Latest news with #Roe
San Francisco Chronicle
3 days ago
- Health
- San Francisco Chronicle
No, California is not guaranteed to remain an abortion haven
The sudden closure of five Planned Parenthood clinics in Northern California last week reveals a sad, stark truth: California is not the national 'haven' for abortion rights that it has aspired to be since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. No state could be under Republican rule in Washington, or while federal law trumps state law, the Supreme Court majority opposes abortion rights and clinics are reliant on federal money to survive. There are few options to fix this problem, even in California, the world's fourth-largest economy. The state barely covered its budget deficit this year, and it has holes to fill as federal funds for public universities, education, transportation and other sectors were slashed in the recently passed budget. Plus, the state needs federal dollars to help rebuild Los Angeles after the devastating wildfires there earlier this year. Ten million Americans are expected to lose their health insurance because of nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Meanwhile, the wealthiest Americans will receive a disproportionate share of the tax cuts funded by those reductions, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. 'It's an illustration of the limits on what any state can do (on abortion access) if the federal government is hostile,' said Mary Ziegler, a professor of law at UC Davis and leading scholar on abortion rights. 'It's more of a reminder that there isn't really a real sanctuary. California has limited power over a lot of this.' It is the latest example of how California is in the political crosshairs of what President Donald Trump's former top adviser Steve Bannon famously described as his 'muzzle velocity' philosophy of launching a lot of disruptive policies and spurious attacks simultaneously. California is withering under the incoming fire. The people hurt most by the closure of those clinics will be the poorest Californians, as 80% of the people who used services at those clinics were Medicaid recipients, according to Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, the umbrella organization for the shuttered clinics. Planned Parenthood doesn't just provide abortion services. The majority of people go to Planned Parenthood clinics for contraceptive services, sexually transmitted infection testing, pregnancy testing and gynecological services. One in 10 (11%) female Medicaid beneficiaries ages 15 to 49 who received family planning services went to a Planned Parenthood clinic in 2021, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. California has the highest percentage (29%) of Medicaid recipients in the country who go there for health care. This wasn't the way it was supposed to go. California was supposed to be a haven for abortion rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Shortly after the decision, Gov. Gavin Newsom joined the governors of Washington and Oregon to create what he called 'the West Coast offensive. A road map for other states to stand up for women.' A diverse coalition of abortion rights advocates formed the California Future of Abortion Council. It proposed more than 50 recommendations for policymakers to improve abortion access in the state. In the year after the decision, Newsom and the Democratic-controlled Legislature created more than a dozen new laws and invested more than $200 million to increase access across the state. In November 2022, 67% of California voters supported a ballot measure enshrining abortion rights in the state Constitution. Newsom spent $100,000 from his campaign coffers to plant billboards in seven states with some of the nation's most restrictive laws: 'Need an abortion?' reads one billboard. 'California is here to help.' 'What you do in California sets the standard for everyone else,' Mini Timmaraju, national president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said at a 2022 fundraiser for Proposition 1 in San Francisco that Hillary Clinton attended. 'I want to take that package of legislation and this proposition and see it copied nationwide.' Ultimately, all those California laws and all that state funding weren't enough to keep the Mar Monte clinics open. They never could be as long as there isn't the national right to an abortion that Roe provided and as long as women's health clinics are reliant on federal funds to remain open. Planned Parenthood estimates that 200 clinics nationwide could close. To meet this reality, California needs a new 'West Coast offensive.' It needs to draw up a new 'road map for other states to stand up for women.' It would be best if clinics were funded privately, insulating them from partisan federal cuts. But that is harder now. California is the state with the most millionaires and billionaires. Now is the time for wealthy individuals and foundations to stand up and backfill these losses so clinics can continue to provide access to women's health care. But will those individuals step forward? Or will they be cowed like the wealthy law firms and Ivy League universities that have bowed to Trump's intimidation? Even if they do step up, is there enough private money in California to keep federally funded women's health clinics open until Democrats regain control of at least one lever of power in Washington and can curb his fascistic policies? That possibility looks bleak. For starters, it would probably require hundreds of millions of dollars, said Shannon Olivieri Hovis, former NARAL Pro-Choice California director who is now vice president of public affairs at Essential Access Health. 'I think the honest answer is, we don't know yet. We're talking about a huge hole.' Theresa Cheng, a professor of emergency medicine at UCSF and a member of the school's Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, said it will be difficult for the private sector to patch up all the new holes punctured in the social safety net by the Trump administration. 'That's going to be really difficult because the Trump administration has cut so broadly in so many social systems,' said Cheng, who is in touch with private donors through her work with several nonprofit organizations. 'Food insecurity. Homelessness. Immigration. There are a lot of needs out there now.' Relying on private donations isn't going to help clinics across California's chasm of wealth inequality, Ziegler said. 'If you're depending partly on individual donors, that's going to look very different in Beverly Hills or Marin County than it is in Gilroy or other areas where there are few people to give private donations,' Ziegler said. Until political change happens in Washington, Cheng urged Californians to 'stay stalwart in protecting reproductive health. So much of this will have to be settled out in the courts. That will at least buy us some more time.'
Axios
5 days ago
- Politics
- Axios
Supreme Court gains confidence as power concerns climb
Americans are beginning to regain confidence in the Supreme Court after hitting an all-time low when the court effectively ruled to overturn Roe v Wade, according to an AP-NORC poll released Friday. The big picture: The confidence boost is notable because Americans increasingly thinkthat the Supreme Court has too much power, a trend likely to grow as the justices continue to take on cases that Americans are deeply divided on. Driving the news: The poll found that 67% of adults now have at least some confidence in the high court, up from 56% in a poll conducted shortly after the reproductive rights ruling. Thirty-eight percent of respondents think the court has too much power, a significant jump from 29% in April. Zoom in: The number of people who think the Supreme Court has too much power varies sharply depending on political affiliation. Fifty-six percent of Democrats think the court has too much power, up from 34% in April. Twenty percent of Republicans agree, which is roughly unchanged from the results taken in April. Republicans are almost two times more likely than Democrats to say that federal judges are too powerful (50% vs. 24%) which suggests an increased distrust towards the lower courts. Between the lines: The court's 6-3 conservative majority, including three justices that President Trump appointed, has ruled in Trump's favor in a slew of high-profile wins for conservatives. The court handed down a ruling in June that effectively weakens the judicial branches overall power. In that case, Trump v. CASA, Inc., the justices determined that federal district judges do not have the ability to block laws throughout the United States, a policy known as an universal injunction.
The Hill
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
1 in 3 Americans lack confidence in Supreme Court, primarily Democrats: Poll
Public confidence in the Supreme Court has ticked up slightly since it plummeted after the nation's highest court overturned federal abortion rights protections in 2022, according to a new survey. The AP-NORC Research Center poll, unveiled Friday, found that 1 in 3 adults in the U.S. remain wary of the Supreme Court — chiefly driven by Democratic skepticism. Roughly 67 percent of those surveyed said they had at least 'some' confidence in the court — up from 56 percent in a poll conducted just after the decision three years ago upended the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. The same poll in 2020 — before the historic Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health case was decided — found 86 percent of people overall said they had confidence in the high court. The most dramatic swings in public confidence over the three polls from 2020 to this year were seen on the Democratic side: About 80 percent said they had at least some confidence in the court in the 2020 poll, but that number plunged to 35 percent in 2022. The latest poll found about 43 percent of Democrats expressed confidence in the justices. Meanwhile, Republicans surveyed in the latest poll were overwhelmingly more supportive of the court than in previous years, which has tracked conservative since President Trump appointed three justices to the bench during his first term. About 90 percent of GOP respondents said that they have 'some' or a 'great deal of' confidence in the justices, showing only a slight shift from 2020 when about 95 percent of Republicans said the same. Attitudes among independents has fluctuated some since 2020, but not as pointedly as the views among Democrats surveyed. More than three-quarters of independents polled in 2020 said they had 'some' or a 'great deal of' confidence in the Supreme Court. The number dipped to 52 percent in 2023 but bounced to 67 percent in the 2025 results. The AP-NORC poll surveyed 1,347 adults across the country from July 10-14 and has a margin of error of 3.6 percentage points.
Hamilton Spectator
5 days ago
- Politics
- Hamilton Spectator
How views of the Supreme Court have changed since 2022 abortion ruling, according to AP-NORC polling
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans' views of the Supreme Court have moderated somewhat since the court's standing dropped sharply after its ruling overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, according to a new poll. But concern that the court has too much power is rising, fueled largely by Democrats. The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about a third of U.S. adults have 'hardly any confidence at all' in the court, but that's down from 43% three years ago. As the new AP-NORC polling tracker shows, about half of Americans have 'only some confidence' in the court, up from 39% in July 2022, while a relatively small number, about 1 in 5, have 'a great deal of confidence,' which hasn't shifted meaningfully in the past few years. The moderate increase in confidence is driven by Republicans and independents. Still, views of the nation's highest court remain more negative than they were as recently as early 2022, before the high-profile ruling that overturned the constitutional right to abortion. An AP-NORC poll conducted in February 2022 found that only around one-quarter of Americans had hardly any confidence in the court's justices. Persistent divide between Republicans and Democrats The partisan divide has been persistent and stark, particularly since the Dobbs ruling, when Democrats' confidence in the nine justices plummeted. The survey shows Republicans are happier than Democrats and independents with the conservative-dominated court, which includes three justices appointed by President Donald Trump, a Republican. Few Republicans, just 8%, view the court dimly, down from about 1 in 5 in July 2022. For independents, the decline was from 45% just after the Dobbs ruling to about 3 in 10 now. The views among Democrats were more static, but they are also slightly less likely to have low confidence in the justices, falling from 64% in summer 2022 to 56% now. In recent years, the court has produced historic victories for Republican policy priorities. The justices overturned Roe, leading to abortion bans in many Republican-led states, ended affirmative action in college admissions, expanded gun rights , restricted environmental regulations and embraced claims of religious discrimination. Many of the court's major decisions from this year are broadly popular, according to a Marquette Law School poll conducted in July. But other polling suggests that most don't think the justices are ruling neutrally. A recent Fox News poll found that about 8 in 10 registered voters think partisanship plays a role in the justices' decisions either 'frequently' or 'sometimes.' Last year, the conservative majority endorsed a robust view of presidential immunity and allowed Trump to avoid a criminal trial on election interference charges . In recent months, the justices on the right handed Trump a string of victories, including a ruling that limits federal judges' power to issue nationwide injunctions . Katharine Stetson, a self-described constitutional conservative from Paradise, Nevada, said she is glad that the court has reined in 'the rogue judges, the district judges around the country' who have blocked some Trump initiatives. Stetson, 79, said she is only disappointed it took so long. 'Finally. Why did they allow it get out of hand?' she said. Growing concerns the court is too powerful Several recent decisions were accompanied by stinging dissents from liberal justices who complained the court was giving Trump too much leeway and taking power for itself. 'Perhaps the degradation of our rule-of-law regime would happen anyway. But this court's complicity in the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts, their rulings, and the law (as they interpret it) will surely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise,' Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote when the court ruled on nationwide injunctions. The July AP-NORC poll found a growing similar sentiment. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults now say the court has 'too much' power in the way the federal government operates these days. In April, about 3 in 10 people were concerned about the court's power. The shift is largely due to movement among Democrats, rising from about one-third in April to more than half now. Debra A. Harris, a 60-year-old retired state government worker who now lives in Winter Haven, Florida, said the court's decisions in recent years 'just disgust me to my soul.' Harris said the court has changed in recent years, with the addition of the three justices appointed by Trump. 'I find so much of what they're doing is based so much on the ideology of the Republican ticket,' Harris said, singling out last year's immunity decision. 'We don't have kings. We don't have dictators.' George Millsaps, who flew military helicopters and served in Iraq, said the justices should have stood up to Trump in recent months, including on immigration, reducing the size of the federal workforce and unwinding the Education Department. 'But they're bowing down, just like Congress apparently is now, too,' said Millsaps, a 67-year-old resident of Floyd County in rural southwest Virginia. ___ The AP-NORC poll of 1,437 adults was conducted July 10-14, using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points. ___ Follow the AP's coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at .
Toronto Star
5 days ago
- Politics
- Toronto Star
How views of the Supreme Court have changed since 2022 abortion ruling, according to AP-NORC polling
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans' views of the Supreme Court have moderated somewhat since the court's standing dropped sharply after its ruling overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, according to a new poll. But concern that the court has too much power is rising, fueled largely by Democrats. The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about a third of U.S. adults have 'hardly any confidence at all' in the court, but that's down from 43% three years ago. As the new AP-NORC polling tracker shows, about half of Americans have 'only some confidence' in the court, up from 39% in July 2022, while a relatively small number, about 1 in 5, have 'a great deal of confidence,' which hasn't shifted meaningfully in the past few years.
