Red States Trying to Control Blue States’ Pro Choice Laws

Federalized Troops enforcing
judicially mandated school
integration in Little Rock in 1957
against a defiant governor

Article IV Section 1 – Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

Section 2- A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime…

It is a far cry from recognition of the requirements that each state honor the laws of other states – a divorce in one state must be recognized in other states, for example – to applying that state’s laws to its residents when they travel to or become resident in other states. Additionally, certain arenas of law have been judicially determined to belong exclusively to federal jurisdiction, like immigration and border control, under the Commerce Clause, the Naturalization Clause, the Declaration of War Clause, the Law of Nations Clause, and the Necessary and Proper Clause of the US Constitution.

The problem occurs when one state, under the control of a grandstanding political player – like Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas trying to push federal agencies away from its international boundary with Mexico – rejects federal primacy (despite a Supreme Court ruling to the contrary) or simply wishes to ignore the constitutional prerogatives for actions that take place outside of that state’s immediate borders. The distrust of red and blue states for each other has escalated – where judicial and constitutional mandates are ignored because they conflict with popular sentiments.

This disconnect is everywhere. Take this recent example noted by CBS News February 22nd: “Prosecutors in Arizona say they won't agree right now to extradite the man accused of murdering a woman in SoHo because they don't trust Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg… Raad Almansoori is locked up in Arizona, where police say he stabbed two women. The Manhattan DA wants to bring him to New York to face charges for that SoHo murder, but Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell wants him to stay in Arizona, for now.”

The Supreme Court and federal lower courts are also weighing on various cases pending before them as red states either track their residents’ seeking abortions in blue states, but that same court is weighing reversing the “Chevron Deference” rule where courts requiring explanation and interpretation of highly specialized federal statutes generally defer to the expertise of an administrative agency. The result of shifting increasing power to the states to ignore federal administrative rulemaking or to extend their jurisdiction to their residents even when then are not in their states is massive chaos, as different states apply differing interpretations and where experts are simply ignored by biased legislatures and lower courts with differing belief systems.

Red states are attempting to convict their residents of abortion-related crimes, either because they were provided with abortion-inducing “morning after” pills or physically traveling to blue states for safe abortions that are legal in their resident red states. But blue states are beginning to fight back, leaving to disputes over the meaning of the constitutional provisions cited above. Writing for the NY Times The Morning (February 22nd), Pam Belluck explains:

“Doctors in a handful of blue states have found a way to provide abortions to women in red states where it is banned or restricted. They are doing it with a new tool: laws that protect them from prosecutors elsewhere… These telemedicine shield laws block officials in red states who might prosecute or sue the abortion providers in Massachusetts, New York, California, Vermont, Colorado and Washington State. Those states won’t extradite doctors. They won’t turn over records. They won’t aid in any investigation… Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade and triggered a wave of bans in conservative states, abortion rights advocates have worked to preserve access. They’ve used mobile clinics across the border from red states — and funds that cover the cost of travel to places where abortion is legal…

“[One new approach is where] providers started mailing abortion pills under the shield laws just last summer. But their reach has surprised even some advocates. They’ve already prescribed and mailed abortion pills to tens of thousands of women in Texas, Idaho and other places that banned abortion after the high court’s 2022 decision. Patients find them online and fill out forms about their medical history. Providers then evaluate whether patients are eligible. They can be up to 12 weeks’ pregnant and must have no disqualifying medical issues like an ectopic pregnancy or a blood-clotting disorder.

“Being able to receive abortion medication at their homes by mail saves patients the time, money and difficulty of traveling to a state where abortion is legal. It also avoids the weekslong wait for pills ordered from overseas. Shield law services charge $150 or $250, but they allow poorer patients to pay less or even nothing.

“Abortion opponents in conservative states are outraged. The shield laws are ‘really trying to completely sabotage the governing efforts of their neighboring states,’ said John Seago, the president of Texas Right to Life. ‘It can’t stand, and we can’t be content with this new development.’

“The practice has not yet been challenged in court, but observers think it’s only a matter of time. Law enforcement officials in anti-abortion states may be waiting for a case they think will be persuasive. A senior government official in a conservative state told me about one possible strategy: State officials could first file charges or a complaint against a provider in a blue state. Then, when that state refused to cooperate, a red state could sue the shield-law state itself, claiming that the Constitution’s full faith and credit clause prevents one state from interfering with another’s laws.

“States with abortion bans will also watch a lawsuit the Supreme Court will hear next month, in which opponents of abortion have sued the Food and Drug Administration to try to bar abortion pills. (My colleague Emily Bazelon has written for The Morning about how much of the abortion struggle now revolves around pills.) If the justices uphold an appeals court ruling, patients might need in-person doctor visits to obtain the medications.”

As red states achieve new levels of radical laws – like Alabama’s law declaring frozen embryos as part of an IVF process to be human beings – as the radical right promises to force a national abortion ban and as states are arresting their residents returning from a blue state where they had an abortion… it’s clear that freedom itself is at issue… but there is a very strong undercurrent of white Christian nationalist autocracy welling up in MAGA America.

I’m Peter Dekom, and for women across the land, this desire to control their bodies according to fundamental Christian beliefs will hopefully drive mothers, grandmothers, daughter and sisters to the polls in November.