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Question for legal folks: Travel based abortion restrictions (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 year ago by PrinceWith999Enemies to c/asklemmy

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Texas and I believe a few other states have passed anti-abortion laws that attempt to cover people leaving their states to seek safe and legal abortions. The ones I’m familiar with (as I recall) applied to things like traveling on state-owned roads to seek an abortion out of state.

Let’s lay aside the question of constitutional and federal restrictions governing interstate commerce laws for now. I started wondering if these laws would govern transportation via airlines or Amtrak. They could (I assume) make the argument that they pulled you over on the way to the transportation facility, but if you didn’t buy the tickets until you get there, I think it’d complicate the state’s case. I did some thinking along those lines.

My real question now is whether the defendant could state that they were traveling for reasons of a medical consultation regarding their pregnancy but had not yet decided whether they would be having an abortion performed. As far as I know, these laws necessarily target intent. If the patient states they were traveling to a state where they would be more likely to receive competent medical advice (which is a truism - abortion-restricting states also limit what MDs can say to a patient), would the state need to prove their intent? Absent something like a text message stating “I’m going to California to get an abortion,” does the prosecution have any line of attack there?

Abortion resources:

California abortion resources by the state government

Planned Parenthood

Abortion Defense Network

LGBTQ abortion info

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[–] PrinceWith999Enemies 6 points 1 year ago

Yes, absolutely. I’m talking about the in court defense, not what you say to the officers.

If you’ve been following all of the Trump investigations and trials, you’ll see a lot of it comes down to the prosecution proving that the defendants knew what they were doing was illegal and that they don’t have a credible alternative explanation for their actions. I’m speculating that a medical consultation may be a credible alternative explanation.