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Texas Lawmakers warned Sidley and Lawa firms on Abortion Policy

Last week A Texas lawmaker who is part of a legislative caucus accused the Sidley Austin law firm of appearing to be “complicit in illegal abortions”. According to Reuters, “Representative Cody Vasut is “of counsel” in the Houston office of BakerHostetler, an Ohio-founded firm with about 1,000 lawyers nationally. Vasut is also one of 11 state lawmakers in the Texas Freedom Caucus, which said it would introduce legislation making law firms criminally liable and requiring disbarment for Texas attorneys who help to pay for abortions or abortion travel.

The caucus said in a July 7 letter to Sidley that the Chicago-based firm “may have aided or abetted drug-induced abortions” in violation of Texas law and warned it to preserve any relevant records in anticipation of being sued.”

The legislators are previously, “have led the charge to pass laws to restrict abortion for nearly a quarter-century, but until recently, federal courts let the procedure continue, striking down laws that impinged too much on what was for 49 years a constitutional right.” the Dallas Morning News said.

 

The letter sent to a law firm that planned to reimburse travel costs for employees seeking an abortion

 

Businesses Insider India has talked about the threatening letter the Texas GOP sent to a law firm that planned to reimburse travel costs for employees seeking an abortion. They said, “In the letter, which was addressed to Sidley Austin LLP, the 11 representatives of the caucus wrote that legislation will be introduced to impose civil and criminal sanctions on law firms that pay for abortion or abortion travel.

“We are writing to inform you of the consequences that you and your colleagues will face for these actions,” it said.

The proposed legislation will prohibit any employer in the state from paying for elective abortions or reimbursing abortion-related costs regardless of where the abortion occurs. According to these lawmakers, private citizens will be allowed to sue anyone who pays for an elective abortion performed on a Texas resident.”

Biden talked about Public Health Emergency For Abortion Access

President Joe Biden asked his his staff to see if he “has the authority” to declare a public health emergency to address abortion access, a move that could release additional funding and give federal health officials more power to respond to state-level abortion restrictions.

 

Forbes has published some key facts about this.

 

  1. “During a bike ride in Delaware, Biden told reporters he had asked his staff to consider the impacts of declaring an abortion-related public health emergency.
  2. While Biden signed an executive order Friday directing his administration to defend abortion patients and providers, Democratic officials and progressives have called for Biden to take broader actions, like declaring a public health emergency and allowing abortions on federal land—even in states where abortion has been banned.
  3. A public health emergency is typically declared by the federal government following a natural disaster or infectious disease outbreak, and it gives the Department of Health and Human Services additional funding and flexibility to respond to the emergency.
  4. Biden’s executive order directs HHS to protect emergency medical care for pregnant people, but declaring an emergency could also give HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra the power to ensure healthcare providers can prescribe and dispense abortion medication out-of-state to patients whose home states have restricted abortion, Center for Reproductive Rights President Nancy Northup wrote in the Washington Post.
  5. White House aides and HHS officials weighed declaring a public health emergency after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Bloomberg reported Friday, but they decided against it at the time due to questions about its effectiveness and possible legal challenges.
  6. Jennifer Klein, director of the White House Gender Policy Council, told reporters during a briefing Friday the move wasn’t “off the table,” but she noted there were only “tens of thousands of dollars” in the government’s public health emergency fund, and declaring an emergency “doesn’t release a significant amount of legal authority.”

Meta has banned employees from discussing abortion rights internally

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has put a restriction on its employees regarding the discussion about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on internal communication channels of the company. The company has asked its employees not to discuss abortion rights internally.

 

Meta’s excuse to not discuss abortion rights

 

According to New York Times, Meta issued a memo on May 12—after the draft opinion was leaked to Politico—saying that “discussing abortion openly at work has a heightened risk of creating a hostile work environment” so it “would not allow open discussion” among employees. One of the company’s policies has put “strong guardrails around social, political, and sensitive conversations.”

 

Criticism

 

Ambroos Vaes, a A software engineer of Meta, talked about the restrictions of the company, on LinkedIn. Times spotted the post which reads, “On our internal Workplace platform, moderators swiftly remove posts or comments mentioning abortion,” Vaes said in the LinkedIn post. “The ‘respectful’ communications policy that was put in place explicitly disallows it. Limited discussion can only happen in groups of up to 20 employees who follow a set playbook, but not out in the open.”

 

It is not the first time Meta has restricted its employees from discussing an issue. Earlier the company updated its Respectful Communication. In 2020 after the murder of George Floyd the company instructed the employees to stop discussing political and social issues in company-wide Workplace channels.

 

In this hour, Meta is being accused of banning employees from discussing abortion rights internally. But Meta is doing something which can dilute bad names in the media. According to Engadget, “On Friday, Meta also told employees it would reimburse the travel expenses of employees in need of access to out-of-state healthcare and reproductive services “to the extent permitted by law.” That’s a policy many tech companies, including Google, had in place before Friday’s decision and that they reiterated after the Supreme Court announced its ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.”