Abortion, Every Day (6.28.23)

In the States

Arguments in the challenge against South Carolina’s 6-week abortion ban began yesterday in front of the (all-male) state Supreme Court. As you may remember, the Court previously ruled that a different 6-week ban was unconstitutional. Since then, however, two things have changed: The sole female justice, who wrote the majority opinion striking down the ban, has retired. And Republicans—eager to get an abortion ban on the books—claim that they have changed the language of the bill so that it will pass legal muster.

The previous ban was struck down in part because the Court said that 6 weeks wasn’t enough time for someone to make a decision about their pregnancy. The state attorney, Thomas Hydrick, argued that the law doesn’t actually say 6-weeks, but instead bans abortion after “cardiac activity” is detected. (Insert biggest eyeroll here) Hydrick also claimed that because pregnancy tests might work as soon as ten days after conception, it’s women’s responsibility to find out if they’re pregnant as early as possible: “There is a distinction legally between do women know, and can women know?”

Unfortunately, Justice John Few seemed swayed by this idea, saying, “I think it's a valid notion that the state, as part of its policy judgment can say, we want you to start thinking about your choices early.”

Somehow it gets even more offensive: Part of the reason the state brought up pregnancy tests was in order to claim that the notion of “choice” should be expanded to include the window of time that women use contraception or take those tests. Essentially, they’re arguing that women’s right to choose actually begins when she works to prevent or detect pregnancy. I don’t need to tell you how dangerous this kind of thinking is.

Thankfully, Catherine Humphreville, representing the abortion providers who brought the challenge against the law, was able to insert a little commonsense:

“As a practical matter, that is not what women are doing. People are not sitting around taking a pregnancy test every day. They have jobs, they have children, they have other determinations, they're not regularly tracking their menstrual cycles. And so that doesn't change anything.”

But as we all know, commonsense arguments don’t always make a difference when you’re talking about powerful men intent on controlling women’s bodies.

The North Carolina judge set to decide whether Republicans’ abortion ban can go into effect on July 1 says that she’ll be issuing a ruling by Friday. U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles has already, unfortunately, said that she wouldn’t be striking down the law in its entirety. She might, however, block certain provisions. The legal challenge brought against the ban focuses on several parts of the law that pro-choice groups say are confusing and contradictory—that’s Republicans just passed a last-minute amendment revising the law in anticipation of the hearing. Unless Eagles enacts a temporary restraining order, the ban will fully go into effect, further stripping abortion access from those in the South. (The 19th has a piece on how doctors in the state are preparing.)

Meanwhile, the attacks on democracy continue in Missouri, where we’ve been keeping a close eye on Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s attempts to stymie a pro-choice ballot measure by refusing to sign off on the state auditor’s cost estimate. (If you haven’t been following this, the short version is that the auditor estimates the measure would cost the state $51,000 but Bailey wanted him to say it would cost $51 billion.) This week, a judge denied a request from the ALCU of Missouri to force Bailey to certify the cost estimate. Bailey’s refusal to sign has mean that pro-choice advocates have been unable to start collecting signatures—which, of course, is the point. The whole thing is a delaying tactic so that voters won’t be able to make their voices heard on abortion.

I’ve warned before (a lot) that a huge part of the anti-abortion strategy is a hyper-focus on crisis pregnancy centers. Conservatives want to paint these fake medical clinics as somehow supporting women and families, and so they’re working hard to increase funding and resources for the groups. Part of that support is pushing back against their very bad, and very deserved, reputation as religious organizations that lie to women. The latest in that tactic comes out of Nevada, where an anti-abortion group successfully pressured the state Department of Health and Human Services to remove a warning about the centers from their website.

The Nevada Current found that the four paragraph warning had been taken off the website sometime this month, language that included telling readers that crisis pregnancy centers “do not provide comprehensive, accurate, or evidence-based clinical information,” but instead seeks to “dissuade people seeking abortions from obtaining the procedure.”

The change happened after Nevada Right to Life put out a petition this Spring asking Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo to take off the “derogatory” language. When asked about the change to the website, the governor’s office sent a statement to the Current saying that he was “concerned by the mischaracterization and politicization of crisis pregnancy centers on a government website.” Politicization?? Meanwhile, Nevada Right to Life is thrilled, claiming that the language was “threatening and bullying.” (It is always projection with these people.)

Illinois abortion providers have seen a huge influx of out-of-state patients—many of whom are dealing with high-risk pregnancies that are putting their health and lives at risk. Alina Salganicoff, director of women’s health policy at KFF, told public radio station WBEZ that this is just another example of how ‘exceptions’ aren’t real:

“It’s very, very difficult to get an exception…It’s like, how imminent is this threat. And in many cases, patients can’t wait until they’re about to die before they get an abortion.”

It’s not a real exception for your health and life if you need to leave your home state in order to get care. That’s assuming you can leave the state. Illinois doctors, like OBGYN Dr. Jonah Fleisher, are worried about the patients they don’t see:

“I know that some number of those women are not going to make it through birth and postpartum. More than the stress of somebody who’s actually making it to see me, that’s the thing that causes me more stress.”

A judge in Kentucky has officially dismissed a challenge against the state’s abortion ban. This comes after abortion providers decided to drop the case and find new plaintiffs. Another challenge against the law—which argues that the ban is a violation of religious freedom—remains standing.

Maine just got one step closer to expanding abortion access past 24 weeks with a doctor’s recommendation. Last night, the legislation passed the state House; now it goes back to the Senate for a final vote. There’s been a tremendous amount of controversy over the bill, with Republicans bringing up their usual bullshit about abortion later in pregnancy and anti-abortion activists threatening Democratic leaders.

Quick hits:

• An update on where Georgia’s ban is with the state Supreme Court;

• Montana doctors have written a letter to the governor asking him to stop trying to restrict abortion;

• Connecticut abortion providers are seeing a large increase in out-of-state patients;

• Data from #WeCount shows that California abortion providers are performing an average of 473 more abortions per month since Roe was overturned;

• New statistics show how the abortion rate in Kansas went significantly up;

• And an Arizona abortion provider reflects on life post-Roe.

In the Nation

If you follow me on Twitter or TikTok you know I went on a full tear this morning about these comments, but I’m not done being angry yet! Yesterday, President Joe Biden said he’s “not big on abortion” because of his Catholicism, but that Roe “got it right.” I’m so tired of this, honestly. As I ranted earlier today: Now is the time for full-throated support of abortion as a moral good—not language that makes it seems as if Roe was a favor that politicians did us.

The president’s continued spiritless defense of abortion is dangerous; this kind of defensive bullshit is, in part, what brought us to the moment we’re in now. (Here’s an example of how politicians should be talking and thinking about abortion.)

Maybe Biden could take a lesson from Catholic abortion doula Emily Likins, who spoke to NPR about how she thinks about her faith and reproductive rights:

“She will often pray with her Christian patients, and guide them through the process by asking questions like: ‘Is there a manifestation of this situation where God actually agrees with your decision to have an abortion and sees you as a person who is hurting and in need of kind care, compassion, saving?’”

This whole article is worth reading, by the way: it gets into how the vast majority of Catholics (68%!) support legal access to abortion.

Speaking of religion: Abortion, Every Day has been following the spate of religious freedom lawsuits across anti-choice states—challenges that have been met with some pretty offensive anti-abortion responses). Today, The New York Times looks at that pro-choice strategy and how it actually relies on some of the same arguments used by conservatives in their own lawsuits (over issues like contraception coverage). The article also reminds us of how some Republicans are preempting similar lawsuits in their states: they’re revising their own religious freedom laws to specifically exclude abortion. I’ve written about this a few times but it’s worth repeating: States like West Virginia are literally writing laws that say people have religious freedom unless it has to do with abortion.

And if you’re looking for a good overview of where anti-choice strategy is right now, Democracy Now interviewed Amy Littlefield, abortion access correspondent for The Nation, who has some smart thoughts:

Quick hits:

• Axios has more information on Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s Abortion Justice Act that I told you about last week;

• An abortion counselor talks about her post-Roe day-to-day work;

• Media Matters investigates the anti-abortion movement’s sudden focus on surrogacy;

• And a smart piece on the lie of health and life exceptions from The Washington Post’s Sarah Green Carmichael.

2024

As Republican presidential candidates try to frame a 15-week national ban as a ‘compromise’, here’s a good reminder that they will never stop there. From Tim Head, executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference (where candidates made their pitches to the religious right-wing this past weekend):

“We want to obviously save as many as possible and eventually get to the place where we've completely eradicated abortion from the United States. We're moving in that direction…We're working to win as many states, singularly, as possible, and then continuing to plot away on a potential 20-week, 15-week, 12-week or below from the national and federal perspective.”

We saw this happen in states like North Carolina and Nebraska, where Republicans made a big show of saying that they were just trying to pass ‘compromise’ legislation—only to watch anti-abortion activists make clear just a few weeks later that they were heading back to those states to finish the job by banning abortion entirely.

Quick 2024 hits:

• North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum says he won’t sign a national abortion ban;

• Slate looks at the abortion-related language fight among Trump and his opposing Republican candidates;

• A quick rundown of where the candidates stand on abortion;

• And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to edit abortion out of his stump speech depending on where he’s speaking. In his four trips to New Hampshire, for example, he hasn’t mentioned abortion once.

Wise Words

I really appreciated this op-ed from the two co-directors of the Baltimore Abortion Fund, Lynn McCann-Yeh and Porsha Pinder, who write that the notion of ‘safe haven’ states is a misnomer—because it’s impossible for many people both in and out of Maryland to access care:

“The safety that they claim to offer is meaningless when their legal protections are unreachable, fleeting and insufficient even for their own residents. To put our faith into sanctuary states as the solution for our current crisis is dangerously shortsighted. We can no longer accept a reality where half of Americans are denied reproductive freedom, bodily autonomy and the right to decide their futures. Instead of believing in sanctuary, we must act in solidarity.”

This is the kind of proactive vision we need.

Pro-Choice Strategy: Digital Privacy Protection

We’ve seen lots of terrific abortion rights protections over the last year, largely by way of shield laws that protect providers and patients from out-of-state prosecutions and investigations. Part of that effort has included looking more closely at the way that digital data is used—or could be used—to target those that obtain abortions. There are two states right now to pay particular attention to:

• California, where there has been a sustained campaign to get law enforcement in the state to stop sharing license plate data with anti-abortion states—information civil liberties groups point out could be used to track those who leave their state for abortion care;

• And Massachusetts, where Democrats are pushing legislation that would prohibit the selling or renting of cell phone location data—again, information that could be used to track those seeking abortions.

Care Crisis

We’ve been covering the OBGYN exodus from anti-abortion states, where bans aren’t just driving doctors out, but making it less and less likely that new doctors will come in. Residency applications in anti-choice states are decreasing, especially in reproductive health areas; applications in pro-choice states, however, are becoming increasingly more competitive.

The Boston Globe looks at how OBGYN residency programs in Massachusetts are seeing a big uptick in applicants, and how OBGYNs and maternal fetal medicine specialists are moving to the state over their inability to provide the standard of care elsewhere. Even in states without total abortion bans, restrictions and the anti-abortion culture of fear has impacted the way that medicine is practiced.

OBGYN Dr. Jillian A. Dodge, for example, moved from Ohio last year; the state’s ban is currently blocked and abortion is legal up until 22 weeks of pregnancy. But Dodge told The Boston Globe that her colleagues weren’t able to treat miscarriages because they didn’t have training in abortion. And that’s not all:

“A patient scheduled for a 7:30 a.m. abortion had to wait till 5 p.m., Dodge said, because the morning anesthesia team refused to participate. Dodge found she had to push hard to acquire simple devices and instruments routinely used in abortion and miscarriage care.”

That is terrifying. We’re talking about a state where abortion is supposedly legal—yet doctors can’t find the right tools that they need?

Meanwhile, in Iowa, Planned Parenthood announced they are closing three of their locations. Representatives from the group say that the move will allow them to actually increase the number of patients that they can see—but obviously abortion bans are taking a toll on providers and their ability to operate, see patients and hire staff.

Listen Up

The NPR Politics Podcast has a segment on what Republican presidential candidates are saying about a federal ban, and how President Biden is talking about the issue:

WAMU also has a good segment on how abortion access has changed in Washington DC; and Wisconsin Public Radio on the new law allowing pharmacists to prescribe birth control.

You Love to See It

One of conservatives’ more horrific strategies is pitting communities against each other—like in Texas, where the law allows citizens to sue each other over abortion and incentivizes turning each other in. That’s why I loved this piece from the Texas Standard so much about the Buckle Bunnies Fund—a mutual aid group made up of volunteers dedicated to helping people get the abortions they need. Because the group is not a non-profit, they’ve been able to avoid some of the pitfalls of Texas’ abortion laws.

From Makayla Montoya Frazier, founder of Buckle Bunnies:

“Since we’re also not an incorporated organization and we’re just individuals, they’d have to pick one of us to come after and not all of us. And the work would probably continue.”

And because the group doesn’t have an office or salaries, every bit of money they get goes directly to the costs associated with getting someone out of the state for abortion care. Love it. (You can donate here.)