’s laws. When I see a state do the things you are addressing here, I think, follow the money, it has to do with money, or the state would not have an incentive to act. It cost significant amounts of money to cross state lines to impose their state laws in other states which don’t have their laws. It therefore would seem to me that one state could sue another state for not allow a US citizen from accessing something which they have a right to access freely in an agreeable state.
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If it is as you suggest, then these AGs in these states are acting strictly based on their moral convictions, which I do not believe should allow them to track down adults, (not minors), who reject their moral convictions. Again, there must be teams of lawyers salivating over making money off this. If there isn’t a financial incentive, I’ll be shocked.
The issue needs to be clarified. A woman seeking an abortion or adult seeking ‘Gender Affirming’ care…. No go. A minor being transported for an abortion or ‘Gender Affirming’ care…. information should be available for potential prosecution of child abuse.
Clarification please, when you say “no go” do you mean it shouldn’t happen, or do you mean “none of the AG’s business”? As for minors being transported for abortion (going to leave gender affirming care out of this, because I don’t think children need it), any doctor should be required to report abuse. Abuse is not abortion. If my daughter were raped at 13 and had gotten pregnant, you bet your bippy I’d be taking her for an abortion, because a 13 year old body really isn’t ready to give birth and a 13 year old girl is not ready to be a parent… and even moreso, I would not want a rapist to have access to a child, and in a couple of instances, I have heard of rapists suing for parental rights and winning, and I would not want my minor child to be subject to that kind of b.s. EVER. But that’s an extreme case, and outside the purview of this, imo.
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Bottom line, if a state allows it, then a state allows it. You can’t have cross state prosecution of someone for doing something that is not illegal in that state. Think of it in gun terms and it might go across better. If we are going to erode state rights in one instance, then it WILL be eroded in ALL instances. That is a slippery slope I’m not willing to even look at.
Different states have different laws. Its always been a pet peeve of mine. Kinda like some states issue a front and rear license plate and some just issue a rear plate. So if what you seek is illegal in your state but legal in another, I don’t see a problem….. unless it becomes a habit…
I agree.
Way back in the long long ago before I developed the wisdom to leave the Metro NYC area, there was a big deal about NY State sending agents into NJ to check for NY plates. If your plate was recorded at an outlet mall, you got a letter in the mail reminding you that you have to pay NY sales tax, even if you bought the item in NJ. (Which had a lower sales tax rate at the time.)
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I think NY State got sued and had to stop the practice. Either way, it was a waste of time and money because I do not think a single person fessed up to purchasing bargains and saving on the sales tax.
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Should one state be able to get info from another state about actions of their residents? Only in the case of enforcing Federal law, no other reason.
End of story.
I agree with you. One of the repercussions of a federal system is, the laws can differ across states. There are some instances where rights and privileges are transferrable – the best examples I know of are drivers licenses and marriages – but many are not.
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Hagar, an example that might resonant with more people (ex here of course) than guns, might be speed limits. The max speed limit in Nevada is 80 mph. The max speed limit in Hawaii is 60. Should someone who lives in Hawaii and visits Nevada get a speeding ticket for driving 75 mph while in Nevada?
I’m generally anti abortion(I’m open to some exceptions) but an AG has no right to even attempt to prosecute something that occurred in another state, if it was legal in the jurisdiction it occurred in.
No, you should not be able to cross state lines so that you can murder a child, (or rape a child, or take nude photos of a child, or do anything else to harm a child).
If the the government has the consent of the governed for nothing else, it is to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
The taxpayers of every state, pay for abortions, if, if their state legalizes abortions. If their state makes it illegal and the person crosses state lines to have an abortion, the taxpayers of that state don’t pay for the abortion, the host state would have to but the laws don’t allow it. So therefore, who pays? So is it the insurance companies that are behind the AG’s prosecutions? If an insurance company, federal or otherwise wants to do business in a state they must abide by state laws.
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The reason I applauded abortion laws being returned to the states instead of the federal government, was because it was unconstitutional for the federal government to mandate state taxpayers to subsidize abortions throughout the fifty states. If you want legal abortions, move to a state that accommodates your desires–just as it is with gun laws. I don’t live in NY or MA because I like FL laws better, so I moved here.
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The states which allow an out-of-state person to have medical services are the problem and not the other way around.
A follow up, now that I’ve had time to take three minutes to do a search on this subject. This source below is as liberal leftist as they come, but they do spell out exactly what I knew was at issue here on this subject. And that is, each states taxpayers, voters, have caused their states to act on the subject of abortions. Some states made it illegal in varying degrees of restrictions and others went the opposite direction and legalized abortion with varying degrees of access.
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Each state has made laws based on what the state’s voters wanted, and those laws forced insurance companies, both government and private, to restructure their plans in accordance with state laws. It’s complicated, as is always the case with the autonomy of states and their laws regarding healthcare insurance and firearms.
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The only problem I have personally with the current situations with abortion laws are, with the states which banded abortion and did not provide exceptions for, health-risk of the mother, rape, incest, and have an allowance for up until eight weeks to terminate the pregnancy process before a living being comes into existence.
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Once there is a heartbeat, abortion is murder. I, along with many millions of Americans hold this political position and have voted within our respective states to not pay for the irresponsible actions of people. It’s totally irresponsible for any female to not take appropriate action to end the production of an unwanted living being in their womb before eight weeks ends.
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The states which have AGs not allow cross-state abortions are acting based on laws passed by the voters of the states they represent. It all comes down to who pays for an abortion. And I for one, demand that my tax dollars don’t fund what I have defined as murder here in this post.
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And to compare abortion laws to gun laws is tantamount to comparing apples to……..apes. What a female does with her reproductive system has nothing to do with what a female does with a gun, and state gun laws should not be regulated in any way by a federal government of a Constitutional Republic of Fifty States. I fight for state’s rights on both political issues.
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I don’t make anyone pay for my firearms preferences in any way, and I reject having to pay for anyone’s irresponsible sexual mistakes. If I use my gun in an illegal manner, does anyone have to pay for that out of pocket directly? The element of ‘Insurance” is what’s at play here, and nothing else. If we take this element out of the political equation, and all females paid out of pocket for abortions, there would not be any AGs taking legal action outside of state lines.
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Here’s a link which brings the insurance factor into light, — (americanprogress.com is as leftist as it gets but they address the insurance element of this issue) – https://www.americanprogress.org/article/u-s-health-insurance-system-excludes-abortion/
I’d agree Hagar; it will never stop at one thing and before you know it now you are getting prosecuted or fined by some other state for some such minor infraction, especially when the lucrative possibilities become clear.
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I’m mixed on abortion, in a perfect world I prefer no one needed one and at this point of my life I find it at a minimum distasteful except for extreme circumstances. I also think much like guns flowery language that tip toes around it is used. Abortion ends a human life and I think that should be acknowledged. Just like with guns things like the advantages of greater magazine capacity should be acknowledged even when used for bad reasons.
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However my overriding and guiding principle is I believe in absolute bodily autonomy for oneself and because of that I would not deign to interfere in another’s actions regarding their body. Even though the fetus is a distinct entity, it is still within another’s body and there is nothing we should do to control that no matter how repulsive, distasteful, or repugnant I or anyone else finds any action any person takes on their body. I also think this autonomy should extend so far as to mean you automatically own your own DNA and it cannot be used by others for profit without including you.
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I also never understood why a right to abortion was found hidden within a right to privacy; like I get the half assed logic, medical records are private. But we have a 10th endment that seems to be very under utilized that has infinite room to find that right much more legitimately IMO.
Back in the early 70s, during my full mil career, my car was licensed/registered in a state that had no front plate. Got ticketed in a different state, where I was stationed, for no front plate as required by THAT state. Trooper was a pure jackass. Went to their version of traffic court and the magistrate took one look at it, looked at my haircut (I suppose) and tossed it. Various state agencies trying to pull this same sort of crap has been going on for a long time. Only the magnitude of the issues changes.
I just remembered that IN DOES enforce one IL gun law. Our gun shops ask an IL resident for their FOID card before they will sell ammo or guns to them. I actually got asked once when I was near the state line(on the IN side buying a gun. Which was weird since he was holding my IN driver’s license and 4473….