Voter ID laws have been a controversial issue this election year as many states have passed laws similar to Pennsylvania's. On Friday the Tennessee Court of Appeals rejected a challenge [JURIST report] to the state's voter ID law but upheld public library cards as a legitimate form of ID. Earlier this month a federal district court upheld [JURIST report] South Carolina's voter ID law but ruled that it cannot take effect until 2013. That same week, Mississippi's attorney general said that state's law will not take effect [JURIST report] before this year's elections because it must be approved by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website]. The DOJ last month approved New Hampshire's law [JURIST report] requiring photo ID to be used in this year's election, but voters who cannot produce a photo ID will still be permitted to vote if they sign an affidavit and allow a picture to be taken of them at the poll.

Although abortion is not a highly controversial topic in France, where it has been legal since 1976, it is a very controversial issue in other countries. Earlier this week, a US appeals court refused to reconsider [JURIST report] its decision to uphold a Texas law that cut off funding to clinics affiliated with abortion providers. Also this week, Uruguay's president signed a bill [JURIST report] legalizing abortion with no restrictions for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. In August South Korea's Constitutional Court [official website, in Korean] upheld a 59-year ban [JURIST report] on abortion as constitutional.

[N]othing in the record supports Argentina's blanket assertion that the Injunctions will "plunge the Republic into a new financial and economic crisis." ... Argentina makes no real argument that, to avoid defaulting on its other debt, it cannot afford to service the defaulted debt, and it certainly fails to demonstrate that the district court's finding to the contrary was clearly erroneous.

In August the Second Circuit rejected [JURIST report] Argentina's attempt to prevent bondholders from acquiring bank documents regarding the country's assets outside US territory, declaring that sovereign immunity was not an acceptable defense in this case. In September 2011 the US District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled [JURIST report] that Argentina had to comply with subpoenas requested by NML Capital Ltd. [corporate website], one of the bondholders of Argentina's debts, for the collection of five money judgments totaling about $1.6 billion.

If Planned Parenthood is banned from the Women's Health Program, it will jeopardize health care access for tens of thousands of Texas women. Research demonstrates community health centers would have to greatly expand their in order to offset the loss of Planned Parenthood from the program, which research shows is nearly impossible after cuts to women's health enacted in 2011.

This is the latest development in the ongoing reproductive rights controversy [JURIST backgrounder] in the US. On Thursday the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit declined to reconsider its August decision to allow Texas to defund Planned Parenthood [JURIST reports]. The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Tuesday upheld an injunction [JURIST report] against an Indiana law that would block Medicaid funding for abortion providers. Last week a federal judge blocked a similar bill [JURIST report] that would have defunded Planned Parenthood in Arizona. In August the Fifth Circuit upheld Louisiana's Act 490, which allows the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) to revoke an abortion clinic's license [JURIST report] immediately after a regulation violation, rather than allowing the abortion clinic time to comply with the regulation. That same month, a Kansas judge refused to dismiss a lawsuit [JURIST report] challenging the state's new abortion clinic regulations after state officials asked that they be upheld without a trial. In July a federal judge blocked a Mississippi law [JURIST report] that would have effectively shut down the state's only abortion clinic.