Supreme Court changes fuel moves to protect abortion access
Bankruptcy Law
A vast swath of West Texas has been without an abortion clinic for more than six years. Planned Parenthood plans to change that with a health center it opened recently in Lubbock. It’s a vivid example of how abortion-rights groups are striving to preserve nationwide access to the procedure even as a reconfigured Supreme Court — with the addition of conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett — may be open to new restrictions.
Planned Parenthood has made recent moves to serve more women in Missouri and Kentucky, and other groups are preparing to help women in other Republican-controlled states access abortion if bans are imposed. “Abortion access in these states now faces its gravest ever threat,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood’s president. She said the new health center in Lubbock “is an example of our commitment to our patients to meet them where they are.”
The clinic opened on Oct. 23 in a one-story building that had been a medical office and was renovated after Planned Parenthood purchased it. To avoid protests and boycotts that have beset some previous expansion efforts, Planned Parenthood kept details, including the clinic’s location, secret until the opening was announced.
Planned Parenthood says the health center will start providing abortions — via surgery and medication — sometime next year. Meanwhile, it is offering other services, including cancer screenings, birth control and testing for sexually transmitted infections. Planned Parenthood closed its previous clinic in Lubbock, a city of 255,000 people, in 2013 after the Texas Legislature slashed funding for family planning services and imposed tough restrictions on abortion clinics.
That law led to the closure of more than half the state’s 41 abortion clinics before the Supreme Court struck down key provisions in 2016. There were no clinics left providing abortion in a region of more than 1 million people stretching from Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle south to Lubbock and the oil patch cities of Odessa and Midland. Women in Lubbock faced a 310-mile (500-kilometer) drive to the nearest abortion clinic in Fort Worth. Anti-abortion activists have been mobilizing to prevent the return of abortion services to Lubbock — and are not giving up even with the new clinic's opening.
“Lubbock must not surrender to the abortion industry,” said Kimberlyn Schwartz, a West Texas native who attended Texas Tech University in Lubbock and is now communications director for Texas Right to Life. Her organization has backed a petition drive trying to persuade the City Council to pass an ordinance declaring Lubbock a “sanctuary city for the unborn.” Abortion opponents hope that designation would lead to either enforcement efforts or lawsuits seeking to block abortion services.
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Can my trucking injury case be filed in Illinois?
If you have been injured in a truck driving accident, you may be wondering whether your worker’s comp case can be filed in Illinois. For an injured truck driver, this is an important question to ask, as the jurisdiction of the case can end up having a big impact on your benefits.
There are three main scenarios in which the Illinois Worker’s Compensation Commission would have jurisdiction over a trucking injury:
-If the accident took place in Illinois, If the employer is principally located in Illinois, or If the contract for hire is in Illinois
This means that a truck driver whose home terminal is in Illinois can make a claim for workers comp benefits in Illinois even if they were injured while on the road in another State. It also means that truck drivers who get hurt while passing through Illinois can file a claim in Illinois, even if their employer is located in another state.
If you have been injured on the road, and you are unsure where and how to file your workers comp claim, call us at (312)-726-5567 to begin your consultation. We can advise you whether Illinois is the right state to file for you. We have handled well over 30,000 claims for injured workers throughout the state of Illinois.