February, 21 2012, 02:36pm EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
press@sanders.senate.gov,Michael Briggs: (202) 228-6492
Senators Seek Study on Voter Laws
A group of U.S. senators today asked the Government Accountability Office to study what they called an "alarming number" of new state laws that will make it "significantly harder" for millions of eligible voters to cast ballots this November.
Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) sent a letter asking the non-partisan research arm of Congress for the review of new laws in at least 14 states.
WASHINGTON
A group of U.S. senators today asked the Government Accountability Office to study what they called an "alarming number" of new state laws that will make it "significantly harder" for millions of eligible voters to cast ballots this November.
Sens. Bernie Sanders(I-Vt.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) sent a letter asking the non-partisan research arm of Congress for the review of new laws in at least 14 states.
The study is needed "to ensure that all citizens have the opportunity to exercise their constitutional right to vote and are not unreasonably hindered or burdened in that process," the letter said.
Some of the new restrictions, the senators added, are tantamount to poll taxes.
New state identification laws, by one estimate, will have a direct impact on 21 million American citizens who do not have a government-issued photo ID. The majority of those people are young would-be voters, the elderly, African Americans, Hispanics, and those earning $35,000 per year or less.
Other new state measures require proof of citizenship in order to register, prevent students from using college ID cards to register, place extreme burdens on third-party registration efforts, and eliminate or cut back early voting opportunities.
"State actions that suppress the right to vote must not be tolerated," the senators said. "We must make it easier, not harder, for poor and working people to vote and to participate in the political process."
The senators also asked the GAO to examine data on any prosecutions or convictions for voter impersonation fraud during the past decade in states that enacted new restrictions on voting, since the threat of such fraud has been used as a justification for many of the new laws.
"It is critical that we have an accurate picture of these recent state laws, individual access to voting, and actual instances of voter impersonation fraud," the letter said.
To read the senators' letter, click here (pdf).
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In First-of-Its Kind Legal Challenge, Texas Women Say State Abortion Ban Endangered Their Lives
The state ban that took effect last year ostensibly allows pregnant people to obtain care if their life or that of their fetus is at risk, but one critic said the suit shows that "there is no such thing as an abortion exception."
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Five Texas women are scheduled to speak on the steps of the state Capitol on Tuesday about the life-threatening risks posed by the state's abortion ban and their struggles to obtain necessary healthcare since it went into effect, a day after filing an unprecedented lawsuit challenging the law.
While a number of abortion rights groups, religious organizations, and healthcare providers have filed legal challenges to state abortion bans, the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), which is representing the plaintiffs, called the lawsuit "groundbreaking" because it has been filed by people who claim an abortion ban put them at risk.
"I don't think we've ever seen anything like this in the nation, having people with pregnancy complications having to sue the state," Nancy Northup, president of CRR, toldThe New York Times. "It puts a face on the reality of what it means when you criminalize abortion care. It shows that abortion care is healthcare."
"These five brave women are fighting for their right to live and get the care and treatment they need from doctors."
The five women—Amanda Zurawski, Lauren Miller, Lauren Hall, Anna Zargarian, and Ashley Brandt—are suing officials including state Attorney General Ken Paxton and state medical board executive director Stephen Brint Carlton, and are calling on a state court in Travis County to confirm that the state's abortion ban allows medical professionals to provide abortion care in cases where the pregnant person has a "physical emergent medical condition" or "where the pregnancy is unlikely to result in the birth of a living child with sustained life."
The near-total ban on abortion care that went into effect in Texas after Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022 ostensibly includes "exceptions," allowing abortion care to prevent a pregnant patient's death or "substantial impairment of major bodily function."
The women represented by CRR say they were denied care despite being pregnant with fetuses that had significant abnormalities, and in some cases developing life-threatening medical conditions.
As Common Dreams reported last October, Zurawski discovered that her cervical membranes has begun to prolapse in her 17th week of pregnancy—a condition that her fetus would not survive. Despite this, doctors told her they could only perform an abortion if she became acutely ill or if the fetal heartbeat stopped. Her water broke soon after learning the news, but she was still told to remain at home, where she developed a fever. Her husband called their local hospital and pleaded for a doctor to provide the care Zurawski needed, only to be told the hospital's ethics board would have to approve the procedure.
When Zurawski was finally admitted to the hospital, doctors discovered she had developed a blood infection. She later needed a blood transfusion after developing a secondary infection and was ultimately left with scar tissue completely blocking one fallopian tube, likely making it difficult to become pregnant again.
With Texas doctors desperate to avoid a potential prison sentence, a $100,000 fine, and the loss of their medical license that would result from providing an abortion illegally, journalist Jessica Valenti said the stories of Zurawski and her co-plaintiffs "don't just demonstrate how dangerous abortion bans are—but that abortion 'exceptions' ARE NOT REAL."
\u201cThese women's stories don't just demonstrate how dangerous abortion bans are - but that abortion 'exceptions' ARE NOT REAL. \n\nWe need to be hammering on this every single day. There is no such thing as an abortion exception - they're a Republican PR stunt\u201d— Jessica Valenti (@Jessica Valenti) 1678160214
"If fatally ill women can't get abortions, do you really believe rape victims will be able to?" said Valenti. "It's not going to happen. Ever. And any time we allow Republicans to say they're 'compromising' by adding exceptions to a ban, we're allowing that (very dangerous) lie [to] flourish."
Other plaintiffs were forced to travel to other states to get care after learning their fetuses had serious complications. Hall, who found out at 18 weeks pregnant that her fetus had no skull and an undeveloped brain, was warned by a doctor not to tell anyone where she was going or why, for fear of being reported to an anti-abortion hotline.
"Just because Roe v. Wade is no longer the law of the land does not mean that women and pregnant people are without constitutional and basic human rights," Molly Duane, senior staff attorney at CRR, toldNPR. "We're talking about people who are in medical emergencies, who need urgent medical care, and whose physicians are too scared to provide that care because of the state's laws and because of the state's failure to provide any clarification around what its law means."
Brandt found out when she was 12 weeks pregnant with twins that one twin was not developing properly, and received abortion care in Colorado to save the life of the healthy fetus. She began bleeding after returning home and had to go to the emergency room.
"She was terrified that she would lose both babies and that she would somehow be in trouble for going out of state for the fetal reduction procedure," reads the lawsuit. "In the emergency room, Ashley felt a distinct uneasiness and confusion. It appeared that the medical staff thought they were not supposed to know about Ashley’s abortion or discuss it with her."
Brandt's medical records showed that her doctor omitted discussions they had had about fetal reduction to save the life of her healthy baby, and claimed one twin had been lost to "vanishing twin syndrome," likely to protect both Brandt and the doctor from prosecution.
"These five brave women are fighting for their right to live and get the care and treatment they need from doctors," said Maya Wiley, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
\u201cThese 5 brave women are fighting for their right 2 live & get the care & treatment they need from doctors. They\u2019re fight is for all of us! #Texas threat to imprison doctors & nurses is gov\u2019t getting betw patients & medical professionals. That\u2019s not liberty https://t.co/zvqi5oauQp\u201d— Maya Wiley (@Maya Wiley) 1678203180
According to the Times, outcry over the impact of abortion bans on women whose lives were threatened "helped build momentum for legalized abortion in heavily Catholic Ireland and in South America."
The women in the Texas lawsuit are scheduled to speak about their experiences at the state Capitol at 1:30 pm ET on Tuesday.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday accused Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell of unnecessarily risking large-scale layoffs and an economic recession by continuing to raise interest rates, a policy decision that the Massachusetts Democrat slammed as badly misguided and destructive.
During a Senate Banking Committee hearing, Warren asked Powell to address the roughly two million people in the U.S. who would be out of a job if the Fed's projected unemployment rate of 4.6% by the end of the year turned out to be accurate.
"What would you say to them?" Warren asked. "How would you explain your view that they need to lose their jobs?"
Insisting that a surge in job losses is "not an intended consequence" of the Fed's rate increases, Powell said he would "explain to people more broadly that inflation is extremely high, and it's hurting the working people of this country badly—all of them, not just 2 million of them."
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The Fed chair's answers did not satisfy Warren, who said Powell appears to view throwing two million people out of work as "just part of the cost" of bringing inflation down.
Watch the exchange:
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