Abortion, Every Day (4.25.24)

Idaho AG says doctors are lying about airlifting women out-of-state

Click to skip head: In Anti-Abortion Strategy, Idaho’s AG says doctors are lying about women being flown out of the state. In the States, more on the repeal of Arizona’s 1864 ban and what happens next. In Media Muck-Ups, the AP doesn’t tell the full story on Tennessee’s travel ban. In the Nation, responses to the EMTALA Supreme Court case. Finally, in Stats & Studies, reports on women being denied emergency care, drive time to abortion clinics and more.

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Anti-Abortion Strategy: Blame Doctors

Since Roe was overturned, we’ve all read the horror stories coming out of anti-abortion states. They’re awful and terrifying. And while I’ve seen some seriously callous reactions from Republicans over the last two years, this one from Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador may take the cake.

At a press conference after yesterday’s Supreme Court arguments, Labrador said that the doctors who recounted airlifting patients out of state were lying, and that they were trying to make a “political statement.” First reported by Nicole Blanchard at the Idaho Statesman, you can watch Labrador’s comments here at CSPAN:

“I think you heard during the argument, there were all these issues about people being airlifted, women being airlifted out of Idaho. What’s telling is that they never said that under oath. They’re going to the press and they’re making all these statements that are clearly misinformation…they’re trying to scare people. It’s really hard for me to conceive of a single instance where a woman has to be airlifted out of Idaho to perform an abortion.”

Labrador also said that he spoke to doctors at these hospitals, and that they told him no patients were airlifted. “I would hate to think that St. Luke’s or any other hospital is trying to do something like this just to make a political statement, which I think is actually dangerous to the health and life of women in Idaho,” Labrador said.

What a total piece of shit. That said, we saw this coming. Back in 2022, I predicted that conservatives’ strategy for abortion ban deaths would be to blame doctors—I tracked how anti-abortion groups and lawmakers had already started to preemptively message around that point, claiming that hospitals and providers didn’t give the standard of care or didn’t understand the law.

More recently, I’ve started to flag how anti-choice politicians are ramping up that blame, falsely claiming that doctors are putting their patients’ lives at risk in order to make a political point. In Tennessee, for example, Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti says that it’s not the state’s ban harming women, but “other factors like doctors’ independent choices not to provide permissible abortions.”

We can’t let lies like this go unchecked.

Related: If you watch Labrador’s press conference, you may catch another phrase that I’ve been warning about; he says the state’s ban is “the will of the people.”

In the States

After weeks of national backlash, the Arizona House voted yesterday to repeal the state’s 1864 abortion ban. The repeal legislation will now go to the Senate, where it’s expected to pass. The vote is the result of a political pressure campaign from national GOP leaders, including with Donald Trump, who are desperate to calm voters’ post-Roe ire.

Gov. Katie Hobbs will sign the repeal, noting that the urgency and high stakes are more important than the politics of the vote:

“Whether [Republicans are] doing it because they’re being politically calculating or because they believe it’s the right thing to do, they just need to get it done. They just need to pass it and get it to my desk, and I’ll sign it.”

CNN points out that even if the repeal is successful and Hobbs signs, the 1864 ban might be enforceable for a brief amount of time because nonemergency bills don’t take effect for 90 days after the legislature adjourns.

The three Republicans who voted with Democrats—Reps. Tim Dunn of Yuma, Justin Wilmeth, and Rep. Matt Gress—were the target of some significant anger from their colleagues yesterday. Republican Rep. Rachel Jones said she was “disgusted,” and that “life is one of the tenets of our Republican platform.”

Anti-abortion groups in the state also joined in. Debi Vandenboom of Arizona Women of Action, said, “It is always unfortunate when politicians who claim to be pro-life are willing to betray women and children when it seems politically expedient to do so.”

House Speaker Ben Toma was so mad about the vote, the Arizona Mirror reports, that he removed Rep. Gress from the House Appropriations Committee. When asked why, Toma said, “‘Cause I’ve decided so.” Mature!

If the repeal goes through, Arizona’s 15-week ban will go back into effect. And as I outlined earlier this week, Republicans have a plan to introduced a fake ‘pro-choice’ amendment of their own to siphon votes from the actual abortion rights amendment in the state.

While California Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed emergency legislation that would allow Arizona abortion providers to practice in his state, Democrats in Arizona hope it won’t be necessary. State Sen. Eva Burch, who spoke on the statehouse floor about needing an abortion for a nonviable pregnancy, says, “It’s unreasonable for us to expect patients to have to travel out of state for this kind of care.”

Speaking of California, did you know that some schools in the state are being taught sex-ed by crisis pregnancy centers? The Sacramento Bee reports that state Attorney General Rob Bonta sent a letter to the Modesto Pregnancy Center, asking them to show proof that they’re offering accurate and unbiased sex education to the Modesto City Schools District.

This comes at the same time that a California Republican, Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, wants to mandate that anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers are part of the sex ed curricula. Ochoa Bogh claims that the biased, religiously-based centers are helping to fill the healthcare provider gap. (Never mind that most of the time these places have zero actual healthcare providers!) The Republican claims that her legislation “simply brings into parity the resources offered to students, giving them information on both Planned Parenthood and licensed pregnancy centers.”

But there shouldn’t be ideological parity when it comes to children’s health and wellbeing! There should only be the truth.

Quick hits:

• The Orlando Sentinel reports that Florida abortion providers are hurriedly seeing as many patients as possible before the state’s 6-week ban goes into effect;

• Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin tried to play off the fact that he vetoed legislation that would ensure the right to contraception;

• The Conversation looks at what Arizona was like for women in 1864;

• And a columnist at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel responds to Vice President Kamala Harris’ Wisconsin speech.

Media Muck-Ups

It’s articles like this that remind me why I publish Abortion, Every Day. The Associated Press has a roundup of abortion rights news from this week, including this Tennessee bill headed to the governor’s desk.

The legislation will make it illegal to help a teen get an abortion in any way—whether it’s lending them gas money to leave the state or telling them about an abortion clinic. But the AP adopts false Republican rhetoric about the soon-to-be law, reporting that it would only ban “taking a minor out of the state without parental consent to obtain an abortion.”

That’s just not true! And while the AP notes that a similar law in Idaho was blocked because of a legal challenge, they don’t mention the reason it was blocked: It was found to violate free speech rights because of how broadly the law was written. (Like Tennessee’s law, it criminalizes even giving a teen information about abortion.)

Republicans are deliberately hiding just how extremist their laws are in order to trick voters. And when publications don’t cover the full truth of these policies, they’re helping them do it.

“The fear, the pain, the disbelief that we’re losing our daughter. I couldn’t believe that all of this was happening. They told me that it was too politically heated in this environment right now to give me my health care.”

~ Mylissa Farmer, who was denied a health- and life-saving abortion in Missouri. When Farmer called her local representative for help, he gave her the information for a crisis pregnancy center.

In the Nation

If you missed Abortion, Every Day’s coverage on the EMTALA case before the Supreme Court yesterday, you can check it out here. (And if you want to know how pissed off I am about it, you can watch my TikToks.)

For some takeaways, check out CNN, which gets into how the female justices grilled Idaho attorney Josh Turner about pregnancy complications. MSNBC looks at how Justice Samuel Alito brought up fetal personhood. PBS Newshour analyzes an exchange between Turner and Justice Sonia Sotomayor. And The New York Times features key moments, including the debate over mental health.

Meanwhile, NBC News says the Court “seems to be” siding with the Biden Administration, while The Economist believes SCOTUS will rule in favor of Idaho. SCOTUSblog, however, says the judges are “divided.” And while some of the conservative justices asked Turner pointed questions, as POLITICO notes, it’s “far from clear” whether any will vote with the liberal justices.

The best thing you can read after watching yesterday’s EMTALA shit-show is this column from Moira Donegan at The Guardian:

“But what is really at stake is not the Emtala law—which, like all federal laws, is now subject to the distortion or selective nullification of the court, according to the conservative majority’s whims. What was really at stake was the status of American women, who now have to beg before the courts not to face legally enforced medical negligence that will kill and maim them.”

Speaking of the absolute humiliation that comes along with watching your humanity be debated as if it’s a bullet point on a legal brief: there was something about this headline that sent me over the edge. The Supreme Court was literally hearing arguments about whether or not states have the right to deny women life-saving care, and for some reason Yahoo thought it would be a good idea to cover alongside a “Masked Singer reveal.” That’s how little we rate.

Law professor Mary Ziegler writes at Slate that while ballot measure votes are important for abortion rights, Americans can’t forget about judicial elections. After all, it was the Arizona Supreme Court that allowed the 1864 ban; and it was Florida’s Supreme Court that enacted the state’s 6-week ban:

“It is state judges who will decide whether to narrow or eviscerate state protections. And it is voters who will decide whether judges will be accountable for unpopular decisions.”

Finally, I had a great time chatting with Jason Sattler at his podcast—if you want to hear our conversation about abortion rights, you can listen in here.

Quick hits:

• Bloomberg Law, USA Today, and Reuters with more on the new expanded HIPAA rule;

• IndieWire on how television depictions of abortion have changed over the years;

• The Conversation on contraception misinformation on TikTok and Instagram;

• And The New Republic on how religious freedom arguments are helping abortion rights.

2024

A new survey shows that abortion is Americans’ third most important issue as they head to the polls this November. The report, from the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab, also shows that among women voters, abortion is the second most important issue.

Another new poll, this one from POLITICO, shows that 6 in 10 independent voters are unhappy that Roe was overturned—as are nearly 4 in 10 Republican voters. Given that most voters still believe Congressional Republicans are responsible for the end of Roe, it’s good that President Joe Biden keeps reminding Americans that Donald Trump did this. He should probably do it more.

POLITICO also reports that Trump’s ‘abortion announcement’ claiming he believes the issue should be left to the states is likely a smart one: half of voters want states to make their own abortion laws, and conservative voters were even more likely to support the idea once they heard it was Trump’s position.

Stats & Studies

If you missed this report on women being denied emergency care in anti-abortion states, please make sure to read and share it. Given the EMTALA case in front of the Supreme Court, it’s more important than ever.

In Texas, for example, a man had to call 911 from an emergency room bathroom because the hospital refused to check in his miscarrying wife: “She is bleeding a lot…I’m here at the hospital but they told us they can’t help us because we are not their client.”

Heath law and policy professor Sara Rosenbaum tells the Associated Press that pregnant patients are “radioactive to emergency departments” in states with abortion bans. “They are so scared of a pregnant patient, that the emergency medicine staff won’t even look. They just want these people gone,” she said.

Related: STAT News found that hospitals are largely unwilling to talk about the their ability to provide maternal care post-Roe, fearing legal and financial repercussions.

New data from the Center for American Progress shows that people who are driving the longest distances to get abortion care are more likely to have lower incomes. The data also shows that people living in districts with Republican representatives have travel times more than twice as long as those in districts with Democratic representatives.

It’s not surprising, but horrific nonetheless. Megan Jeyifo, executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund, tells Salon that these kinds of barriers to care aren’t just logistically difficult, but emotionally traumatizing:

“People 100 percent internalize the difficulty that they face in accessing care, and can view it as a reflection of the morality of that care. I think part of our job as abortion funds is to say ‘It is not your fault this is hard. This is hard by design because politicians want us to not have control over our own bodies, and how we start or grow our families.’”

Finally, you may remember the study I flagged last week showing that the number of young people seeking sterilization spiked after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. This week, States Newsroom points out something super important about that research: twice as many women as men sought out sterilization. While tubal ligation increased at a rate of 58 procedures per 100,000 visits, vasectomies among men increased at a rate of 27. Lead author Jacqueline Ellison told States Newsroom she wasn’t surprised by the stark difference: “Women are primarily responsible for controlling fertility.”