Albin Rhomberg

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Albin Rhomberg is an American anti-abortion activist and physicist based in Sacramento, California.

In 1978, while Rhomberg was a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, he joined students Susan Erzinger and Peggy Pattonin in refusing to pay a student registration fee that financed an insurance plan that had provisions for health services including pregnancy counseling and abortion. After the students were denied registration materials they filed a complaint in San Diego County Superior Court against the University's regents. [1] [2] [3]

In 1982 Rhomberg broke into the Los Angeles County Coroner's office to photograph aborted fetuses who were seized during a raid on an abortion clinic, Inglewood Women's owned by Morton Barke. [4] He later led pickets at abortion clinics in Sacramento [5] and became director the Center for Documentation of the American Holocaust. [6]

Rhomberg was among eight protesters who disrupted an ecumenical prayer service held as part of the inauguration of California Governor Pete Wilson on January 6, 1991. The protesters denounced Wilson's pro-choice stance at the Sacramento's Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament and were placed under citizen's arrest before being booked at Sacramento County Jail. [7] [8] Rhomberg later sued Governor Wilson and others, alleging that his arrest violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights. [8] [9]

Rhomberg was campaign spokesman for California Proposition 85 in 2006. The proposition sought to require parental notification and a 48-hour waiting period for anyone under 18 seeking an abortion. [10] During the campaign Rhomberg argued that telephone recordings created by Life Dynamics "prove pretty unequivocally that Planned Parenthood is protecting men who sexually abuse children." [11] In 2008 he was a principal advisor for the California Proposition 4 campaign, which had the same goal. [12] Both measures failed. In 2011 Rhomberg was the spokesperson for the Parental Notification Initiative Campaign. [13]

Rhomberg currently serves on the board of the Center for Medical Progress along with David Daleiden and Troy Newman. [4]

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The Center for Medical Progress (CMP) is an anti-abortion organization founded by David Daleiden in 2013. The CMP is best known for producing undercover recordings that prompted a controversy over Planned Parenthood in 2015; CMP established a fake company to pose as buyers of fetal tissue and secretly recorded Planned Parenthood officials during meetings.

In 2015, an anti-abortion organization named the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released several videos that had been secretly recorded. Members of the CMP posed as representatives of a biotechnology company in order to gain access to both meetings with abortion providers and abortion facilities. The videos showed how abortion providers made fetal tissue available to researchers, although no problems were found with the legality of the process. All of the videos were found to be altered, according to analysis by Fusion GPS and its co-founder Glenn R. Simpson, a former investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal. The CMP disputed this finding, attributing the alterations to the editing out of "bathroom breaks and waiting periods". CMP had represented a longer version of the tapes as being "complete", as well as a shorter, edited version. The analysis by Fusion GPS concluded that the longer version was also edited, with skips and missing footage. Nonetheless, the videos attracted widespread media coverage; after the release of the first video, conservative lawmakers in Congress singled out Planned Parenthood and began to push bills that would strip the organization of federal family planning funding. No such attempts by Congress to cut federal family planning money from Planned Parenthood have become law. Conservative politicians in several states have also used this as an opportunity to cut or attempt to cut family planning funding at the state level.

Abortion in Illinois is legal. Laws about abortion dated to the early 1800s in Illinois; the first criminal penalties related to abortion were imposed in 1827, and abortion itself became illegal in 1867. As hospitals set up barriers in the 1950s, the number of therapeutic abortions declined. Following Roe v. Wade in 1973, Illinois passed a number of restrictions on abortion, many of which have subsequently been repealed. Illinois updated its existing abortion laws in June 2019. The state has seen a decline in the number of abortion clinics over the years, going from 58 in 1982 to 47 in 1992 to 24 in 2014.

Abortion in Alaska is legal on demand at all stages of pregnancy, as long as a licensed physician performs the procedure. As of 2016, Alaska does not require a minor to notify a parent or guardian in order to obtain an abortion. 63% of adults said in a poll by the Pew Research Center that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Alaska was one of only four states to make abortion legal between 1967 and 1970, a few years before the US Supreme Court's decision in 1973's Roe v. Wade ruling. Alaska had consent requirements for women seeking abortions by 2007 that required abortion providers to warn patients of a link between abortion and breast cancer, despite it being scientifically unsupported.

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Abortion in California is legal up to the point of fetal viability. An abortion ban was in place by 1900, and by 1950, it was a criminal offense for a woman to have an abortion. In 1962, the American Law Institute published their model penal code, as it applied to abortions, with three circumstances where they believed a physician could justifiably perform an abortion, and California adopted a version of this code. In 2002, the California State Legislature passed a law guaranteeing women the right to have an abortion "prior to viability of the fetus, or when the abortion is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman". In 2022, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 1, which amended the Constitution of California to explicitly protect the right to abortion and contraception by a margin of 33.76%.

Abortion in New Hampshire is legal up to the 24th week of pregnancy as of January 1, 2022, when a new law went into effect. Prior to this, the gestational limit was unclear. Abortion was criminalized in the state by 1900. In June 2003, the state passed a parental notification law, repealing it four years later before passing a new one in 2011. New Hampshire then passed a law in 2012 which required minors to wait 48 hours after requesting an abortion but no longer required parental consent. New Hampshire law regarding abortion has been heard before the US Supreme Court in the case Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England in 2006. The number of abortion clinics in New Hampshire has declined over the years, with 18 in 1982, 16 in 1992 and four in 2014. In 2010, there were three publicly funded abortions in the state; all three were federally funded. There are both active abortion rights and anti-abortion rights activists in the state.

Abortion in Maryland is legal at all stages of pregnancy. The first laws regulating abortion in the state were passed in 1867 and 1868, banning abortion except by a physician to "secure the safety of the mother." Abortion providers continued to operate both within and outside of the law. Legal enforcement became more strict from the 1940s through 60s, with numerous police raids on abortion providers. In 1968, Maryland passed a liberalized abortion law that clarified the wording of the previous law, allowing abortion in hospital settings in cases of rape, severe fetal deformity, or when life and health were endangered.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2022 California Proposition 1</span> Successful referendum on enshrining reproductive rights in the state constitution

Proposition 1, titled Constitutional Right to Reproductive Freedom and initially known as Senate Constitutional Amendment 10 (SCA 10), was a California ballot proposition and state constitutional amendment that was voted on in the 2022 general election on November 8. Passing with more than two-thirds of the vote, the proposition amended the Constitution of California to explicitly grant the right to an abortion and contraceptives, making California among the first states in the nation to codify the right. The decision to propose the codification of abortion rights in the state constitution was precipitated in May 2022 by Politico's publishing of a leaked draft opinion showing the United States Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The decision reversed judicial precedent that previously held that the United States Constitution protected the right to an abortion.

References

  1. ↑ Stoner, Dave (May 9, 1978). "Reg fee funded abortion okayed" (PDF). New University. Vol. 10, no. 37. p. 5.
  2. ↑ Noonan, John Thomas (1979). A Private Choice: Abortion in America in the Seventies . New York: Free Press. ISBN   0-02-923160-4.
  3. ↑ "Student lawsuit". The Human Life Review. 4. Human Life Foundation: 84. 1978.
  4. 1 2 Smith, Warren Cole (July 24, 2015). "The tipping point?". WORLD News Group.
  5. ↑ Marx, Paul (1988). Confessions of a Prolife Missionary . Gaithersburg, Maryland: Human Life International. p.  332. ISBN   1-55922-020-1.
  6. ↑ Marx, Paul (1991). Apostle of Life. Gaithersburg, Maryland: Human Life International. p. 67. ISBN   1-55922-029-5.
  7. ↑ Beyette, Beverly (January 7, 1991). "Abortion Protesters Disrupt Inaugural Church Ceremony". Los Angeles Times.
  8. 1 2 Clifton, Eli; Marcotte, Amanda (July 16, 2015). "Who's Behind the Planned Parenthood Sting Video? Troy Newman—and Other Rabid Anti-Choicers". The Nation.
  9. ↑ "Albin A. Rhomberg v. Pete Wilson, et al". Justia US Law. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit - 108 F.3d 339 (9th Cir. 1997). Retrieved August 4, 2015.
  10. ↑ Gordon, Rachel (October 9, 2006). "CAMPAIGN 2006 / PROPOSITION 85 / Parental notification for abortion back on ballot / Voters rejected a similar measure in election last fall". San Francisco Chronicle.
  11. ↑ Mieszkowski, Katharine (November 4, 2006). "Abortion foes' dirty tactics". Salon.
  12. ↑ "California judge OKs underage abortion horror stories for voter information pamphlet". Catholic News Agency. August 11, 2008.
  13. ↑ De Brito, Deia (February 14, 2011). "New initiative aims to restrict teen access to abortion". California Watch. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved August 4, 2015.
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