Who will decide whether women get care?

Plus, Pine Curtain newspapers and Trump's announcement

Here’s an important question that someone — likely the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court — will have to answer to know whether women in Texas have a fighting chance for medical care in the event of the need for an urgent, necessary abortion.

The question was made necessary by the court’s 6-3 decision that overturned a previous court ruling that women had the constitutional right to an abortion on demand. The court said that the decision on whether to allow abortions should be left up to the individual states.

What is to be answered takes some explanation. The U.S. already has laws that require doctors to perform life-saving procedures on people who need them. This does not just rely to abortions but all kinds of procedures without which a person might die or be seriously disabled.

Texas’ abortion law, though, doesn’t allow for abortions in any cases, even when the fetus in question is already dead or even if doctor assesses the mother is in danger of dying without the procedure being done.

Welcome to Texas! Where the politicians value life so long as it hasn’t taken a breath or pooped its diaper.

Thus, when President Joe Biden signed two executive orders reminding doctors of the federal law and promising they would be protected from state laws if performing an emergency abortion, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton would have none of that.

He put together a lawsuit claiming that Biden was overstepping its bounds and that Texas has the perfect right to provide substandard health care for women.

OK, the law doesn’t exactly say it that way, but it might as well.

Which will prevail here, the Supreme Court rule that leaves the question of abortion all up to the states, or the federal law that mandates that doctors do what they can — including provide abortions — to protect those with life-threatening conditions?

One certainly cannot be surprised that it would be Texas that would file the suit challenging Biden’s executive orders. Paxton, along with so many other problems, is “sue happy.”

There were moves to attempt to disbar him for the goofy actions he filed supporting former President Donald Trump’s Big Lie. Those suits were thrown out about 10 minutes after the district clerk marked them as “filed.”

It isn’t clear if Biden’s second order — advising pharmacists that they must make contraceptives, including the so-called “abortion pill” available or risk being removed from federal benefit programs like Medicare and Medicaid — is a part of Paxton’s suit.

If it isn’t a part now, expect it to come, if not from Paxton, then from another state’s Republican attorney general.

In the end, this case, too, will almost surely come back before the Supreme Court. This is not necessarily great news for the women of Texas or anywhere else. Still, one can hope that the court at some point will actually care about the lives of women which might be in danger.

Only time will tell.

***

East Texas newspapers owned by M. Roberts Media and run by Stephen McHaney announced last week that they where moving to three days of print publication — Wednesday, Friday and “weekend.”

That would be the Longview News Journal, Tyler Morning Telegraph and Marshall News Messenger. That’s a chunk of the population behind the Pine Curtain that will lose the opportunity to buy a daily newspaper.

McHaney says news coverage will not suffer, it is just that stories on non-print days will appear on the online editions of the newspapers. He says those will be refreshed at least every morning.

I’m sure McHaney is committed to that but news coverage is already diminished from what it once was. Here’s hoping that it doesn’t slip any further. It will be a challenge, for sure.

I have no idea if the new plan includes layoffs from any of the papers but it would not be surprising. Covid hurt newspapers along with all other businesses. Times are even tougher and they were already suffering mightily.

No matter what you might think of the editorial stances of these newspapers, this is not a good development. All three of these papers have had a heyday in which they did a good job in protecting the people from all sorts of shenanigans. Those days have not necessarily passed, but….

People think of newspapers as institutions but they are businesses and, as with all businesses, they operate on a profit basis, or most of them do. Don’t lose heart, the election of Donald Trump was the best thing that ever happened to the New York Times. Who knows what might help bring newspapers back?

***

Sigh.

It appears as if Trump is going to announce he is running for president again, with the rumors I’ve read setting September as a possible time to make it official.

This is no surprise but that doesn’t make it any less depressing because we know thousands of people in East Texas are going to line up to work and vote for him.

His lies will likely be even more outrageous this time than last and it will be interesting if any of the formal faithful might be ready to look for a better candidate, say, someone who occasionally tells the truth.

Don’t know which Republican that might be unless Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger jumps in.

It will also be worth watching to see if other prospective Republican candidates will defer to him and stay out of the race.

Here’s looking at you Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, Kristi Noem, et al.

My prediction: Everyone will wait to see what DeSantis does and he will wait until the new year at least.

I was out of East Texas last week and this newsletter did not send for some reason so,
We will try sending it again.

I keep hoping that, when I go away, I will come back to find that East Texas has grown the population by a liberal or 10.

On certain days it can sure feel lonely.