Abortion restrictions put women’s rights on shaky ground, even in New Jersey

Rep. Mikie Sherrill was in Livingston Wednesday to — again — defend abortion rights as — again — the U.S. Supreme Court is mulling whether to restrict access to the procedure.

Sherrill (D-11) chose to make her remarks outside the emergency room of the former Saint Barnabas hospital to highlight the particular dangers of the most recent case.

“It’s simple: Politicians, legislators should not be deciding whether pregnant women live or die,” she said.

Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion is at the center of the case, which the high court’s justices heard Wednesday.

The state law allows abortions if “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.” The Biden administration argues that a 1986 federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act trumps the state’s law. The federal law says that hospitals participating in Medicare must offer necessary treatment to stabilize care for someone with an emergency medical condition. For the Biden administration, that means the hospital must perform an abortion if necessary to prevent severe health risks to the mother, and not just their death. Idaho argues that is too expansive a reading of the federal law.

Sherrill sounded the alarm about what will happen if the Supreme Court sides with Idaho: Women living in states with draconian abortion laws may not get the medical care they need in an emergency.

“What these Idaho lawmakers fail to understand is that when a woman comes into an emergency room with complications regarding her pregnancy, whether it’s a miscarriage, an ectopic pregnancy, or anything else, often the life-saving medical treatment they need at that moment is an abortion,” she said.

Sherrill’s appearance in Livingston Wednesday came as Democrats, sweating about the prospect of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, see abortion as a, if not the, issue that could save their party. It may also, they hope, give their party a boost statewide next year, when the governor’s race will be at the top of the ticket. Sherrill is expected to jump into that race after November’s election.

Republicans here have argued that other states’ abortion restrictions are irrelevent. We’re run by Democrats who support abortion rights and were quick to codify them when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, they note. State Sen. Holly Schepisi (R-Bergen) has argued New Jersey Democrats who focus on abortion are scaring voters to win elections. Assemblyman John DiMaio (R-Warren), his chamber’s minority leader, wrote an op-ed last year saying abortion rights “aren’t at risk” in New Jersey.

Their message: New Jerseyans shouldn’t care about this issue.

That’s not entirely true, and Sherrill explained to me why. She said the restriction of abortion rights in other states means women’s rights are on shaky ground there and here. What if a New Jersey woman who is pregnant needs to take a business trip to a part of the country where reproductive health care is under attack, she said. Should she go? What about a college graduate thinking of where to start a family, she asked — would she want to pick a part of the country where a future pregnancy could be a death sentence?

“So I don’t think we in New Jersey feel like our protections are built on very safe ground, and as women, we really feel that curtailment of freedoms across our country,” she said.