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A bill making its way through the South Carolina legislature would place a near-total ban on abortions, prohibiting the procedure except in cases where the life of the mother is at risk.

The measure, a draft of which is currently being considered by the state senate's Medical Affairs Committee, would also criminalize helping a person obtain an abortion including providing information about how to obtain an abortion. Under the current bill draft, a person who provides information could be prosecuted if they know the information "will be used, or is reasonably likely to be used for an abortion" and could face up to 25 years in prison.

Indiana-based attorney James Bopp, general counsel for the National Right to Life Committee, which opposes abortion rights, helped draft the South Carolina bill.

National Right to Life wants to restore full legal protection to the unborn under the law, Bopp said. Since Roe v. Wade has been overturned, we can now do that.

But some legal experts think parts of the bill are on shaky legal ground and may violate the U.S. Constitution.

This particular law is constitutionally overbroad, Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles who specializes in First Amendment law, said. It covers speech that is constitutionally protected.

According to Volokh, the "aiding and abetting" portion of the draft bill would have more legal standing if it was narrowly focused on illegal abortions in the state.

If abortion is illegal and Supreme Court has said that it could be made illegal, then that does allow punishing at least certain kinds of speech related to abortion just like this is true with all crimes, he said.

The courts have repeatedly decided speech that encourages or solicits a person to commit a crime is not constitutionally protected, Volokh said. Just like assisting in a robbery could carry criminal penalties, he said, assisting in someones illegal abortion could legally carry penalties, too.

Jessie Hill, a law professor at Case Western University, said the problem with the South Carolina bill is it doesnt seem to distinguish between illegal and legal abortions.

For example, there's nothing that says specifically that the abortion being facilitated or about which information is given, Hill said. It doesn't say that that has to be an illegal abortion.

That, Hill said, could lead to punishing people who provide information about how to get abortions in other states, like North Carolina, where the procedure is legal.

If the abortion services are legal in those other states, then giving information about that is not normally a crime. And it can't be, Hill said. The states can't generally apply their laws beyond their own borders in that way.

Hill said criminalizing speech about a legal procedure likely violates the First Amendment since its not inciting or encouraging someone to commit a crime.

Bopp, of the National Right to Life Committee, maintains the bill is focused on illegal abortions and is fully constitutional.

South Carolina only has authority over acts committed in their own state," Bopp said. "And this would be an illegal abortion, which means an abortion illegal under the laws of South Carolina. If an actual abortion occurred outside the state, then it's not covered and it can't be covered.

The Medical Affairs Committee has scheduled a full-day of public input on South Carolina abortion legislation post-Roe for Aug. 17. The draft measure could be changed before going before the full state Senate for a vote.

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Draft version of SC abortion bill raises concern among First Amendment experts - WFAE

LocalThe American flag, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts flag, and the City of Boston flag, from left, fly outside Boston City Hall. Charles Krupa/Associated Press

By Danny McDonald, The Boston Globe

Following years of controversy and First Amendment litigation that ultimately wound its way to the nations highest court, a flag bearing a red Christian cross is slated to fly outside Boston City Hall later this week. Wednesdays flag-raising will take place three months after the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the City of Boston violated the First Amendment rights of Camp Constitution, a Christian group, when city authorities refused to fly the banner outside City Hall in 2017.

In a ruling written by the since-retired justice Stephen Breyer, the high court said that Boston was wrong to deny the group, run by West Roxbury resident Harold Shurtleff, a permit to raise a white banner with a red Christian cross in connection with Constitution Day on Sept. 17, the date the US Constitution was signed in Philadelphia in 1787.

The legal organization Liberty Counsel, which represented Shurtleff in the litigation, said in a Monday press release that the flag will be raised on one of the public flagpoles on City Hall Plaza at 11 a.m. on Wednesday. Mayor Michelle Wus office confirmed Monday the flag-raising ceremony was scheduled for Wednesday, but did not immediately offer further comment.

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Christian flag at heart of Supreme Court First Amendment case is scheduled to fly at Boston City Hall - Boston.com

The Supreme Court declared organized prayer in public schools unconstitutional in 1962. My grandfather ended it in my mothers elementary school class earlier than that. According to the story, one night when my mother was saying her prayers, she said a line that my grandmother detected was the Protestant version. She asked my mother where she learned it and my mother said that she learned it in school. School prayer was common back then, even in East Haven.

The next day my grandfather went to the school. He told the principal that it wasnt right for Catholic kids to have to say Protestant prayers. He might have also said some other things. My mothers class didnt say another organized prayer. Thereafter, in 1962, the Supreme Court decided Engel v. Vitale, holding that a compulsory, state-sponsored prayer in public schools violated the First Amendment. Writing for a 6-1 majority, Justice Black reasoned It is neither sacrilegious nor anti-religious to say that each separate government in this country should stay out of the business of writing or sanctioning official prayers and leave that purely religious function to the people themselves and to those the people choose to look to for religious guidance.

A year later, in Abington School District v. Schempp, the court held that public schools could not lead religious exercises, which included reading Bible verses and reciting the Our Father over the loudspeaker. Justin Clarke wrote in that decision, In the relationship between man and religion, the State is firmly committed to a position of neutrality.

We learn in elementary school that the Pilgrims came to America to worship freely. Religious liberty in the United States, however, developed over the next few centuries. The Constitution prohibits a religious test to hold federal office. Although the First Amendment was ratified in 1791, its Free Exercise and Establishment clauses bound only the federal government until they were incorporated against the states by the Fourteenth Amendment by Supreme Court decisions in the 1940s. Cases involving organized prayer in other public events have continued to reach the Supreme Court since Engel and Schempp.

This past term, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court sided with a public high school football coach who led prayers on the field after games. The school district considered the action to raise Establishment Clause concerns. The majority, contrary to the facts in the record, considered the prayers to be private, not compulsory. While the decision did not overturn the cases of the 1960s that prohibited school prayer, it signaled the courts preference for religion in general and prioritized the religion of an authority figure over the liberty of those under that authority, student athletes.

The Washington Post recently reported that in the month since the Bremerton decision, school districts in various parts of the country are facing efforts from parents and even board members to introduce prayer into school activities. The United States has numerous religions and denominations, very likely because of the First Amendment. Organized or sanctioned prayer in public schools is government endorsement of religion and the imposition of specific beliefs, which may conflict with the beliefs of students, and thereby violate their religious liberty, as they did with those of the Engels, who were Jewish, the Schempps, who were Unitarian, and my own Catholic family, just 60 years ago. In matters of state and religion, be careful what you pray for.

Chris DeMatteo is an attorney based in New Haven.

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Opinion: The thinning wall between church and state - CTPost

The Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Max Kautsch is an attorney whose practice focuses on First Amendment rights and open government law.

Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden doesnt want you to know anything, other than what he reveals, about what the local media is calling a months-long, taxpayer-funded probe into unfounded allegations of election fraud in Johnson County.

First, to reiterate the facts about the 2020 election: Countless officials and scholars have repeatedly affirmed that there was no evidence of voter fraud playing a role in Donald Trumps loss. According to Johnson County election officials earlier this year, we have not seen any evidence of fraud and believe the allegations without proof are not in the best interest of our county.

In what one would think would be the last word on the subject in this state, Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab recently explained that in each of the over 300 audits his office has conducted since 2019, which involve hand counting a precinct and it matches what you tabulated after election, I mean where are you finding fraud? Youre finding accusations, but the math shows that the elections are secure.

Even so, polling suggests that up to 70% of Republicans still believe that Joe Biden was not elected legitimately.

That a majority of the Republican Party appears willing to ignore the facts is one thing. But its quite another for a Republican sheriff to spend taxpayer dollars on a monthslong probe that has resulted in no arrests, call it a criminal investigation and keep secret the records documenting those expenditures.

The public became aware of the probe only because Hayden openly discussed it with groups such as the Northeast Johnson County Conservatives at an event in the Kansas City area in February and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association at that organizations conference last month in Las Vegas. There, Hayden led a panel titled 2000 Mules: Law Enforcement Has To Step In At This Point. Will Sheriffs Investigate?

But when a local media outlet requested records related to the probe under the Kansas Open Records Act, including the receipts for taxpayer funds to pay for it, Hayden denied the request in its entirety, claiming that the requested records were created as part of a criminal investigation.

To be sure, KORA allows law enforcement agencies to withhold records compiled in the process of preventing, detecting or investigating violations of criminal law.

But despite a bevy of election crimes already on the books, Hayden has yet to say which of those laws he thinks were violated, let alone identify suspected violators. And other than statements about the probe he has made as an invited speaker, public information is mostly limited to his July 19 news release and news conference that same day where he defended the probe primarily on the basis that his office has received 200 tips.

That news conference was on the heels of the 2000 Mules conference, where Hayden claimed, without evidence, that his office has a whole lot of reasonable suspicion and were starting to develop some probable cause.

Less than two weeks after Haydens news conference, Schwab pushed back, indicating to a local TV station during an interview late last month that its unlikely Hayden received 200 complaints based off the fact that Schwabs office got about 12. Schwab told the station that Haydens probe was justifiable only if hes got evidence, and that theres got to be probable cause and right now, thats not what were seeing.

Schwab underscores the purpose of an investigation: to make arrests. To support an arrest for a violation of Kansas law, a law enforcement agency must be able to show probable cause that the alleged crime has been committed.

The Kansas Supreme Court has defined probable cause in part as the reasonable belief that a specific crime has been or is being committed.

Reaching that threshold requires collecting evidence. Law enforcement agencies conduct investigations to collect evidence of criminal activity.

But as Schwab has made clear, there simply is no evidence of specific criminal activity for Haydens election integrity probe to collect. The best Hayden seems to be able to do to imply that he reasonably believes fraud occurred because the 2020 presidential election was the first time since 1914 that Johnson County didnt vote for the Republican nominee.

Thats not an investigative lead. Thats wistful thinking.

But perhaps of even greater concern is that Haydens use of KORA may set a harmful precedent whereby a law enforcement agency could designate any activity it chooses as a criminal investigation, regardless of whether such activity is reasonably likely to lead to the arrest of any suspect. That keeps the public in the dark about questionable expenditures of taxpayer dollars on the activity.

If Hayden persists in keeping records of public expenditures away from the taxpayers on the basis that his probe is a criminal investigation, the Legislature should consider amending KORA to ensure that an agency may withhold such records only if the investigation is likely to lead to the arrest of a suspect.

Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary,here.

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Johnson County sheriffs stonewalling on election probe keeps Kansans in the dark - Kansas Reflector

Before 1985, there was a media concept that attempted to balance the news that was aired to the general public. It was called the Fairness Doctrine, and it was initiated in 1949 by the Federal Communications Commission during the earlier days of television newscasting.

There was a concern in 1949 when there were only three major broadcast networks, NBC, ABC and CBS that a tendency to bias might occur in their news presentations. The FCC created a doctrine that required any news program that had a license to broadcast to the public to present both sides of any and all controversial issues important to that general audience and its agenda.

In 1969, the Fairness Doctrine was challenged, and without going into the details (check the Ronald Reagan Library website, which describes the case), it went to the Supreme Court who upheld it in a unanimous decision. It was during the Reagan administration in 1987 that the FCC decided to abolish the doctrine because it was feared that it would hurt the public interest and potentially violate the First Amendment rights of free speech.

Its hard to see how First Amendment concerns would apply (and, back then, the Supreme Court agreed), since both sides would have the opportunity to express their views of events in the news, or other issues presented to the public, and in no way a violation of free speech would be evident. When the doctrine was abolished, it, of course, opened the licensed broadcast doors to the news eventually becoming, to many, a hopelessly one-sided and often deeply biased affair.

The Fairness Doctrine was created with broadcast licensing, and the scarcity of the broadcast spectrum, in mind. In its original design, it could not apply to cable news, satellite service providers or the internet. But what if it could? What if the current administration, or any administration for that matter, would direct the FCC to revisit its doctrine of 1949 and explore the potential good that could be accomplished with a modern-day reinstatement of the fairness policy? Suddenly everyone who exclusively tunes into Fox News for their information on current issues of importance would see other reputable newscasters offering the other side of the story. Of course, the same would apply to MSNBC and all broadcast and cable news networks.

Once viewers got a more balanced view of potentially deeply polarizing issues, they would certainly become better informed in their decision making, and perhaps that polarization may be slightly reduced on both sides. Even if that reduction were small, it would be a step in the right direction, a step toward healing the growing schism between differing biases in the news.

Maybe, as an experiment, lets bring back the Fairness Doctrine for one year and see if it can make a difference. I have tried to imagine a serious downside to this experiment and continue to come up short. After all, the Supreme Court supported it and that should be remembered. In a court of law, both sides must be heard by the jury. If they only heard the prosecutors side, I suspect that all would be found guilty or found innocent if they only heard the defenses presentation. Lets be fair!

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Maine Voices: What if the balance demanded by the Fairness Doctrine could exist today? - Press Herald