Abortion, Every Day (12.22.23)

The cruelty is the point. Always.

Click to skip ahead in the newsletter: The Cruelty is the Point outlines the anti-abortion movement’s attacks on Kate Cox. In Ballot Measure Updates, what Ohio Republicans are planning to do to stop Issue 1. In the States, Wisconsin Republicans are considering an anti-abortion ballot measure & updates from Virginia, Arizona, Texas and Wyoming. In the Nation, Grace writes about Alliance Defending Freedom’s increasing power over Republican Attorneys General. Care Denied looks at the role of state medical boards in responding to abortion bans. In Listen Up, some quick hits from NPR and more. And in You Love to See It, a way to support one of Abortion, Every Day’s favorite lawmakers.

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The Cruelty is the Point

We all know this Adam Serwer quote by now—and in a post-Roe world, it’s taken on new meaning. As I’ve watched the anti-abortion movement scramble to respond to Kate Cox’s story, Serwer’s words have come to me at least ten times a day. Piece after piece, group after group, has cruelly suggested that Cox ‘murdered’ her ‘disabled’ child—some explicitly, some using slicker tones. And while I’m loathe to give these people any sort of attention, it’s vital that we understand exactly what the anti-abortion movement believes about women, and how that influences what they plan to do next.

The Fort-Worth Star Telegram, for example, ran two columns in the last week that epitomize anti-choice cruelty. In the first, Mark Davis writes that “one can objectively understand” why Cox would want an abortion, but that “what is lacking in the coverage, and thus the public understanding, is why the answer had to be no.”

Who is Mark Davis, you may ask, to dictate that Cox be forced to carry a doomed pregnancy to term, risking her own life and health in the process? He’s a morning radio host.

The second column comes from Cynthia Allen, member of the Star-Telegram Editorial Board. Like Davis, Allen writes as if she knows more and better than Cox about her own pregnancy: “[H]er child’s diagnosis, while tragic, had no direct impact on her health.” Allen continues by dismissing the dangers to Cox’s health—like uterine rupture—as simply the normal risks of pregnancy. She writes, “If Cox were obese, older than 40, or had heart disease, her risks would also rise. But her desire to end her child’s life in such cases probably would not.”

If you wanted to throw your laptop across the room, you’re not alone! Allen goes further, reminding us what the real end goal is:

“[S]uffering is part of life. It’s most assuredly part of motherhood. The notion that we, as mothers, have agency over the circumstances of our pregnancies, births and even our children, is pure folly. We don’t. We’re just along for the ride. Our calling is to carry our children through it.”

And there it is. Women are born to suffer, and not having control of our bodies is actually just the natural state of things. (It never ceases to amaze me how many of women’s ‘natural’ roles need to be forcibly enshrined in law.)

Allen assures readers that she’s a good woman, and that “I would have gladly carried that child, if that was the suffering I was intended to endure.” Fucking yikes.

What’s important to remember is that these are not outlier views—they’re central to the anti-abortion movement. The Houston Chronicle, for example, spoke to anti-choicers in Texas who believe Kate Cox should have been forced to carry her doomed pregnancy to term. And like Republican lawmakers, they believe that if Cox’s life was really in danger, the law would have helped her.

The other lie making its way around the internet and conservative spaces is that the lethal condition that Cox’s fetus was diagnosed with wasn’t actually fatal at all. The anti-abortion movement sowed false stories and stats all over social media, like one that said “90% of kids with Trisomy 18 live when given proper medical care.”

As FactCheck.org points out, the truth is that the median life span for a baby with the condition is just 14 days, and only between 5 and 8% will live to see their first birthday.

These groups would have us believe that this is about offering hope to those given devastating diagnoses, but let’s be clear: this is a shame and disinformation tactic. As I wrote in an October investigation, “Calculated Cruelty,” the anti-abortion movement’s next big move is their campaign to force women to carry doomed pregnancies to term—an initiative that relies on false statistics and lies about fatal conditions and prenatal testing.

Imagine the bravery it takes to come forward to tell your story, as Cox did, and being met with this. I hope wherever she is right now, she’s feeling the love and support that far outweighs this garbage.

“It was only through doing [these campaigns] that we really started questioning the enormous revolutionary power of the abortion pills. With the pills, it’s so safe. You don’t need any providers, you’re not dependent on anybody.”

~Dr. Rebecca Gomperts of Aid Access, at the University of Southern California

Ballot Measure Updates

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine appears to be throwing fellow Republicans under the bus over their Issue 1 loss. In an interview with a local television station this week, DeWine says he thinks maybe they wouldn’t have lost the ballot measure vote if the state ban would have had rape and incest exceptions, “as I asked for there to be.”

DeWine also said that when it comes to enacting Issue 1, he believes that previous anti-choice “guardrails” like parental consent and other restrictions will stand. This is what the Republican governor said when asked if he was just trying to avoid adhering to the new constitutional amendment:

“Keep in mind that these were in place, and were upheld, when abortion was legal based upon Roe v Wade, so they already survived court decisions during that period of time. So having those guardrails are significant.”

So, at least we know the Ohio GOP’s strategy: try to keep abortion as restricted as possible by relying on pre-Dobbs laws, no matter how onerous they were, and regardless of whether they adhere to Issue 1.

I’m sorry to say that tying these restrictions to Roe is a smart tactic. Issue 1 contained viability language, and was somewhat framed by pro-choicers as a measure to simply ‘restore Roe’. If that’s the case, Republicans will say, why would they oppose restrictions that existed during Roe?

We should be fighting for so much more than Roe for lots of reasons, the very least of which being we don’t want to back ourselves into a corner in this way.

If you want a closer look at the ballot measure effort happening in Florida right now, check out the local news segment below. (And you can support Floridians Protecting Freedom here.)

And we’re still waiting to see what happens with the ballot measure effort in Montana, where abortion rights activists want to enshrine the right in the state constitution—in part to put an end to attacks from Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte. Even though Montana’s Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that women’s health decisions were part of a right to privacy in the state constitution, the governor and Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen have pushed the court to reverse that decision.

KTVH spoke to Christopher Coburn, a spokesperson for the advocacy group partnered with Planned Parenthood of Montana:

“The truth is that politicians continue to overstep and try and cut away and tear down that precedent and those right. So we feel—as do, we think, the majority of Montanans—that that right to abortion should be enshrined in the Constitution.”

Quick hits:

• NBC News on Republicans’ strategy to take down abortion rights ballot measures;

• And an inside look at the abortion rights ballot measure effort in Nevada.

In the States

Speaking of ballot measures: Wisconsin Republicans may try to use one to restrict abortion rights. Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told the Associated Press that he wants to propose an amendment that would lower the state’s limit from 20 weeks to somewhere between 12 and 15 weeks.

I find this a baffling strategy, given that every time abortion rights is put directly to voters, abortion rights wins. And we know from the state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin—which was very much a referendum on abortion—that voters overwhelmingly support access to care.

It may be that this is Wisconsin Republicans’ last desperate gasps: They know that their total abortion ban is headed to the state Supreme Court, which is now under liberal control. Perhaps they think that offering a fake ‘compromise’ is their only option? (To be clear: 12- and 15-week bans are not compromises, reasonable, or anything else that the GOP lies about.)

Editor-in-Chief of the Wisconsin Examiner, Ruth Conniff, believes that Vos is likely posturing. The quote that he gave the AP about a possible ballot measure would certainly seem to suggest as much: “It’s probably the only way for us to put this issue to rest…It has the idea of saying we’re letting the people decide.”

He’s so disdainful of the actual will of the people that he can’t even support it outright—he says the measure would have “the idea of saying” they’re letting people decide. The caveat is telling, I think.

In response to Vos’ suggestion, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers replied plainly: “I'll veto any bill that makes reproductive health care any less accessible for Wisconsinites than it is right now.”

Some good news out of Virginia, where abortion rights advocates note that Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s budget proposal doesn’t include any funds to enforce potential abortion bans. You may remember that in Youngkin’s last budget, the Republican governor allocated money to the Department of Corrections in anticipation of women and doctors being jailed over his proposed abortion ban. Rae Ann Pickett at Virginia League for Planned Parenthood says, “We are really glad to see that the governor has not recommitted to banning abortion in his budget.”

In less promising news, the budget proposal does remove funding for low-income pregnant people who get fatal fetal diagnosis. Remember what I said about the cruelty being the point??

WyoFile has a fantastic piece about how two clinics on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming are working to close the maternal health gap—which is significant in the region. WyoFile reports that the Indian Health Service has ramped up efforts to serve Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho patients. And Dr. Laura Gibbons, who works on the maternal health team at Wind River Cares, says, “I think in a lot of ways…[our patients] have more resources than the general community does.”

Arizona Rep. Nancy Gutierrez writes in the Arizona Daily Star about how restrictions on abortion rights pave the way for government interference in our bodies more broadly. And I’ve gotta say, I love her closer:

“Abortion is healthcare. Abortion should be codified in our Arizona Constitution and the United States Constitution. And strangers should stay the hell out of my private medical decisions.”

Quick hits:

• Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador wants a federal appeals court to dismiss a challenge to the state’s ‘abortion trafficking’ law;

• Arizona Rep. Athena Salman is resigning in order to work as director of Arizona campaigns for Reproductive Freedom For All;

• A California judge has ruled against two anti-abortion activists who secretly recorded abortion providers and deceptively edited the video;

• And community radio in Wyoming looks at how the state is poised to have just one abortion clinic in the new year.

In the Nation

This is wild: According to documents obtained by Chris Geidner at Law Dork, The Alliance Defending Freedom—better known as the conservative legal groups that brought the case that overturned Roe—is providing free legal representation for states defending anti-abortion and anti-trans cases. As you can imagine, that raises some pretty serious ethical questions about the anti-abortion group’s relationship to state Attorneys General offices.

Geidner reports that in Idaho, ADF is arguing three cases “free of charge” in front of high courts in the state—including one seeking to enforce the state’s total abortion ban, which could end up on the Supreme Court’s docket. 

An interesting detail in the documents: In one of the agreements, the Idaho attorney general’s office agreed to let ADF head all communications with media and public statements made about their case.

“Client understands that the Representation will include communication with the media, and that such communications may directly affect the successes of the Representation. Client therefore agrees to consult with ADF regarding public statements related to the Representation and when interacting and communicating with the media.”

In other words, state officials have to run their statements by the country’s most powerful conservative legal organization before they go public.

This brings up further issues around transparency and influence. Not only do constituents not have a say in who represents their interest in court, but they also don’t have access to who is funding these large anti-abortion organizations in the first place!

And as experts point out, the public interest is not the same as the interest of the anti-abortion group—especially when you consider the massive amounts of data showing how popular abortion rights are, including in states like Idaho.

James Tierney, a lecturer at Harvard Law School and former attorney general, said it well. He told Geidner, “It is a very bad practice to allow an advocacy group to represent the state. They will represent their true client, the advocacy group, not the state.”

Quick hits:

• The Los Angeles Times editorial board urges the Supreme Court to keep mifepristone accessible;

• Rolling Stone outlines the conservative plan to ban mifepristone, attack birth control, and increase data surveillance targeting women if they gain control of the White House and Congress in 2024;

• And there’s been an increase in teens choosing Nexplanon, the longterm contraceptive implant that goes in a patient’s arm.

Care Denied

When the Texas Supreme Court ruled on Kate Cox’s case, they shifted blame from legislators to doctors, claiming that if Cox was really endangered, doctors could simply give her care. As if it was that easy. As if there wasn’t a risk of losing their license, or jail time. But we all know that these laws—and the fake exceptions that Republicans rely on to make them look less monstrous—were deliberately written to dissuade doctors from providing abortions, no matter what the circumstances.

That’s why what we’re seeing across the country in states with bans isn’t legal ‘confusion’ over when a doctor can provide care; what we’re seeing is legislation working as intended. That’s not to say there’s not confusion at all—of course there is. Even knowing that there’s no law that could account for the infinite number of things that could wrong during a pregnancy, doctors in anti-choice states are still desperate for guidance.

State medical boards are supposed to offer clarifications when they can; anything to give health care providers a sense of what to do in particular situations. But in places like Texas, it’s just not happening. The Texas Tribune reports that the state medical board—even in the wake of Cox’s case—is demurring from weighing in.

The board chair told reporters, “We’re going to hold back on getting involved in anything until all these issues, at least at the judicial setting, are resolved.” I think it’s safe to say it’s going to be a long time before abortion rights are settled in Texas courts, so it seems like we’re going to get anything from them anytime soon. (It’s also worth noting that Mother Jones found that the sole OBGYN on the Texas medical board donated to Greg Abbott.)

And as Molly Meegan, chief legal officer of ACOG points out, even with guidance, doctors aren’t going to feel comfortable performing abortions in Texas: “Medical emergency exceptions, the way they're written, don't work in real life.”

We’ve been reminded of that real life nearly every day since Roe was overturned. This week, for example, Essense profiled Anya Cook—the Florida woman who was denied care when her water broke prematurely.

I will never forget Cook and this quote from her husband, Derick, who explained what he said when doctors asked whether they should prioritize saving Anya’s life or her uterus: “That was very confusing. I just went with the best answer: Save my wife and her uterus.”

And at The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse wrote a remarkable piece about the similarities between Kate Cox and Sherri Chessen—the host of a popular children’s television program who faced intense public scrutiny and scorn after news of her doomed pregnancy and subsequent abortion was revealed:

“When I called her the other day, it was as if she had been waiting to be asked how she felt about the replay of the long-ago chapter of her long life.

‘I’m losing my patience!’ she exclaimed. ‘I have a newfound fire that wants to clobber all those idiots. When will they ever learn?’”

Quick hits:

• ABC News with a closer look at one of the women they profiled for their wrenching documentary on the people impacted by abortion bans;

• And an interview with the founder of Partners in Abortion Care in Maryland, one of the handful of clinics that provide abortion throughout pregnancy.

• And a predictably terrific piece from Andrea Grimes at MSNBC, who notes the ‘pro-life’ movement’s silence on Brittany Watts.

Listen Up

• “All Things Considered” has a short segment on the state of abortion rights as we head into 2024;

• California public radio station KALW spoke to social scientist Sydney Calkin about her book, Abortion Pills Go Global: Reproductive Freedom Across Borders;

• And “Consider This” at NPR looks at last year in abortion restrictions and bans. You can listen below:

You Love to See It

Before we head off into a short holiday break, I wanted to give a shout out to one of Abortion, Every Day’s favorite lawmakers: Megan Hunt of Nebraska. You may remember Hunt from this incredible speech, and her work protecting abortion and trans rights. She’s the best.

But did you know that Hunt and Senators in Nebraska get paid just $12,000 a year? I sure didn’t! (As you can imagine, a salary like that impacts who can realistically represent the state.) Sen. Hunt doesn’t mention this much, but she runs a business—an incredible stationary shop—that allows her to do all of the vital abortion rights work in the legislature that we’ve watched and admired over the last year.

So if you’re looking for a last minute gift, or want to support a woman-owned business in Nebraska, check out Five Nines. (Or keep it bookmarked for the next time you need something!) Personally, I have my eye on this 100% done with life patch—amazing.

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Abortion, Every Day will return on December 26th, and publish on a limited schedule until the new year.