Abortion, Every Day (2.21.24)

Tennessee GOP says child rape victims must carry pregnancies to term

Feb 21, 2024

“Protecting” Children

Yesterday in Tennessee, every House Republican voted in support of forcing raped 12 year-olds to carry pregnancies to term. HB 2603, introduced by Democrat Rep. Gloria Johnson, would have allowed children under 13 years-old to obtain abortion care—but Republicans in the state resoundingly killed it.

What’s more, one anti-abortion lawmaker seemed to imply that 12 year-old girls would deliberately wait until they were close to their due date to get an abortion. Rep. Andrew Farmer said, “For you to stand there and tell this committee that there aren’t people that are sick enough in this world to abort a child at eight months, it’s happening.”

Remember: This comes at the same time that Tennessee Republicans are advancing an ‘abortion trafficking’ bill they claim will protect minors. The hypocrisy is just astounding.

These are girls who are little more than babies themselves being forced into childbirth—which is dangerous for an adult woman! For a child, pregnancy is downright life-threatening. Monstrous.

Attacks on Democracy

This is wild. South Dakota Republicans have launched a new attack on the pro-choice ballot measure that would restore abortion rights in the state. Yesterday, the House advanced a bill that would invalidate the proposed amendment if anti-abortion groups are able to convince even a handful of people to withdraw their signatures after the fact.

House Bill 1244, introduced by Rep. Jon Hansen—who happens to be the vice president of South Dakota Right to Life—would allow people to remove their names from the pro-choice petition after the measure has gone through the certification process. It also has an emergency clause which would put it into immediate effect if passed. From Rick Weiland of Dakotans for Health, the group behind pro-choice measure:

“[The law] would create a signature withdrawal provision under which a single person withdrawing his or her signature could invalidate a petition containing 35,017 valid signatures, and that even petitions containing tens of thousands more signatures than required by law could be invalidated by just a few hundred withdrawal requests.”

Basically, this means if anti-abortion groups are able to convince (or intimidate) a small group of people into removing their names from the petition, they could stop the entire ballot process. Which, obviously, is the point.

Naturally, Rep. Hansen claims he’s just trying to protect democracy. During the committee hearing for the bill, the anti-abortion activist/representative said, “If you obtain petition signatures through fraud or misleading information, that's not democracy.”

That quote is important: A few weeks ago, I warned that Republicans were going to start throwing out allegations of voter fraud to stop pro-choice ballot measures. In Florida, for example, two petitioners were recently arrested for submitting “invalid” signatures. They were targeted by the state’s department of Election Crimes and Security; this is the department that arrested Black voters over ‘crimes’ like filling out two registration forms after moving.

In short, these lawmakers want to pretend that all of the pro-choice voters who are making their voices very, very clear are just figments of our imagination. What better way to do that than by crying foul?

In the States

Abortion rights may be headed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court sooner than we expected. Read this for some background, but the short version is that there’s been disagreement about the 1849 abortion law and whether or not it constitutes a ‘ban’. When Roe was overturned, that’s how it was perceived—and clinics stopped providing abortions.

But in July, a judge ruled that the law isn’t actually an abortion ban at all—but “a feticide statute only.” (Meaning it only applies to an attack on a pregnant person that ends the pregnancy, and not abortion.) That ruling opened the door for Planned Parenthood clinics in the state to providing care again, even though anti-abortion groups continue to claim that the law remains in effect as a total ban.

The court battle around the law has always been expected to head to the state Supreme Court—which, thanks to the election of pro-choice judge Janet Protasiewicz, is now under liberal control. But this week, a Republican prosecutor has asked the Court to decide on the law now.

Sheboygan County District Attorney Joel Urmanski, who is defending the law as a ban, says, “This Court’s resolution of this issue now, rather than later, will provide needed clarity to policymakers as to the current state of the law.”

And for once, pro-chociers agree with him. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin also wants the state Supreme Court to make a ruling.

Georgia Democrats are introducing a long-shot effort to get abortion rights on the ballot. In a press conference today, lawmakers announced Resolution 836, the “Right to Reproductive Freedom” resolution, which would allow voters to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

As you can imagine, this isn’t likely to go anywhere given Republican control of the legislature. But it’s important that Democrats are reminding voters again and again that Republicans don’t care what they want when it comes to abortion rights.

A new poll shows that Texas voters overwhelmingly support abortions in cases of rape, incest, and serious risk of “a serious birth defect.” The poll, from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, found that 73% of Texans support abortion in cases where there could be a fetal abnormality.

This comes in the wake of Kate Cox, a woman who was denied an abortion despite having a nonviable pregnancy. (Nonviable pregnancies have become a focal point for anti-abortion activists, who are quietly launching a campaign to force women to be ‘walking coffins’.)

Right now, the state’s ban only allows abortion when someone’s life is at risk—and even that exception is dubious, given that multiple Texas women have come forward about being denied health- and life-saving care.

Speaking of those denied care in Texas: The Cut has an interview with Center for Reproductive Rights lawyer Molly Duane, who represented Cox and the women who are suing the state. Molly is a rock star, so definitely read the whole interview, but I was especially interested in what she said about criticisms of the suit not going far enough. (CRR’s lawsuit isn’t trying to overturn the abortion ban, but instead is seeking to clarify what counts as a medical emergency.)

Duane says she understands the critique, but that “change is not going to happen overnight” and that it’s going to take a “lifetime” of work:

“I think people who are in the movement also need to be very creative in their approach. We litigate to achieve short-term wins but also serve long-term goals, be they jurisprudential or public-narrative facing. And also, we did challenge SB8. We challenged the trigger bans in many states. And we failed. These women would not be able to testify in court if we filed a case that would just be thrown out.
We have to be realistic about the courts that we’re dealing with. Coming from a public-health frame, our goal is to help large populations, millions at a time. That’s not always possible. In the meantime, every single person we help is a win.”

A Republican running for Ohio Senate said something incredibly telling this week about abortion. Bernie Moreno—a big fan of all our anti-abortion BINGO words—answered a question about abortion rights by talking about people helping women with strollers on airplanes. After relaying a story about his daughter traveling home by plan and people helping her with her large stroller, Moreno said, “Those are the kinds of things that we can do…Let’s be a pro-mom, pro-family policy.”

As I pointed out on Twitter, this is part of the reason you should never trust men heralding ‘chivalry’. Too often, they understand it as a fair trade off for your basic human rights. Who needs abortion rights if you have nice men to pick up your stroller for you?

This isn’t some unimportant gaffe, it’s a reminder that for Republicans, banning abortion isn’t just about making abortion illegal—it’s about a return to traditional gender roles.

If you missed my piece earlier today on the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, check it out here. In totally predictable news, the University of Alabama at Birmingham health system has paused IVF procedures in the wake of the ruling, saying they need to make sure that their doctors aren’t criminally prosecuted for providing the standard of care. Meanwhile, IVF patients are hurriedly collecting their frozen embryos and rushing them out-of-state.

For more on the ruling, read Robin Abcarian at the Los Angeles Times who asks if embryos are children—why hasn’t the person who dropped the tray of them been arrested?

“I mean, if a frozen embryo is a legally protected minor child, and all unborn life is sacred, then why on earth would the state of Alabama allow this accidental killer to stay on the loose?”

There’s also more analysis on Alabama in Slate, and “Morning Edition” at NPR spoke to If/When/How Attorney Elizabeth Ling.

Also, a reminder: Florida Republicans are in the process of advancing a bill that would allow people to sue for the “wrongful death” of a fetus. Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, says, “The potential misuses are staggering—purposefully broad language could help abusers weaponize the judicial system to harass and punish their pregnant partners with costly civil lawsuits.”

Quick hits:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren met with reproductive health advocates in Massachusetts;
Kari Lake is still at it in Arizona;
Illinois could offer tax credits to attract reproductive health workers;
And NPR on anti-choice bills in Kansas, including legislation that would require that doctors ask abortion patients why they’re ending a pregnancy.

Reality Check

Nikki Haley needs to get a grip. The Republican presidential hopeful told The Dallas Morning News that she thinks Texas should change its law so that women like Kate Cox, who had a doomed pregnancy, can get abortion care:

“They should make sure no woman in that situation ever goes through that again. It’s OK to put laws in place, but let’s not be so blinded that we don’t fix them when we see there’s something that needs to be adjusted.”

But here’s the thing: Nikki Haley pledged to support a national 15-week abortion ban that would to do to all American women what Texas did to Cox. It has no exception for fatal fetal abnormalities! I swear, I don’t understand why anyone finds Haley compelling.

In the Nation

The Supreme Court has denied a request from three Republican-led states to join the case against mifepristone. You may remember that U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk—who ruled against the abortion medication last April—had allowed Missouri, Kansas and Idaho to join the lawsuit. (Fellow Substacker LawDork has a good rundown here.) But today the Court declined the states’ motion.

Also in Supreme Court news this week, Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador filed his opening brief in the case over how the state adheres (or doesn’t adhere) to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). The federal EMTALA requires life-saving and stabilizing abortions, but Idaho quite simply doesn’t wanna. They want to be able to prosecute doctors who provide emergency abortions, which they claim aren’t really necessary. As I wrote last month, “of course they want us dead.”

One last thing on SCOTUS. In The Nation, Elie Mystal writes that if Biden wants to ‘restore Roe', he needs to expand the Court.

“Either we expand the Supreme Court and break the conservative supermajority, or we accept that women and pregnant people are second-class citizens who will lack equal access to healthcare for a generation. That is the world we live in, and the people who deny it are selling you a fantasy.”

Stats & Studies

Love this: New research shows that telehealth medical abortion is just as safe and effective as in-person medical abortion care. The study, published in Nature Medicine, looked at more than 6,000 medication abortions in 20 states. The researchers from University of California, San Francisco found that 98% of those telehealth abortions were effective, and that 99.8% were free from “serious adverse events.” (Find out more about the study at ANSIRH.)

In other words, despite wild anti-abortion claims to the contrary, telehealth abortion care is perfectly safe. The study comes at a key time, with mifepristone access headed to the Supreme Court and anti-abortion groups working hard to fabricate evidence that abortion medication is dangerous. That’s becoming harder and harder for them: just a few weeks ago, two major anti-abortion studies cited in the case headed to SCOTUS were retracted by their publisher.

In Better News

I’m thrilled to share that I’ve been named a fellow at the Type Media Center. Along with reporter Helen Ouyang, I was awarded an inaugural Ernst Abelin and Pamela Bevier fellowship—which offers vital support for independent journalists. I’m incredibly honored, and am so grateful for the vote of confidence from both Pamela Bevier and Type Media Center. Love to bring you good news every once in a while!