The Washington Post got details from a web meeting between anti-choice groups across the country who are looking to what's next after the Supreme Court was able to destroy Roe v. Wade with the decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
The groups explained that they don't want to be seen as taking a "victory lap" after pushing to take away healthcare privacy rights around reproductive freedoms.
"One by one, they spoke of flipping Democratic congressional seats, of empowering state legal offices, of avoiding a victory lap and instead doubling down on their long-running crusade to curtail abortion access across the country," said the Post.
“There’s always been a 50-year debate over what’s the best way to bring down Roe v. Wade,” said Clarke Forsythe, the senior counsel for Americans United for Life, an anti-choice law firm. He was among the 40 activists on the call. "And now there’s a big debate, and everybody’s involved, about what’s the best road forward — or what are the best roads forward — after Dobbs."
The activists on the call debated whether to try and destroy the rights to an abortion across the entire country or whether to focus more on there being exceptions to the ban for rape and incest. In the past several months, the anti-choice laws have taken a public relations hit because many minors who are rape survivors have been forced to figure out travel out of state after being attacked.
In the case of one 10-year-old who was forced to travel to Indiana, Republicans attacked the young girl and speculated whether the story was even real. At one point, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said that the story was fake because he'd never seen a police report.
"I'm not saying it could not have happened. What I'm saying to you is there is not a damn scintilla of evidence. And shame on the Indianapolis paper that ran this thing on a single source who has an obvious ax to grind," he told Fox's Jesse Waters.
As it turns out, the police report not only existed but so did the perpetrator, who eventually confessed to law enforcement. Yost not only refused to apologize or admit that he was wrong, he doubled down, telling the Fox network he was glad that a child rapist was taken off the streets, and then blamed the doctor, lying that the doctor never reported the rape. The doctor reported it two days after the procedure.
“Apologize for what? Questioning a newspaper story?” Yost asked.
Sadly, only 30 percent of rapes are actually reported to the police.
The anti-choice activists still don't agree on how they should proceed and whether it's with adding the exceptions or whether they should continue to support vigilante justice in places like Texas and Oklahoma.
"A narrow slice of activists take a more extreme stance of imposing criminal penalties on patients who get abortions — but such a position is at odds with the more mainstream antiabortion movement that contends the woman should not be punished," the Post reported. "The looming battles will be waged in state legislatures as antiabortion groups work with local leaders on passing ambitious plans to ban abortion. Major groups have their own model legislation — or are planning to soon unveil language — that state lawmakers can introduce when legislative sessions resume in a race to influence what a new post-Roe America will look like."
Already, there are faith leaders heading to courts claiming that abortion banks that don't take into account the life and health of the mother violate their religious freedom. In religions like Judaism, the fetus does not exist without the host, so they put the life of the pregnant person first. The idea of life beginning at conception or at six weeks or eight weeks or 20 weeks isn't rooted in science; it's rooted in far-right forms of Christianity. A fetus isn't considered viable until around 24 weeks. So, non-Christian leaders say that the state laws violate their religious freedoms.
For example, the National Council of Jewish Women explained that "life does not begin at conception under Jewish law. Sources in the Talmud note that the fetus is 'mere water' before 40 days of gestation. Following this period, the fetus is considered a physical part of the pregnant individual’s body, not yet having life of its own or independent rights. The fetus is not viewed as separate from the parent’s body until birth begins and the first breath of oxygen into the lungs allows the soul to enter the body."
So, for all of the states that passed their own "religious freedom" laws, these suits from religious groups saying its religious freedoms are being violated could end up in state Supreme Courts.
"It was easy to unite against Roe v. Wade," said Louisiana state Rep. Alan Seabaugh, who tried to kill the part of his state law that would have thrown women in jail for having abortions.
"I think this issue has the potential to divide the right," he said about abortion generally, "because of the issue of where you put the line. It’s not clean, neat and easy."
Other national anti-choice activists are working to kill interstate travel and commerce and ensure that women cannot travel to another state because they could be pregnant and could be getting an abortion.
"The Thomas More Society and GOP state lawmakers are seeking to advance proposals allowing private citizens to sue people who help or provide a resident of a state that has banned abortion terminate a pregnancy in another state," The Washington Post previously reported last month.
But even Americans' Right to Life confessed that it shouldn't be a random person but those who have an invested interest in the pregnancy, like members of the family.
"We don’t support an open-ended, any Tom, Dick or Harry can use the law," said Forsythe, of Americans United for Life, which wrote hundreds of antiabortion bills for anti-choice lawmakers. “The civil enforcement mechanism should be limited to women injured by abortion or family members involved or affected."
Such a requirement would essentially eliminate the vigilante component of the law.
Interstate commerce issues are left up to Congress, not the states, according to the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court's elimination of Roe handed the regulation of state laws back to the states. That has now sparked interstate legislative debate, with some trying to ban travel to others that allow abortions. Lawsuits between people in states with different laws will likely head to the Supreme Court to decide.