Abortion, Every Day (8.28.23)

Wisconsin GOP attacks democracy to keep abortion banned

Aug 28, 2023

In the States

Abortion rights advocates in Ohio are suing over a misleading summary put in place by Republicans for the state’s pro-choice ballot measure. This November, voters will decide whether or not to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution—something the state GOP has tried to stop every step of the way. Since those efforts were unsuccessful, and Ohioans will have a say on abortion rights, Republicans are now trying to lie to voters about what the amendment actually is.

I reported last week how the Ohio Ballot Board approved language from Secretary of State Frank LaRose that was chock full of anti-abortion bullshit and misinformation, including the claim that the measure would allow abortion “at any stage of pregnancy.” (The summary is also longer that the actual amendment itself!) Lauren Blauvelt of Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights called the summary “propaganda,” and “a last ditch effort to deceive and confuse Ohio voters ahead of the November vote on reproductive freedom.”

The group announced today that they’re filing a lawsuit with the state Supreme Court, asking that the entire amendment be included so that voters can see the language for themselves, and that the ballot board correct the inaccuracies in the summary.

I wish that was the only news today on anti-choice attacks on democracy. Alas. This month in Wisconsin, pro-choice judge Janet Protasiewicz took her seat on the state Supreme Court—shifting the makeup of the Court to give liberals control. It was fantastic news on all fronts, but especially important for abortion rights: The challenge to Wisconsin’s abortion ban is being battled out in the courts and will almost certainly end up in front of Protasiewicz and the state Supreme Court.

But Wisconsin Republicans, furious over their loss, have been trying to come up with ways to keep Protasiewicz from restoring abortion rights (in addition to trying to limit her power more broadly). The Washington Post reports that conservatives want to remove Protasiewicz from cases where they claim she’s ‘biased’—and impeach her if she refuses to recuse herself.

“Republicans for months have contended Protasiewicz must not participate in the cases on abortion and redistricting because of what she said on the campaign trail.
‘I want to look and see: Does she recuse herself on cases where she has prejudged?’ [State Assembly Speaker Robin] Vos said. ‘That to me is a serious offense.’”

How many more ways can Republicans prove that they don’t care what voters want? As Wisconsin Sen. Kelda Roys said, they want “to try to overturn the clear will of the voters.”

Speaking of abortion and state Supreme Courts: In Pennsylvania, abortion has become central to the November election for a new state Supreme Court justice. Pro-choice judge Dan McCaffery is running against Carolyn Carluccio—who has been endorsed by state anti-abortion groups and tried to scrub mentions of her anti-abortion beliefs off her website.

POLITICO reports that Democrats are planning to spend millions in the race, which will likely end up being the most expensive state Supreme Court election Pennsylvania has ever had. Democrats are also hoping for a replay in what happened in Wisconsin when Protasiewicz won her seat. In the meantime, Republicans in the state are trying to play off how important abortion is in the race, calling it a “diversionary tactic.”

Florida’s Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in the legal challenge to the state’s 15-week abortion ban next week. Remember, the ruling in this case will determine the future of the state’s recently-passed 6-week abortion ban, which hasn’t gone into effect yet. While Floridians wait for that decision, pro-choice activists there continue to collect signatures and gather support for an abortion rights ballot measure. They have more than 600,000 of the nearly-900,000 signatures they need. For info on how to support their effort, check out Floridians Protecting Freedom.

Months ago, I predicted that Republicans would use ‘consensus’ in place of ‘abortion ban’ in an attempt to distract Americans from the fact that they’re passing legislation against voters’ wishes. Abortion, Every Day has been keeping track of the term ever since, and it’s been absolutely wild to see how quickly it’s taken off among Republicans. The latest example comes out of Virginia—an increasingly important state to keep an eye on as abortion access is decimated across the South.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has been pushing for a 15-week ban since last year, is revisiting his proposal and talking about it as—you guessed it!—a consensus. From NBC News:

“Passing a ban on abortion after 15 weeks, with exceptions for rape, incest and saving the life of the mother, would be a legislative priority for Youngkin if his party succeeds in the November legislative elections, the sources familiar with his plans said. The governor and his campaign team believe that 15 weeks is a ‘consensus’ limit—one that many Virginians across political ideologies can agree upon. And they’re betting the measure is modest enough to avoid spikes in Democratic turnout more stringent bans have triggered in other states.”

Here’s the thing: We know that Republicans like Youngkin are going to use ‘consensus’ to describe their deeply unpopular bans, but I really wish the mainstream media wouldn’t repeat the characterization without question. (This piece from NBC News, for example, doesn’t look critically at Youngkin’s claim at all.)

Business leaders in North Carolina are raising the alarm about how the state’s abortion ban will drive customers away from the state. In a press conference last week, business owners likened the impact of the state’s abortion ban to that of HB2—the anti-trans bill that led to a loss of $3.76 billion in business for the state.

In the wake of South Carolina’s abortion ban going into effect, the five female senators—including two Republicans—who battled back against the law are calling for a state referendum on abortion rights. (In South Carolina, only the legislature can create a ballot measure on abortion.) Also in the state, columnist Issac Bailey lays into the all-male justices who ruled to uphold the ban. And for more South Carolina abortion news, make sure you’re reading fellow Substacker Emily Taylor and her terrific newsletter here. (Both are truly cathartic reads.)

In Michigan this week, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will announce legislation to repeal the state’s anti-abortion TRAP laws. The Reproductive Health Act would end onerous building code requirements for clinics and repeal a 24-hour waiting period mandate, among other changes. Michigan recently enshrined abortion protections in the state constitution, but state House Speaker Pro Tempore Laurie Pohutsky said, “There’s a lot of cleanup to do throughout Michigan’s laws.”

Colorado is leading the nation in virtually prescribed abortion medication, with the proportion of tele-health abortions in the state at nearly three times the national average. Axios also reports that tele-health abortions increased to 20% over the last year, with that number expected to increase in the wake of the state passing a shield law to protect providers this past April.

Quick hits:

The Guardian on Texas’ new ‘exceptions’ for ectopic pregnancies and premature water breaks;
Johnson County in Iowa may pay for rape victims’ emergency contraception, funding that has been cut by the state Attorney General;
The Oregon Republicans who walked out over abortion rights, blocked from seeking re-election, are now suing in order to be able to do so;
And The 19th on abortion and the Kentucky gubernatorial race.

In the Nation

Over at Vox, reporter Ian Millhiser has a must-read piece on James Ho, the judge for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals who issued that completely bizarre opinion about how abortion robs doctors of the joy of seeing a baby be born. In short? His work “is often indistinguishable from that of a professional troll,” Millhiser writes.

“If you could breathe life into 4chan, the dark corner of the Internet where shitposters, edgelords, Groypers, and trolls of all kinds thrive, and then appoint this new lifeform to the federal bench, you would have created Judge James Ho.”

Fucking yikes. This is the guy who has a say over our bodies. Reading this Vox piece reminds me of the column I wrote back in April after Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk that mifepristone’s approval should be revoked:

“We all know men like this: ridiculous and cruel, convinced of their own superior intelligence against all evidence to the contrary. But instead of simply being the biggest asshole in class or the former boss we recall while grimacing, they’re the judges, politicians and lobbyists who get to decide our futures. It’s humiliating, really.”

2024

Let’s get something straight: Nikki Haley is not “pro-woman,” and her abortion stance isn’t anywhere close to moderate. Yet somehow that’s become the takeaway from last week’s GOP debate. I wrote a column last night about why it’s so dangerous to let Haley position herself as the reasonable Republican on abortion:

No, Nikki Haley Isn't Reasonable on Abortion

Jessica Valenti

August 28, 2023

Read full story

Haley’s debate performance on abortion has other Republicans taking her candidacy a bit more seriously. On Fox News, Kellyanne Conway said, “I think Nikki is going to get a second look from some people based on some stuff she said tonight on abortion.” And GOP strategists believe that it will be good for them to have a woman on stage talking about reproductive rights. Obviously, that doesn’t mean she’ll win the primary or even come close—but again, this makes Haley more dangerous than ever.

Quick 2024 hits:

The editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch blasted Republicans for repeating lies about abortion later in pregnancy during the debate;
The New York Times examines Gov. Ron DeSantis’ claim about an “abortion survivor” (as does this surprisingly thorough TikTok);
And in CNN, political strategists say that abortion rights as a political issue is having an even greater impact than it did last year—which is saying a lot!

Stats & Studies

Okay, this is sort of funny. Kellyanne Conway and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post about what Republicans should be doing on abortion. Now, you know how I feel about giving liars a platform, but it looks as if Dannenfelser—who repeats some seriously false stats & studies—was reigned in a bit by the WaPo fact-checking team.

For example, SBA Pro-Life America likes to claim that over 70% of Americans want a 15-week national abortion ban. But in the op-ed, Dannenfelser and Conway write that “recent polls show that 56 percent of voters support a national abortion limit of 15 weeks…”

Already, they’ve lost over 15% of the voters they claimed support their ban, which leads me to believe that the poll Dannenfelser usually cites didn’t stand up to WaPo’s standards. So let’s take a closer look at the poll WaPo did let them cite: Respondents were asked whether they support a 15 week abortion ban or “abortion up until birth.” Those were the only two options! I mean, come on. They can’t expect us to take that seriously.

The other 15-week lie Conway and Dannenfelser weren’t able to get fully published was about fetal pain:

“Democrats’ message-testing instructs them to scaremonger about a GOP ‘national ban’ with no exceptions and to avoid important realities of a child’s development—such as a heartbeat at six weeks or the evidence that unborn children can feel pain by 15 weeks.”

You might not notice the subtle language here unless you’ve been through the fact-checking process at a major publication, but I sure can see it! They weren’t allowed to write that Democrats were ignoring the reality of fetal pain, but the reality of “evidence” of fetal pain. Similarly, later in the op-ed, they write that a 15-week ban would account for when fetuses “might be able to feel pain,” an acknowledgement that there is no sound evidence to prove as much.

There are other parts, too—like when they write that “half the country—25 states — voted to protect babies in the womb.” They can’t actually claim that half of voters support anti-abortion laws, just that Republicans in half of the states passed anti-choice laws. We know that voters themselves don’t actually want those laws.

In any case, I wish that Conway and Dannenfelser weren’t given column inches at all—because most readers aren’t going to catch the small language changes that make clear they’re full of shit. But I’ll take my wins where I can. (And thanks to WaPo fact checkers & editors today.)

The Message War: ‘Viability’

I’m am so completely over Democrats accepting the Republican ‘viability’ talking point. We know that viability is a made-up standard with no basis in medicine, yet somehow it’s everywhere these days. You can thank conservative strategists and the mainstream media that repeats them.

This weekend, for example, CNN’s Dana Bash interviewed Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker— pointing out that his state’s law that allows abortion until about 24 weeks, after which the state requires a medical reason. She asked the governor, “Do you believe more national Democrats should support that limitation on abortion?”

To Pritzker’s credit, he only nominally took the bait:

“That’s where most democrats are, it’s about a woman making a decision for herself with her doctor-not with a politician in the room making the decision for her. Women should be able to do this on their own.”

What did the headline become, though? “Pritzker: I believe most Dems back abortion limit at viability.” Enough already. Stop trying to make fetch happen.

In related news, I wrote last week about what a mistake it was for Democratic strategist and pundit Jen Psaki to take Republicans’ bait on abortion ‘up until birth’—which just lended credence to their talking point while stigmatizing abortion later in pregnancy. For some reason, though, the MSNBC host decided to double down and discuss the idea on her show. It did far more harm than good.

Psaki said, “abortions past the point of fetal viability do not happen often”—again, using a term that is completely arbitrary. She also said, “no one is rooting for late term abortions, no one is running the platform of aborting viable babies.” Why, why use language like this?

If mainstream media hosts are going to talk about abortions later in pregnancy—and they should!—they need to do it accurately and without stigma.

Listen Up

Emily Wales, CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, spoke to the Kansas Reflector;

Boise State Public Radio looks at how the ACLU of Idaho was actually formed over a legal challenge on abortion rights.

NPR on how conservatives are trying to win over young voters, who overwhelmingly skew Democrat;

And Slate interviewed Lauren Hall, one of the women who sued Texas over the state’s abortion ban:

Keep An Eye On

Last month, I flagged conservatives’ latest strategy on abortion medication: feigning concern over sexual violence against women, and claiming that the pills are being used by domestic abusers and sex traffickers to hurt women. (Read more about the tactic here.) One of the main players pushing that lie is the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the ‘research’ arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. In The Hill this weekend, one of Charlotte Lozier’s supposed-experts, David Reardon, writes that the FDA’s approval of mifepristone is a sign that the agency doesn’t mind “directly aid[ing] abusers and sex traffickers.”

It’s bad enough that anti-abortion activists are co-opting feminist language and issues in order to roll back women’s rights, but the added insult is that the people being cited as serious experts are absolute quacks. As I’ve written previously, Reardon is part of a group of anti-abortion ‘researchers’ whose work is used in major abortion lawsuits despite being widely discredited. (Reardon, for example, has a degree from an unaccredited online university that was shut down as a diploma mill.)

The anti-abortion movement knows they don’t have facts or science on their side, so they’ve been focusing on establishing themselves as medically credible. We’re going to see more and more of these ‘experts’ and their work, so I’ll be writing more about the names and so-called studies to watch out for.

Help Save a Texas Clinic

A Texas clinic needs our help. KOT, the public radio station in Austin, reports that Austin Women’s Health Center—one of the few clinics to remain open in the state—is on the verge of shutting down. The center provides a spectrum of reproductive health services, including ultrasounds, birth control, and miscarriage management. From former clinic Director Julie Smith:

“What we’ve found recently with our patients that we’ve seen for miscarriage care is that they’ve gone to the emergency room and they’ve been turned away. They say, ‘This will happen at home naturally. Come back if you’re bleeding X amount per hour.’”

Horrific. To support the Austin Women’s Health center, donate to the clinic’s GoFundMe here.