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Texas already has a laundry list of less-than-essential items exempt from the state’s 6.25 percent sales tax, from yachts to male libido enhancers. Yet, when advocates suggest adding something as essential as tampons to that list, lawmakers start acting like a dinner guest trying to avoid picking up the check. (5/5)

In the now-famous leaked draft abortion ruling, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito alludes to the tsunami about to be unleashed. “We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision overruling Roe and Casey. And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision.”  (Therese Raphael, 5/5)

Monday’s revelation of a leaked draft opinion overruling Roe vs. Wade was shocking on many levels. It portends the end of a constitutional right that millions of Americans have relied upon for nearly half a century. It threatens dramatic political repercussions for the Supreme Court and elected officials. And it represents a stunning breach of the court’s protocol. But the most shocking aspect of the leaked opinion is something else entirely: the glaring historical mistakes that pervade its supposedly originalist analysis. Contrary to the draft’s conclusion, for as long as America has existed, so too have abortions — in most cases free of any form of criminal punishment. (Aaron Tang, 5/5)

If the draft opinion to overturn Roe, first revealed by Politico, accurately reflects the final outcome, we will find out just how much abortion rights matter to voters, and especially to women. For all the outrage over the ability of unelected justices to take away a right that has been in place for nearly 50 years — if that happens, it’s because voters around the country have been electing politicians who oppose abortion rights. There’s no Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, or Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court without an antiabortion Republican president in the White House and a Senate controlled by antiabortion Republicans. There are no state trigger laws designed to take away abortion rights without state legislatures controlled by antiabortion lawmakers and governors willing to enact the bills they pass into law. (Joan Vennochi, 5/4)

If the US Supreme Court follows through on its initial resolve expressed in a draft abortion opinion, it will not only eliminate a half-century constitutional right to safe and legal abortion. It will also trigger a political reaction that could turn a broad swath of the nation into an antiabortion vigilante state. What such a decision will not do is end abortion. Not even for citizens of states that ban the procedure. Women with enough means will travel elsewhere to end unwanted pregnancies. Some poor women and girls will try to self-induce an end to pregnancies. Others will resort to dangerous abortions administered by unqualified people in unsafe settings, with no emergency care should things go wrong. (Scot Lehigh, 5/4)

Abortion makes many people uncomfortable. I get it. When I was an ob-gyn resident, I recall telling my supervising physician that I would learn the skills to perform an abortion, but probably wouldn’t provide them after I graduated because doing so made me “a little uncomfortable. ”My supervising physician asked me in response, “Do you think women have a right to this procedure?” I thought, “Well … yeah, of course.” (Cara C. Heuser, 5/4)