Back in January, as the Supreme Court was preparing for its most important abortion case in a generation, some four dozen social scientists submitted a brief explaining why they believed key portions of Texas law HB 2 should be struck down. The brief was a 58-page compendium of research on everything from the relative dangers of abortion versus childbirth to the correlation between abortion barriers and postpartum depression. "In this politically challenged area, it is particularly important that assertions about health and safety are evaluated using reliable scientific evidence," the researchers declared.
Six months later, the material they submitted clearly helped shape Justice Stephen Breyer's majority opinion in Whole Women's Health v Hellerstedt, which found critical elements of HB 2 unconstitutional. This decision also handed a resounding though less noticed victory to private donors who've spent more than a decade quietly pouring at least $200 million dollars into the scientists' work, creating an influential abortion-research complex that has left abortion opponents in the dust....
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/abortion-research-buffett
No comments:
Post a Comment