Abortion, Every Day (4.19.24)

Yes, Republicans are coming after birth control

Jessica Valenti

Apr 19, 2024

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If you missed my piece yesterday about how Republicans want to make abortion reports public record, make sure to check it out below:

Killing Confidentiality

Jessica Valenti

Apr 18

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Ballot Measure Updates

This is cool: Idaho abortion rights activists are looking into getting abortion rights in front of voters in 2026. Unfortunately, Idaho doesn’t allow citizen-led initiatives to put constitutional amendments on the ballot, so Idahoans United for Women and Families would be proposing legislation, instead.

Given that the petition would need to be certified by the state Attorney General and Secretary of State’s offices—both of which are Republican-controlled—the group will definitely face serious hurdles. But the Idaho Capital Sun points out that nearly 60% of voters in the state believe abortion should be legal in most or all circumstances. Given voter fury, the state’s OBGYN exodus, and maternity ward closures, those are the kinds of numbers that could put serious pressure on the state GOP.

You love to see it: Anti-abortion activists in Colorado failed to get the signatures they needed to get a ban on the ballot in November. You know who did get enough signatures? You guessed it! Abortion rights activists turned in 100k more signatures than they needed for their proposed amendment—and did so more than a week early.

Abortion is already legal in Colorado, but Initiative 89 would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution and end the state’s ban on public funds for abortion care. And as far as I can tell, this measure is the only abortion rights amendment heading to voters this November that doesn’t include ‘viability’ language. Karen Middleton, co-chair of Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom, called it a historic day:

“Coloradans deserve the freedom to make personal, private health-care decisions, and that right shouldn't depend on the source of their health insurance or who is in office. A right without access is a right in name only.”

We also ballot measure news out of Nevada this week, where the state Supreme Court ruled against an attack on the language of a pro-choice amendment. Anti-abortion activists had claimed that the measure violated the single subject rule because it would protect not just abortion rights, but other kinds of reproductive health care.

You may remember that this is what anti-choice groups tried to do in Ohio—they wanted Issue 1 to be split into two measures because, they claim, abortion is different than other kinds of reproductive care, like miscarriage and fertility treatment. Not only were they trying to force pro-choice activists to collect twice as many signatures, they were divorcing abortion from healthcare while they were at it.

Thankfully, the Nevada Supreme Court wasn’t hearing it. The justices wrote in their ruling that the “medical procedures considered in the initiative petition concern reproduction…to assert that they could not all be addressed together because they are separate procedures is improper.”

The Daily Montanan reports on the kick off of the ballot measure effort in the pro-choice state. While abortion is safeguarded in Montana’s state constitution, Republicans have launched a wide-scale attack regardless. The governor and Attorney General have been lobbying the state Supreme Court to repeal the protection, lawmakers have been introducing restrictions nonstop, and Republicans proposed legislation to put an end to state Supreme Court elections. Instead they wanted to allow the (very anti-abortion) governor to appoint justices. Given that two Montana Supreme Court seats are up for grabs, there’s never been a more important time to ensure abortion rights has all the protections possible.

At a kick off event this week for Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights, Dr. Sam Dickman, abortion provider and chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood of Montana, got emotional when he described working in Texas after the state’s abortion ban took effect. “I’ve seen what those abortion bans lead to, and we don’t want to see those consequences here in Montana,” he said.

Meanwhile, the bishops of the Arizona Catholic Conference are recycling anti-abortion talking points about the pro-choice ballot measure in the state, claiming that it would “remove most safeguards for girls and women…[and] [ermit a minor to obtain an abortion without parental involvement.”

In the States

Speaking of Arizona: Republicans claim they’re voting against the repeal of the 1864 abortion ban simply because they don’t want to ‘rush’ the process. House Speaker Ben Toma said, “Legislatures are not built for knee-jerk reactions.” How can something be knee-jerk if you’ve known about the law for years?

And while several Republicans joined in on the Democratic Senate effort to repeal the law (not out of the goodness of their hearts), Speaker Toma told Axios that he'll continue to block the House from voting on the bill.The New York Times also had this chilling bit of reporting from the Arizona House this week:

“At one point, most of the attendees in the balcony stood and extended their hands toward the House floor below, and prayed. “Deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power,” they declared loudly.”

Yikes! Meanwhile, abortion rights protesters also showed up, furious that Republicans wouldn’t address the issue. From 72-year-old Rolande Baker:

“Why won’t these cowards allow the vote to come to the floor? What are they afraid of, that it might just pass? That Arizona just might get ourselves out of the year 1864? Before the end of the Civil War? Before women had a right to vote?”

Arizona Sen. Eva Burch, who spoke on the statehouse floor about needing an abortion, was interviewed by Good Morning America this week—a good reminder that abortion rights are very much in the mainstream conversation.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has made clear that she won’t prosecute abortion cases, but abortion providers say they still have no plans to break the law, should the 1864 ban be enacted as expected. There’s an expectation that anti-abortion activists and district attorneys will bring lawsuits against Mayes over her decision, and I’m sure providers themselves will also be the target of suits. I also have to imagine that if abortion providers in Arizona do decide to break the law, they won’t exactly be announcing it.

Louisiana lawmakers are pushing legislation that would funnel millions of dollars to crisis pregnancy centers—funding that would be largely unregulated. The Louisiana Illuminator lays out how Rep. Jack McFarland’s legislation would increase funding to the state’s Alternatives to Abortion program from $1 million to between $3 and $5 million. Rep. McFarland is also co-sponsoring a bill with anti-abortion Democrat Sen. Katrina Jackson-Andrews that would have that money go through a nonprofit organization before it’s doled out to the crisis pregnancy centers. From Democrat Sen. Jay Luneau:

“We don’t know who [the nonprofit] is yet or what it is, and we are going to give them this money to spend? I don’t want to see all this money go to one program, and they get to pick and choose who they like.”

This is exactly how anti-abortion organizations hide the details of their funding and how it’s used. Remember this incredible video outlining how millions of dollars for North Carolina CPCs were being sent to private residences and empty lots??

As Michelle Erenberg, executive director of Lift Louisiana, says, the bill would “shroud them in even more secrecy and insulate them from any oversight by the public.”

Ohio Republicans are also proposing legislation that would direct money to anti-abortion centers. House Bill 475 would prohibit local government from giving funds to any programs that “support, promote or provide” abortions. Any counties that didn’t comply could have government funding withheld, and the supposedly-abortion-related funding would be reallocated to “pregnancy resource centers.”

Because of the broad language about ‘supporting’ and ‘promoting’ abortion, the bill would prevent money going to all sorts of groups. And law professor Jessie Hill told the Ohio Capital Journal, “Presumably a public hospital could lose all of its state funds simply for performing an emergency abortion to save a woman’s life.”

In better news, reproductive rights groups in Indiana are working to make emergency contraception more accessible via vending machines. From WFYI:

“Indiana Task FORCE, All-Options and Midwest Access Coalition partnered with Dear Mom—a local business in Indianapolis—to stock the vending machine with emergency contraception. The machine will also have other resources such as harm reduction tools and political education materials.”

More of this please!

Quick hits:

The San Francisco Chronicle on how a Trump presidency would impact abortion in California;
AED reader and OBGYN Mimi Zieman writes that Mount Everest was the riskiest place she practiced medicine…until she started working in Georgia;
Fox News is peddling in scare tactics over Maine’s abortion protection legislation (here is what it’s really about);
And The Guardian reports that Arizona abortion providers are feeling “surprisingly optimistic.”

In the Nation

The abortion rights world has been buzzing over this article reporting that major abortion rights organizations asked Democrats not to take action on the Comstock Act quite yet because of their own ongoing litigation:

“Publicly, Democrats are standing behind abortion rights groups’ arguments about being careful with the law. But privately, there’s frustration and ‘a lot of internal tension,’ one House Democrat told NOTUS, between those who believe that lawmakers should stay away from trying to repeal Comstock while litigation continues and those who see it as a potent political message to communicate to voters as soon as possible ahead of November.”

Yeah, we need to be screaming about Comstock every day, all day. What I hear from folks in the know is that legislative teams at certain repro groups have been nervous that if Democrats introduced legislation to repeal Comstock, it would interfere with their message that this is an essentially dead, ‘zombie’ law. But that argument doesn’t really hold water once you have Supreme Court justices name-checking Comstock.

Destiny Lopez and Kelly Baden of the Guttmacher Institute wrote at The Hill about how the anti-abortion movement is showing its true colors—especially in the wake of the Arizona frozen embryo decision, and as we get closer to the EMTALA case going in front of the Supreme Court. “The facade of the anti-abortion movement is cracking, despite the movement’s strenuous attempts to appear reasonable,” they say.

And Jamelle Bouie has a terrific column on what the GOP’s abortion rights strategy reveals about the party":

“[A] confident political movement does not fight to dominate; it works to persuade. It does not curate a favorable electorate or frantically burrow itself into our counter-majoritarian institutions; it competes for power on an even playing field, assured of its appeal and certain of its ability to win. It does not hide its agenda or shield its plans from public view; it believes in itself and its ideas.”

That’s exactly right. They’re showing how afraid they are every single day.

In international news, a reminder that American anti-abortion tactics get exported to other countries regularly. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s party introduced an amendment that would let anti-abortion activists into abortion clinics. They don’t say it that way obviously; taking a cue from the slippery language of our anti-choice movement, the legislation says that “non-profits with experience providing maternity support” would be allowed in clinics. Maternity support.

Quick hits:

States Newsroom on the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act;
The 19th on the danger abortion bans pose to Black families and women;
More on the study showing that young people are increasingly seeking sterilization;
Ms. magazine on why high schoolers should be thinking about abortion access in their college decisions;
And The Nation on doctors being forced to perform c-sections.

The War on Birth Control

Just a reminder that Republicans are absolutely, 100% already coming after birth control. Over at the National Review, Alexandra DeSanctis offers a less than compelling argument to the contrary, saying that everyone knows conservatives aren’t interested in banning birth control and that’s why Republicans absolutely shouldn’t support it. (Huh??) This is my favorite part:

“A half-hearted nod to the importance of accessible contraception—hardly an urgent political matter—will do nothing to repudiate any of these lies or expose progressive extremism on abortion. What Republicans need is a cogent and compassionate articulation of their party’s pro-life stance, and this precludes cheerleading for contraception.” (Emphasis mine)

Sometimes I wish I was this out of touch. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen Marsha Blackburn—a top Trump supporter—says that Griswold v. Connecticut was wrongly decided and “constitutionally unsound.” That just happens to be the ruling that legalized birth control. (Imagine that!)

Listen Up

“Landslide” looks at how abortion rights became an “explosive” partisan issue;
At The Guardian’s “Politics Weekly” podcast, Jonathan Freedland and Moira Donegan talk about why Republicans are so divided on abortion restrictions;
And “Consider This” at NPR asks if Donald Trump’s abortion stance (whatever it is this week) will help him come November.

Keep an eye out next week for Abortion, Every Day’s EMTALA explainer as the Supreme Court hears arguments in Moyle v. United States next Wednesday.