International
The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily allows emergency abortions to be done in Idaho
– The United States Supreme Court decided on Thursday to temporarily allow abortions in medical emergencies in the state of Idaho to protect the life and health of the mother.
The Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, formally dismissed an appeal on the strict prohibition of abortion in Idaho by 6 votes to 3, although the central issues of the case were not considered.
The document was published a day after it was briefly posted by mistake on the Supreme Court’s website and published by a news agency.
The decision re-establishes, therefore, a ruling of a lower court that temporarily allowed state hospitals to perform emergency abortions in hospitals if necessary to protect the mother’s health, while the case progresses in the lower courts.
Three of the court conservatives (President John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett) sided with the three liberals (Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson) when they dismissed Idaho’s appeal.
Judges Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissaged.
The case focuses on whether a federal law aimed at guaranteeing emergency care for any patient – the Medical Treatment and Emergency Work Act (Emtala) – replaces the abortion ban in Idaho, one of the strictest in the country.
This has been the first time that the highest court has studied the state restrictions on abortion that came after the TS itself eliminated the Roe vs Wade doctrine that had protected the right to abortion at the national level.
This timid victory for abortion advocates is in addition to the victory achieved after the decision of the Supreme Court to reject a challenge to the approval of the abortion pill, the most widely used method to abort today in the United States.
On that occasion, again, the highest court did not rule on the merits of the case.
After the decision was heard, President Joe Biden recalled in a statement that it is only valid “while this case returns to the lower courts.”
“No woman should be denied attention, forced to wait until she is on the verge of death or forced to flee her state of origin just to receive the medical attention she needs. This should never happen in the United States,” but “it’s exactly what is happening in states across the country since the Supreme Court annulled Roe against Wade,” he said.
According to Biden, who tonight is facing the first debate of the White House race against Donald Trump, doctors “should be able to practice medicine” and “patients should be able to receive the care they need.”
“We will continue to fight for women’s right to make deeply personal health care decisions and we will continue to fight to restore Roe’s protections against Wade in federal law, for all women in all states of the country,” she said.
Since in June 2022 the U.S. supreme court, with a conservative majority, eliminated federal protection against abortion by annulling the ‘Roe vs. Wade’ ruling, dozens of states – Idaho among them – have carried out a frontal attack on women’s rights by implementing restrictive anti-abortion laws.
That same year, the Administration of the current US President, Joe Biden, sued the state of Idaho alleging that the restrictions on this procedure are regulated in part by federal law and cannot be interposed when it comes to saving the lives of pregnant women.
To defend this position, the 40-year-old Emtala Law was invoked, which obliges hospitals that receive federal funds to provide emergency medical care to anyone, also for reproductive reasons.
In the opinion of the vice president of reproductive rights and health of the National Center for Women’s Law, Gretchen Borchelt, “the Supreme Court does not deserve any credit for this decision.”
“This is the minimum that pregnant people and suppliers in Idaho deserve,” he said in a statement.
“Instead of issuing a decision that would unequivocally reaffirm that emergency abortion care is protected by a long-standing federal law, the Court ruled out this issue, opening the possibility that in the future more pregnant women will be denied care that saves their lives and health,” he added.
International
Democrats pressure Donald Trump with a vote in the Senate on in vitro fertilization
In an attempt to corner former US president and Republican candidate Donald Trump, Senate Democrats put to a vote on Tuesday a bill to guarantee access to ‘in vitro’ fertilization, a proposal that the conservatives blocked.
The vote took place just two weeks after Trump said that, if elected in the November 5 elections, he will not only protect access to in vitro fertilization, but will also make the Government or insurers cover the cost of this service.
Taking advantage of these statements with which they intend to attract moderate voters, the Senate Democrats decided to put the legislative initiative back to a vote, three months after it was blocked by the Republicans.
The architect of this strategy was the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, who this Tuesday appeared with his co-religionists at a press conference on the stairs of Congress, surrounded by dozens of photos of families with children conceived by ‘in vitro’ fertilization.
“For many Americans, starting a family is one of the greatest joys. However, millions of people fight infertility every year. Unfortunately, as we have seen this year, access to ‘in vitro’ fertilization can no longer be taken for granted,” he said before the vote.
The senator recalled how the conservative majority of the US Supreme Court ended in June 2022 with federal protections against abortion by repealing the ‘Roe vs Wade’ ruling, which protected that right for half a century, allowing each state to set its own rules.
Twenty months later, the highest judicial instance of the conservative state of Alabama banned ‘in vitro’ fertilization by accepting the argument of the evangelical right that frozen embryos should be considered children.
That decision, later reversed by the Alabama state parliament, has fueled the debate about this reproductive method that has infiltrated the election campaign. The vice president and Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, defends the technique, while Trump has maintained ambiguous positions.
Although he recently expressed his support for in vitro fertilization, he has also repeatedly boasted of having appointed the three Supreme Court judges who contributed to annul the federal right to abortion.
Trump has promoted the idea that the Republican Party is a “leader” in ‘in vitro’ fertilization, but the reality is that the formation is divided: the moderates are committed to protecting this method and the most religious sectors consider that it should be banned.
For his part, Harris has made the defense of reproductive rights a pillar of his campaign. In a statement issued after the Republican blockade of the measure, he harshly criticized the position of the Republican Party and described its resistance to women “freely deciding on their own bodies” as “extreme, dangerous and wrong.”
The legislative project, baptized as the “Law of the Right to ‘in vitro’ fertilization”, received the support of all Democrats and Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine). The rest of the Republicans opposed it.
The text only received 51 votes in favor and could not exceed the barrier of 60 supports necessary to be debated in the Senate and, subsequently, be submitted to a final vote.
The project aimed to make access to ‘in vitro’ fertilization more affordable by requiring some insurers to cover fertility treatments.
According to the FertilityIQ organization, dedicated to providing information and guidance on fertility, the average cost can exceed $20,000. However, the exact price depends on the circumstances of each patient, including the coverage of their insurance.
International
The Government of Ecuador decrees a curfew in six provinces during a national blackout
The Government of Ecuador decreed a curfew in six provinces and one canton (municipality) of a seventh province during the eight hours that the power outage will last throughout the country, which will begin at 22:00 local time (03:00 GMT) on Wednesday.
The curfew will govern in the coastal provinces of Guayas, Los Ríos, Manabí, Orellana, Santa Elena, El Oro and in the municipality of Camilo Ponce Enríquez, in the province of Azuay.
In these same areas there is currently a state of emergency in force to face the organized crime gangs that operate in Ecuador, mainly dedicated to drug trafficking, and whose violence has led the country to register in 2023 the highest homicide rate in Latin America, with 47.2 per 100,000 inhabitants.
The Presidency indicated that police and military will strengthen their actions to ensure citizen and country security, “with special attention to the cantons (municipalities) and parishes in which this suspension of freedom of transit governs.”
He said that, in due course, he will communicate other complementary measures that they consider necessary depending on the situation next week.
Wednesday’s blackout was initially attributed by the Government to maintenance in the national electrical infrastructure to face a new period of electricity rationing due to lack of generation in the main hydroelectric power plants in Ecuador, before what the Executive described as the worst dry season of the last 61 years.
But on Monday night, the Administration of President Daniel Noboa anticipated that from Monday to Thursday of next week there will also be eight-hour blackouts during the nights throughout the country, due to the impossibility of supplying the national demand for electricity.
During these blackouts, the Police will deploy more than 46,000 agents nationwide to carry out patrols that will focus especially on financial institutions, residential complexes, fuel service stations and prisons.
This was anticipated on Tuesday by the Chief of Police for the Metropolitan District of Quito, Henry Román, who pointed out that there will be police controls at the entrances and exits of the main cities of the country, where all vehicles will be inspected.
For its part, it is expected that the military will take control of the Mazar reservoir, the second largest in the country, as provided by Noboa in the previous days to avoid sabotage in this critical infrastructure for the supply of national electricity demand.
The Mazar reservoir, located in the southern Andean province of Azuay, has a capacity of 410 million cubic meters of water and serves to supply a complex of three hydroelectric plants located in the Paute River basin with an installed capacity of 1,757 megawatts.
However, in recent days the level of this water reserve has dropped drastically due to the prolonged absence of rain.
International
Harris expresses confidence in the Secret Service and criticizes Trump’s anti-migrant rhetoric
The vice president of the United States and Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, expressed her confidence in the Secret Service on Tuesday, after the second assassination attempt suffered by former President Donald Trump, and charged against the anti-migrant rhetoric of the Republicans.
During a conversation with the National Association of African American Journalists, Harris said that she feels safe with the protection of the Secret Service and immediately criticized Trump’s campaign for spreading the lie that Haitian migrants from Springfield (Ohio) steal and eat the neighbors’ pets.
“I feel safe. I have the protection of the Secret Service, but that does not deter the importance of fighting for the safety of all people in our country,” he said.
The Democratic aspirant stressed that “not everyone has a Secret Service,” she regretted that “there are too many people who do not feel safe” and gave the example of Ohio, where threats against Haitians have grown due to the hoaxes of Trump and his vice presidential candidate, J.D. Vance.
Likewise, Harris revealed that this same Tuesday he called Trump to talk about the assassination attempt he suffered on Sunday, when a man armed with a rifle was arrested in the vicinity of the West Palm Beach golf course (Florida) where the Republican was.
“I told her what I have said in public: there is no room for political violence in our country,” the vice president said.
This is the second assassination attempt suffered by Trump so far in the campaign, after the one that occurred in July when a man shot the Republican at a rally in Butler (Pennsylvania).
Trump blamed on Monday the second attempted murder on the “lies” that Harris spreads against him and the “rhetoric of the communist left.”
Democrats pressure Donald Trump with a vote in the Senate on in vitro fertilization
The Government of Ecuador decrees a curfew in six provinces during a national blackout
Harris expresses confidence in the Secret Service and criticizes Trump’s anti-migrant rhetoric
Tec de Monterrey honors one of its students for his contribution to nanotechnology in medicine
Defense Minister commends salvadoran soldier for Central American Cross Country victory
Ecuador prison riot leaves at least 43 dead
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