Abortion, Every Day (6.14.23)

In the States

Let’s talk about Ohio. By now, you know what’s happening in the state: Republicans are trying to make it harder, if not impossible, for pro-choice advocates to pass a ballot measure that would protect abortion rights in the state. They’ve lied and cheated, and they’re hoping that the $20 million August special election will allow them to raise the standards on proposed amendments to the state constitution.

We’ve also been watching as conservative groups and activists spread misinformation about the measure—falsely claiming that it would allow abortion ‘up until birth’ and minors to have gender affirming surgery. It’s frustrating enough watching them lie their asses off, but now we have to watch mainstream media outlets give them the space to do it.

This week, The Hill published a column by Ed Martin, president of Phyllis Schlafly Eagles and the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, who writes that the amendment “would end parental involvement in children’s decisions to seek an abortions or sex-change surgeries.” And in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague claims the same, writing that the amendment would be “dictating that every minor must have access to such procedures and that there is nothing an objecting parent can do about it.”

Why in the world are these people—I don’t care how fancy their titles are—being given a platform for their complete and utter bullshit?

The anti-abortion focus on parental rights isn’t going anywhere, I’m afraid. In Oregon, for example, where Republicans have been boycotting over an abortion- and trans-rights bill, it looks as if Democrats may be willing to compromise on protections for minors.

Even after 150 doctors in the state urged lawmakers not to water down these protections, Oregon Public Broadcasting reports that legislators may have reached a deal “that would include softening language in the bill that currently ensures a child of any age can receive an abortion without parental consent.” And in New Mexico, a conservative group is also targeting abortion protections using the guise of ‘parental rights’.

I’ve been warning for a while about the danger of giving up on the rights of teenagers—the most vulnerable among us. It’s not only morally wrong, it’s strategically misguided. As law professor Mary Ziegler put it in The Atlantic recently, “Today, it may be minors whose rights are on the line, but if the anti-abortion movement has its way, it will soon be the rest of us.”

In Missouri, the Attorney General’s office wants a judge to throw out a case challenging the state’s abortion ban based on the argument that it violates the separation of church and state. Fourteen religious leaders from different faiths brought the suit this past January, and asks enforcement of the abortion ban be blocked.

Kalli A. Joslin, a lawyer for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which is representing the group of faith leaders, points out that Missouri’s abortion law begins with: “In recognition that Almighty God is the author of life…it is the intention of the General Assembly to defend the right to life of all humans, born and unborn.” She says that lawmakers don’t have a right “to impose their religion on others by law.” Indeed.

A Planned Parenthood in Utah has closed suddenly, The Salt Lake Tribune reports, leaving patients in the area with few options for reproductive healthcare. The clinic was located in Logan, a college town with tens of thousands of young people that borders Idaho (where abortion is banned). A spokesperson for the clinic said they plan to reopen in August. This comes as clinics across the country are facing staffing shortages, and as Utah abortion providers are fighting a law that prohibits abortions from being performed or prescribed outside of hospitals. (That law is currently blocked.)

And in Texas, rape counselors report that the state’s abortion ban is making it impossible for them to do their jobs. From Elizabeth Boyce of the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault:

“A primary tenet of advocacy is to ensure that survivors’ sense of bodily autonomy is restored, and that they have plenty of options, because their options were definitely taken away just by virtue of their assault. These laws do not advance that goal of advocacy.”

Boyce also points out that the law has tied advocates’ hands, because it won’t allow them to give victims information about abortion—which prevents them from seeking the care that they might want or need. Juliana Gonzales of The SAFE Alliance in Austin, says, “You can imagine that for a survivor of sexual violence, it is often not part of their healing journey to continue with those pregnancies.”

Quick hits:

• The Akron Beacon Journal about the hoops Ohio women have to jump through to get abortions in the state thanks to Republican restrictions;

• HuffPo on the Democratic primary that could decide abortion rights in Virginia;

• In Minnesota, just because abortions after the second trimester are legal, it doesn’t mean they’re available;

• Public radio in Illinois looks at the abortion rights protections passed in the state since Roe was overturned;

• And Reckon has an interview with abortion fund Abortion Care Tennessee about what the last year has been like for them and what kind of help they need moving forward.

Local Battles, National Consequences

The abortion rights fights in small towns and cities in pro-choice states are ramping up to the point where they really deserve their own section. (Worst promotion ever.) Two cities to pay attention to right now:

Gallup, New Mexico: I wrote about this a bit last week, but essentially anti-abortion activists are pushing for the city council to pass an ordinance criminalizing the purchase or use of medications or tools used for abortion care. Abortion is legal in New Mexico, but targeting border towns in pro-choice states has become the new anti-abortion trend. (Gallup borders Arizona, where abortion is banned after 15 weeks and a total abortion ban is currently blocked.)

This past weekend, two Gallup OBGYNs, Dr. Connie Liu and Dr. Erin Lorencz, wrote an op-ed about how the proposed ordinance is already tearing their community apart:

“We mourn this incursion into our community cohesion. Our town is made of a delicate web of relationships. Disruption of this web means that people feel less safe. We stop trusting each other and isolate, and it becomes a different place to live.”

Danville, Illinois: I’ve flagged what’s been happening in Danville before, and it’s really worth paying attention to. As has been the case in so many other border towns in pro-choice states, Danville passed an anti-abortion ordinance last month. The new rule, which goes in opposition to state law, prohibits the shipping or receiving of abortion medication or tools in the mail. The ordinance was passed, in part, to stop an abortion clinic from opening in the town.

The building site for the clinic has been attacked twice this month, once by a man who drove his car into the site with supplies to set the site on fire. Clinic operators say they still plan to open despite the attacks.

Stats & Studies

Love to bring you some good news every once in a while! Gallup reports today that Americans support for abortion rights is at a record high: 69% say that abortion should be generally be legal in the first three months of pregnancy, and 63% want abortion medication to be legal. The majority of Americans also believe that abortion is morally okay.

There’s lots in the report, and I’m still going through it—but I want to flag one thing, in particular. Look at this jump in the percent of Americans who believe abortion should be legal in any circumstance among Democrats and Independents:

This is really good news. It says to me that people are getting more knowledgeable about how complex pregnancy is and why it’s impossible to morally and safely legislate it.

In less exciting news: I saw this headline from Axios this morning, about how women won’t achieve pay equity until 2056, and had to check it out. Because as depressing as that sounds, I knew it was likely worse. And I was right! The statistic comes from the Center for American Progress, who released a report on the pay gap this month showing that “if the gender wage gap continues to shrink at the rate it has between the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963 and 2021, median full-time, year-round working women will not achieve pay parity with men until 2056.”

This estimate assumes we’ll be shrinking the pay gap at the same rate we have been—which seems mighty fucking unlikely given that Roe was overturned and a whole new generation of women are being forced into pregnancy. In fact, check out the chart from CAP below, which shows the impact that Roe and other feminist laws had on women’s wages:

I have a feeling once they add Dobbs onto that chart in a few years, we’re going to see a much different rate happening.

Attacks on Clinic Buffer Zones

We’ve seen an increase in lawsuits against buffer zones lately—last week alone we saw suits in Colorado and Florida. It’s an upsetting sign of conservatives’ next big anti-abortion strategy.

Right now an anti-abortion group is suing for the right to harass patients outside of a Planned Parenthood in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Liberty Counsel wants the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the city’s abortion buffer zone ordinance.

Conservative media is also trying to make buffer zones the next big things: The Federalist has a piece this week about a lawsuit challenging the buffer zone law in Carbondale, Illinois, for example. (This is another good example of anti-abortion attacks on border towns—Carbondale is close to Tennessee.)

Data Protection

Let’s move on from anti-choice strategy for a moment to talk about what pro-choice activists are focusing on right now: digital privacy protections. Just a few recent examples:

• In Illinois, Democrats are pushing legislation to stop data from license plate readers from being used in abortion-related cases.

• POLITICO reports that Massachusetts lawmakers are pushing legislation to prohibit companies from selling location data without permission—a move supported by state abortion rights groups who are worried about how such data could be used to criminalize abortion patients.

• And abortion rights and digital privacy groups are calling attention to California’s policy of sharing Automated License Plate Reader data with other states—information that could be used to arrest and prosecute abortion patients. There’s also concern about the state’s rules around ‘reverse warrants’, which allow law enforcement to pinpoint a person’s whereabouts by asking for data around everyone who visited a specific location (like an abortion clinic).

This all comes at the same time that civil liberties groups focused on digital privacy have been raising the alarm over companies like Google not doing the necessary work to protect consumer data.

Listen Up

In the wake of Indiana abortion provider Dr. Caitlin Bernard being fined by the state medical board for supposedly violating the privacy of a 10 year-old—all part of harassment campaign by the state Attorney General—Stat News asks if doctors have an obligation to get into “good trouble”:

Conservative Corruption

This is wild. Our old friends at Students for Life are pulling quite the stunt in South Dakota. As you know, abortion rights advocates in the state are in the process of collecting signatures for a pro-choice ballot measure. Apparently, Students for Life has plans to campaign in South Dakota in an effort to stop voters from restoring abortion rights—which isn’t surprising. But here’s the thing: They want to do that campaigning without revealing any of their political donors, which is required by state law.

So they’re suing South Dakota over the campaign finance law, claiming that being transparent about their donors is actually “doxxing.” Yes, seriously. Just when you think these groups can’t get any more corrupt, they find a way…

Keep An Eye On

The criminalization of pregnant people. If you’re a regular reader, you know I’ve written quite a bit about the organization Pregnancy Justice and all the vital work that they do. Well, they flagged this story for me out of Ohio: Apparently, prosecutors for Muskingum County had been using a law against “corrupting another with drugs” to target pregnant women and new mothers. One woman, for example, was sentenced to eight to 12 years in prison after she disclosed her drug use to hospital staff in order to ensure that her baby was delivered safely.

As Ohio doctors point out in this recent op-ed, prosecutions like this do nothing to help pregnant women, babies, or families:

“Drug dependency is a medical condition that needs to be addressed through treatment—not prison. Criminal charges deter patients from seeking prenatal care and the help they need for fear of prosecution.”

If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve been seeing similar arrests and prosecutions happen in Alabama, where prosecutors are using a “chemical endangerment” law to arrest and detain pregnant women in order to ‘protect’ their fetuses. The Alabama Attorney General was also planning on using the law to prosecute women who take abortion medication—a way to get around the state’s abortion ban prohibiting the arrest of women who have abortions.

It’s all connected. Pregnancy Justice Legal Fellow Mahathi Vemireddy told AED, that this kind of criminalization builds on the dangers created by abortion bans: “As we've long said, prosecutors will use any law to criminalize pregnancy and all of its outcomes if unchallenged.”

(Thankfully, the Ohio woman who was sentenced to prison had her conviction vacated by District Court of Appeals and is back home—but the prosecutor could still appeal their decision.)