Florida Abortion Activists Allegedly Caught Submitting Fraudulent Petition Signatures

Keep Abortion Legal

Florida authorities have caught multiple individuals involved in petition fraud related to a radical effort to enshrine late-term abortion into Florida’s state constitution.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement announced this week that inspectors arrested a “paid petition circulator” and issued an arrest warrant for a second petition circulator after they submitted 133 invalid constitutional amendment petitions in numerous counties.

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Murfreesboro Settles ACLU Lawsuit over Drag Performances

The City of Murfreesboro settled a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) over public drag performances, according to the legal nonprofit.

“American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Tennessee, Ballard Spahr, and Burr & Forman have settled a lawsuit filed against the City of Murfreesboro over its anti-LGBTQ+ ordinance and local policy denying all special event permit requests from the Tennessee Equality Project (TEP), founder and host of the annual BoroPride Festival,” according to a release from the ACLU.

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Commentary: Pro-Life Leaders Must Engage in Battle Against Abortion Ballot Measures Now

Pro-Life Rally

Thanks to the Dobbs decision and pro-life leaders, 24 states have laws protecting unborn children at 12 weeks or sooner. Through ballot measures, abortion activists are trying to reverse that progress so anyone can get an abortion anytime, anywhere. These activists are targeting ten pro-life states which have laws that protect 30,000 babies in the womb annually.

The proposed constitutional amendments go far beyond Roe to establish unlimited abortion, eviscerate parental rights, and remove health and safety requirements for women. Though some of the measures include the word “viability,” the broad exceptions in the law ultimately allow elective abortion in all nine months. Ohio Democrats have introduced legislation that does this following the vote on Issue 1 laying bare the policy agenda they are pursuing but denied during the amendment campaign.

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DOJ Joins ACLU In Attacking Tennessee over Law Meant to Stop Spread of HIV

Gay Couple

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Friday that the enforcement of a Tennessee law meant to prevent the knowing spread of HIV violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

“Tennessee’s aggravated prostitution law is outdated, has no basis in science, discourages testing and further marginalizes people living with HIV,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, according to a DOJ press release. “People living with HIV should not be treated as violent sex offenders for the rest of their lives solely because of their HIV status. The Justice Department is committed to ensuring that people with disabilities are protected from discrimination.”

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Missouri Supreme Court Deals Blow to Republicans in Abortion Ballot Case

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled against Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s request to change the language of a proposed abortion amendment’s language Monday, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

An appeals court had ruled earlier this month that Ashcroft’s summaries of the amendment were “argumentative” and “politically partisan” because of his use of terms like “unborn child,” which the court considered “problematic.” Ashcroft appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court but the justices declined to hear his appeal, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

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ACLU Declares Trump Gag Order to Be Unconstitutional

On Wednesday, the far-left American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) made a surprising statement condemning a federal judge’s attempted gag order on former President Donald Trump.

As Politico reports, the ACLU’s statement came as a shock to many who support the group, as it had been one of Trump’s primary enemies during his presidency, frequently suing his administration to block many of his policies. But in a new friend-of-the-court brief, the ACLU agreed with Trump’s assertion that a gag order by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is a violation of his First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, as well as a violation of the public’s right to hear him speak.

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ACLU Suing Tennessee over Law That Punishes People Who Knowingly Spreading HIV

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said on X, formerly Twitter, that it is suing the State of Tennessee over a law meant to prevent people from knowingly spreading HIV.

“BREAKING: We’re suing Tennessee for their ‘aggravated prostitution’ statute that targets people with HIV with harsh punishment and lifetime sex offender registration. This law is unconstitutional and disproportionately affects Black and transgender women,” the group said Tuesday afternoon. “The law elevates engaging in sex work from a misdemeanor to a felony based on someone’s HIV status – a protected disability.”

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ACLU Files Lawsuit over Child Drag Show Ban in Blount County

The Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced Thursday that it has filed a lawsuit in Blount County over a letter written by 5th Judicial District Attorney General Ryan Desmond to Blount Pride organizers. 

In that letter, Desmond said that he intended to enforce the Adult Entertainment Act (AEA), which was signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee (R) and bans drag shows from occurring in spaces that could be occupied by children. 

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Judge Rules Against ACLU Requesting to Block Florida Chinese Land Ownership Law

A federal judge ruled not to block the new Florida law that restricts Chinese nationals and some nationals from other countries from purchasing land in the state

U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor on Thursday denied an injunction requested by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which was representing four Chinese citizens and a real estate firm that wanted the law overturned. 

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Steve Cortes Commentary: Vote ‘Yes’ on Issue 1, Protect Ohio from Extremists Like the ‘School Porn Moms of Shaker Heights’

Why are the most radical groups in America, from BLM to the ACLU, suddenly so enthused about politics in Ohio?

After all, Ohio is a generally traditional, center-right state. But these leftists now seek to abuse the process of representative government in Ohio by compelling binding state constitutional referendums in lower turnout election cycles to inflict liberal policies that would never survive the normal lawmaking process.

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Obama-Appointed Judge Reinstates Kentucky Ban on Child Sex Change Procedures

A federal judge ruled Friday that Kentucky can enforce its state law which prohibits sex change treatments for minors, according to Reuters.

U.S. District Judge David Hale, an Obama appointee, decided that Kentucky can prohibit the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments for minors after ruling in June that the state law likely violated the U.S. Constitution, according to Reuters. The decision was made because a federal appeals court reinstated a similar ban in Tennessee ahead of the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hearing both state’s cases together.

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ACLU Asks New Acting ICE Chief to Close Detention Centers, Stop Local Police from Arresting Illegal Immigrants

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is urging the new acting chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to limit arrests of illegal immigrants made by local law enforcement and close detention centers.

The Biden administration’s ICE named Patrick “P.J.” Lechleitner as the new acting chief of the agency at the end of June. The ACLU wrote Thursday that Lechleitner should close ICE detention centers and stop an agency program that allows local law enforcement agencies to make immigration-related arrests.

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Ohio Secretary of State LaRose: Abortion and Marijuana Legalization Efforts Will Make the November Ballot

Ohio Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who is an undeclared candidate for the U.S. Senate, told The Ohio Star that he thinks that the abortion and marijuana legalization efforts in the state will both obtain enough signatures to get on the November 2023 ballot.

“Both efforts are very well funded and it wouldn’t shock me if they are able to get the adequate number they need to get on the November ballot,” LaRose told The Star.

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The Trans Lobby Wants to Make It Illegal in Michigan to Talk a Child Out of a Sex Change

Transgender activists, hospitals and medical associations are pressuring lawmakers in Michigan to pass a “conversion therapy” ban that critics say would effectively prohibit therapists from helping gender-confused children come to terms with their natural bodies and biological sex.

If enacted, the ban would be another win for activists and their medical industry allies who have helped push more than 20 states to ban clinical attempts to change a minor patient’s “gender identity.” Critics say these laws silence and intimidate therapists who don’t automatically affirm young patients’ transgender status and put them on the medicalization track.

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Pennsylvania Lawmaker Offers Legislation to Count Provisional Ballots in Cases of Defective Mail-In Votes

Pennsylvania state Senator Lisa Boscola (D-Bethlehem) is drafting a bill to ensure voters have their in-person votes counted in cases when their defective mail-in ballots were tossed. 

Boscola sponsored Act 77, the 2019 law that legalized no-excuse mail-in voting in Pennsylvania, and her emerging bill seeks to clarify a part of that statute. A provision in that law led the Delaware County Board of Elections to vote unanimously on May 23 to throw out six of its eligible voters’ ballots cast in the May 16 primary. Three of those voters are now suing the board in the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas to have their votes tallied and to guarantee those in similar situations have their ballots counted in the future. 

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ACLU Sues to Block Biden Asylum Ban

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit late Thursday against the Biden administration’s new asylum ban, which is intended to mitigate a surge in immigration following the end of Title 42, a public health policy that allowed the U.S. to expel migrants entering illegally.

The lawsuit alleges that the policy, which makes migrants who illegally enter the U.S. after failing to seeking protection in another safe country they have passed through ineligible for asylum, “attempts to resuscitate and combine the illegal features of the two previous asylum bans” the Ninth Circuit previously struck down.

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ACLU Files Lawsuit Challenging Bill Banning Transgender Medical Procedures for Minors

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Kentucky filed a lawsuit Wednesday to challenge a bill that bans minors from having access to transgender medical procedures, according to the lawsuit.

Senate Bill 150, in addition to prohibiting medical professionals from offering services to minors to “alter the appearance or perception of the minor’s sex,” the law also compels schools to inform parents if their child requests a pronoun change and bars students below sixth grade from learning about “human sexuality.” The bill was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear but then overturned by the legislature, prompting the state’s ACLU branch to file a lawsuit Wednesday in an attempt to stop the bill before it goes into effect in June.

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ACLU Sues Tennessee over Law Preventing Trans Surgeries, Hormones

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Thursday announced that it is filing a lawsuit against the state of Tennessee over what it calls an “attack” on transgender youth. 

SB 1 recently passed the Tennessee Senate and subsequently enacted into law, bans doctors from child genital mutilation and giving harmful sex-change hormones and puberty blockers to children, the former of which often cannot be reversed. 

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Conservative Commentator Fires Back at Deirdre Nansen McCloskey for Cancelling University of Pittsburgh Debate

Daily Wire commentator Michael Knowles on Wednesday responded to Deirdre Nansen McCloskey’s withdrawal from their scheduled University of Pittsburgh debate, calling the libertarian economist “scared” and “not honest.” 

The event, sponsored by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), was to take place next Tuesday and Knowles said he and ISI are looking for a replacement for McCloskey. Knowles, a traditionalist Catholic, and McCloskey, a transgendered woman and professor emerita at the University of Illinois-Chicago, planned to argue over the nature of womanhood and current gender-policy issues. 

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Politically Diverse Groups Back Free Speech at Pitt After Pennsylvania Lawmakers Urge Event Cancellation

After two Pennsylvania lawmakers last week called for cancelling upcoming conservative appearances at the University of Pittsburgh, a politically diverse array of voices are responding in favor of free speech. 

Representatives Jessica Benham (D-Carrick) and Malcolm Kenyatta (D-Philadelphia), who co-chair the state House LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus, denounced the state-related university for permitting the presence of speakers who oppose liberal views of transgenderism. The guests they find objectionable include Cabot Phillips, senior editor of the The Daily Wire news organization, who is scheduled to speak this Friday; Riley Gaines, a former college swimmer and critic of biological males competing in women’s sports, who will appear on March 27; and Michael Knowles, a Daily Wire commentator, who will debate transgender economist Deirdre McCloskey on April 18. All speakers are being sponsored by student-led associations. 

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State Senator Van Wanggaard Commentary: Milwaukee’s Criminal Justice System Failed Officer Peter Jerving and Milwaukee

Last week, following the killing of police officer Peter Jerving, local and state leaders alike called for change to stop the senseless, preventable, tragic violence in Milwaukee. And they’re right. While the causes of violence are many, solving the crisis that is the Milwaukee criminal justice system would go a long way. 

Let’s start with the front line – police officers and police policies.

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Wisconsin Senate Demands Green Bay Remove Audio Surveillance Devices in City Hall

An Attorney representing the Wisconsin State Senate sent a letter this week to Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich demanding he immediately disable the audio recording devices planted in city hall. The letter also demands the city destroy all illegally obtained audio recordings. 

“This surveillance activity is not only disturbing. It is unlawful,” writes Ryan J. Walsh, the attorney representing the lawmakers. 

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Nashville DA’s Office Installs Listening Devices In What Seems a Troubling Secret Recording Trend

Listening devices have been installed in areas around the Nashville District Attorney’s office, according to news reports. The revelations come as similar recording devices are popping up in other government buildings across the country in what privacy experts say is a troubling trend of citizen monitoring. 

District Attorney Glenn Funk’s team did not dispute the findings of a NewsChannel 5 investigation, the news outlet reported.

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Wisconsin Representatives Introduce Victims’ Rights Measure

Two state legislators from Wisconsin are urging colleagues to back their bill to strengthen crime victims’ rights to restitution in their state. 

The bill authored by State Representatives Shae Sortwell (R-Gibson) and Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville) would halt the restoration of felons’ voting rights until after the perpetrators pay all fines, court fees, and victim restitution. In the Badger State, a convict loses his or her right to vote until he or she serves all prison time and completes any parole or probation that a court imposes. But that person may again vote before meeting his or her legal monetary obligations. 

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Arizona’s Democratic Attorney General Defends Maintaining Database Tracking International Money Transfers

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes’ is defending her administration’s decision to keep in place a money transfer surveillance program that paves the way for a growing number of law enforcement agencies across the country to keep tabs on the dealings of potentially illegal activity.

With the database originally set up nearly a decade ago under the stewardship of a Republican attorney general, the so-called Transaction Record Analysis Center (TRAC) act was billed as a voluntary agreement with Western Union aimed at combating drug trafficking that has now expanded to touch more than 600 law enforcement agencies.

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State Representative Jason Zachary Leads Legislation to Stop Gender Reassignment Surgeries in Tennessee

Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed (R-TN-14) State Representative Jason Zachary to the newsmaker line to discuss the ACLU’s lawsuit threat to Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare’s failure to maintain a schedule gender reassignment surgery and his legislature to maintain such surgeries halt in the state of Tennessee.

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Border Patrol Union Tells ACLU ‘Go to Hell,’ Urges Votes for Pro-Border Defense Candidates

After another clash with foreign nationals illegally entering the U.S., the union representing Border Patrol agents is urging Americans to vote on Nov. 8 for candidates who will defend them, the rule of law, and the southern border.

On Monday, mostly single male Venezuelans, Mexicans and Hondurans crossed the Rio Grande River and attempted to illegally enter the U.S. near El Paso, Texas, and allegedly assaulted Border Patrol agents demanding to be let into the country.

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Pennsylvania Supreme Court Decides Against Counting Undated Ballots

Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court this week ordered counties to decline to count any absentee or mail-in ballot delivered in an undated envelope.

State law, which has permitted no-excuse absentee voting since 2020, requires those not voting in person to place their ballot into a secrecy envelope before placing it into a return envelope. Voter must sign and date that outer envelope for their ballot to be valid under state statute. 

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Some Ohio Political Institutions Refused to Acknowledge Columbus Day

On Columbus Day 2022, the disconnect between institutions over whether to commemorate Christopher Columbus persisted, with many organizations aligned with progressives and the Democratic Party making no mention of America’s discoverer and celebrating “Indigenous People’s Day” instead.

Conservative politicians and candidates happily celebrated the holiday. 

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Judge Grants Injunction Against Ohio Abortion Law

On Friday, the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas sided with Ohio abortionists in granting a preliminary injunction against a law forbidding termination of pregnancies in cases when the unborn child has a detectible heartbeat.

Governor Mike DeWine (R) signed the Heartbeat Act in 2019, though the statute could only take effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision this June. Judge Christian Jenkins (D) placed a freeze on the law pending a determination. The state of Ohio is expected to appeal the injunction.

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Commentary: Cake Maker Jack Phillips Is STILL in Court

Jack Phillips

The endless travails of the Colorado Christian baker Jack Phillips are a measure of America’s pathetic descent into coercive secularism. Phillips has spent at least a decade in court, beating back the ludicrous claims of ACLU-style militants who can’t rest until everyone has been dragooned into the LGBTQ revolution. Phillips was at first persecuted for declining trolling customer demands that he design cakes for gay nuptials. He survived that assault, but now faces fallout from the transgender lobby’s mau-mauing of his business. In 2017, a man pretending to be a woman sued him for not designing birthday cakes in honor of “gender transitions” — an obvious nuisance suit that the state of Colorado and activist judges have humored. Phillips is back in court fighting it.

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Hold on Ohio Abortion Restriction to Last at Least Two More Weeks

Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas Judge Christian Jenkins (D) this week indicated he will extend his hold on a significant Ohio abortion-restricting law for two additional weeks. 

Jenkins’s decision prolongs the effect of a decision he made last week to obstruct the Heartbeat Act’s implementation, with the initial freeze to last two weeks. The state General Assembly passed and Governor Mike DeWine (R) signed the bill (SB 23) in 2019. The legislation, which prohibits aborting unborn children who have detectable heartbeats, could not take effect until this year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. 

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Ohio State Board of Education Considers Resolution Against Gender Ideology

Ohio’s State Board of Education on Tuesday heard public comment on a proposed resolution treating biological sex as an “objective, scientific fact” and opposing school policies that seek to blur the lines on this subject.

Board member Brendan Shea (District 5) introduced the measure, which balks at regulations recently proposed by President Joe Biden. If finalized, the federal Department of Education rules would effectively force schools to call gender-dysphoric K-12 students by their preferred names and pronouns rather than their given names and biological pronouns. They would also require school athletic programs to assign children to teams based on avowed gender identity rather than physiological sex. 

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Hamilton County Judge Temporarily Halts Ohio Abortion Restriction

Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Christian A. Jenkins this week imposed a two-week suspension on the Ohio law banning abortions for women whose unborn children have detectable heartbeats. 

Effectively, the statute, known as the “Heartbeat Law,” generally prohibits terminating pregnancies that have gone on for longer than six weeks. Governor Mike DeWine (R) signed the legislation in 2019 but agencies could not enforce it until this year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortion nationwide. 

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‘Find Another Job’: Oklahoma Officials Respond to Teacher Quitting over CRT Ban

Oklahoma officials are calling for teachers pushing Critical Race Theory (CRT) to leave the classroom after an Oklahoma teacher spoke out against the states’ education law following her resignation.

Summer Boismier quit her high school teaching position at Norman Public Schools in Norman, Oklahoma, after she shared a QR code in her classroom linking students to “Books Unbanned,” a program through Brooklyn Public Library, that allowed students to access books prohibited from being taught by a state law. The law, HB 1775, prohibits teaching that one race or sex is superior to another, with the intent to prevent the teaching of CRT and certain elements of gender ideology.

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ACLU Demands That the U.N. Force America to Pay Reparations

The far-left American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called on the United Nations to demand that the United States hand out reparations to African-Americans over past issues such as slavery.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the ACLU, along with several other left-wing groups such as Human Rights Watch, sent their demands to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, calling on the international organization to force Joe Biden to announce “immediate, tangible measures” to “dismantle structural racism” in the United States.

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Pennsylvania Toughens DUI Sentences

Pennsylvania state Reps. Craig Williams (R-Chadds Ford) and Chris Quinn (R-Media) on Friday lauded area lawmakers and activists for their work toward enactment of “Deana’s Law” which toughens drunk-driving sentences.

The new act is named after Deana DeRosa Eckman, a 45-year-old Delaware County resident who died in a February 2019 car collision caused by six-time Driving-Under-the-Influence (DUI) offender David Strowhouer in Upper Chichester Township. Strowhouer had a blood-alcohol content of 0.199, more than twice the level the commonwealth permits, and was driving 80 miles per hour before striking Eckman’s vehicle head-on. 

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Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron Asks State Court of Appeals to Reinstate Pro-Life Laws

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron quickly asked the state’s Court of Appeals to stay a circuit court’s ruling that temporarily blocked the enforcement of two state pro-life laws. Cameron filed a Writ of Mandamus and Prohibition Thursday, requesting the Kentucky Court of Appeals lift a temporary restraining order against both the Human Life Protection Act, which bans nearly all abortions, and the Heartbeat Law, which prohibits the procedure once a fetal heartbeat is detected, generally at six weeks’ gestation. We've asked the Court of Appeals to Reinstate Kentucky's Human Life Protection Act and Heartbeat Law. Read more: https://t.co/lUqoQOj4pS pic.twitter.com/iFY4R3vSCE — Attorney General Daniel Cameron (@kyoag) June 30, 2022 The restraining order allows abortions to resume while the constitutionality of the law is litigated. “Every day that goes by that the Human Life Protection Act and Heartbeat Law are prevented from taking effect, more unborn lives will be lost,” Cameron said in a statement. “These laws represent Kentucky’s values and its support for life. We’re moving quickly to defend this important law and to have it restored.” In his request for emergency relief, Cameron emphasized to the Court of Appeals the urgency of reinstating the pro-life laws: Once an abortion has been performed,…

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Ohio Supreme Court Allows Heartbeat Law to Remain in Effect, Denies Abortion Providers’ Request to Allow Procedure to Continue

The Ohio law that bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, generally at six weeks’ gestation, will remain in effect while a lawsuit filed by abortion providers continues against it.

The law took effect after the state Supreme Court denied a request by abortion providers for an emergency stay on the legislation to allow abortions to continue while the lawsuit proceeds.

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ACLU and Planned Parenthood File Lawsuit in Ohio Supreme Court to Block Enforcement of Heartbeat Law

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Planned Parenthood, and a group of Ohio abortion facilities filed a lawsuit Wednesday in Ohio Supreme Court that seeks to overturn the state’s heartbeat law which began being enforced soon after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

The pro-abortion groups claim in the lawsuit Ohioans have a “fundamental right to abortion” under the Ohio Constitution, “as guaranteed by the Ohio Constitution’s broad protections for individual liberties under Article I, Sections 1, 16, and 21, and the equal protection guarantee under Article I, Section 2.”

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