Antis Want to Do Away with Buffer Zones

11.18.24

Click to skip ahead: In Ballot Measures, Missouri Republicans want to roll back Amendment 3, and more about the dirty tricks in Nebraska. In the States, news out of Massachusetts, Montana, Ohio and more. In the Nation, the pronatalist bent of the latest mifepristone case. Anti-Abortion Strategy gets into the attacks on abortion clinic buffer zones. And after all that, I’m offering some quick hits of positivity with In Better News.

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Ballot Measures

In news that will surprise no one, Missouri Republicans are making moves to undo Amendment 3—the pro-choice ballot measure passed by voters on election day. Senate Majority Leader Tony Luetkemeyer says the state GOP plays to try to “pull back” on some of the more “radical” parts of the amendment.

Luetkemeyer defended the move by claiming that Amendment 3 “passed very narrowly,” and that it failed in most counties:

“It was largely pulled across the finish line by our major Democratic strongholds in the state, whether that be St. Louis, Kansas City, Columbia, but outside of those two metro areas and Columbia, it failed in most of the state.”

Does he think that votes in certain cities are worth less than others? Just because a measure won thanks to Democrats doesn’t make it any less what voters want!

Luetkemeyer’s comments come at the same time that Catholic leaders say they expect to see legislation to override the will of Missouri voters. Jamie Morris, executive director of the Missouri Catholic Conference (MCC) said he believes Republicans will “protect against some of the harms that Amendment 3 poses,” and that he hopes “we will see legislation proposed to chip away at or potentially repeal Amendment 3.”

You can be sure that Republicans are in conversation with anti-abortion groups about how to make all this happen; so I’ll keep you updated as I find out specifics.

Meanwhile, we’re getting more information from activists in Nebraska about just how much trickery was involved in passing an anti-abortion ballot measure. Remember, voters had two abortion-related measures in front of them—one that would protect abortion rights, and one that would codify Nebraska’s 12-week ban into the state constitution. The latter passed largely because anti-abortion activists tricked voters into thinking the measure was pro-choice.

Shelley Mann, Executive Director of the abortion fund Nebraska Abortion Resources (NEAR), details at Prism all the different ways conservatives successfully sowed confusion and disinformation:

“They co-opted our language, our logo, and our fonts; they strategically used phrases like ‘reproductive rights are human rights.’ Petitioners were even caught directly lying to voters by telling them that signing the anti-abortion petition would protect their right to access abortion…Hundreds of voters came forward to have their names removed from the ‘wrong’ petition, but it was too late. Ads ran on every platform throughout the campaign phase, claiming that voting against the viability measure would protect Nebraskans from government interference in abortion care. This was gaslighting on a massive scale, and it succeeded.”

Mann also points out something vital: “What happened in Nebraska will soon be replicated in other states.”

This is exactly right, and something I’ve warned about myself. After all, there’s a reason that anti-abortion groups spent nearly as much money in Nebraska as they did in Florida: They were treating the state as testing ground to see just how well pretending to be pro-choice would work out for them.

I’ll publish a column this week about the different ways we can expect to see this strategy in action, but in the meantime read Abortion, Every Day’s past coverage of the tactic below:

Republicans' Fake Ballot Measures

In the States

The anti-abortion “Men’s March” showed up in Boston, Massachusetts this weekend, reminding all of us that “your body, my choice” isn’t just an online rallying cry—but a belief system. The only good thing about this march is that for the past few years, they’re accompanied by a very special counter-protest: the Clown March. These are activists wearing clown costumes and playing circus music to remind everyone what a fucking joke these men are.

Pro-choice activist Zoe Weiss told WBUR, "We're here to make a mockery of these men who are in their suits and ties walking down the street, telling women what they should do with their bodies, as though they should have any choice in the matter.”

It wasn’t all wigs and red noses this year, though; over a dozen people were arrested after police clashed with protesters. It appears that the majority of those arrested were pro-choice activists. (If any AED readers were there, I’d love to hear about what you saw.)

Some good news today: A judge has temporarily blocked new licensing requirements for Montana abortion clinics while the broader legal case plays out. Republicans put the new rules in place with the goal of shutting down clinics in the state. They’re similar to other kinds of onerous TRAP laws that we’ve seen elsewhere—like those requiring that clinics be constructed as ambulatory or outpatient surgical centers.

But the county judge found that the requirements likely violate patients’ rights to equal protection, and pointed out that they treat abortion providers differently than other health care providers who perform the same procedures. (Doctors treating miscarriages, for example, aren’t required to adhere to the same standards.)

Montana Republicans have been trying to pass all sorts of abortion restrictions since Roe was overturned, even though abortion has been protected in the state constitution since 1999. Voters in the state also enshrined that 1999 state Supreme Court ruling in a ballot measure on election day.

Ohio Republicans are pushing a bill to punish local towns and cities that help low-income abortion patients by funding logistical costs like childcare or transportation. House Bill 475 would even take that funding and reallocate it towards anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers!

I honestly don’t see how this legislation withstands legal scrutiny. Because remember, Ohio passed a ballot measure last year protecting abortion rights in the state constitution. And as Jaime Miracle with Abortion Forward noted, that protection includes a prohibition on the state penalizing “either an individual’s voluntary exercise of this right or a person or entity that assists the individual exercising this right.”

But as we know, Republicans will try anything to overrule the will of the people.

Finally, pro-choice states are understandably worried about what a Trump presidency will mean for abortion rights. Here’s some local coverage about how Democrats and abortion rights activists are thinking about the issue in Oregon, California, and Minnesota.

Quick hits:

• Mother Jones has more on the move by Texas Republicans to make abortion medication a controlled substance;

• The ACLU wants to expand their legal challenge against Kentucky’s abortion ban into a class action suit;

• NBC News on the North Carolina Republican who told a constituent to “move to China” if she didn’t like the state’s abortion ban;

• And some New Jersey Democrats want to codify abortion rights in the state constitution.

“People kind of think that abortion access can be like a light switch, like you flip it up because the law allows you to provide abortion care, and suddenly there’s all of these clinics and providers who are able to provide care. You flip it down when abortion is restricted, and those providers are able to just pause but not go anywhere. That’s just not the case. What we see fairly frequently when there is a change in abortion law is that it just takes a bit of time, if ever, for that infrastructure to be built back up.”

- Kimya Forouzan of the Guttmacher Institute, on why ballot measure wins won’t restore abortion access overnight

In the Nation

States Newsroom points out today that the states that lost federal family planning dollars over their anti-abortion extremism may be able to get it back under the new Trump administration. (In fact, I’d say it’s a near-certainty.)

A refresher: States like Tennessee and Oklahoma lost millions in Title X funding due to a simple requirement—federally-funded health centers had to inform patients that abortion is an option in other states. In fact, the centers wouldn’t even need to give people details! The Department of Health and Human Services only required them to share a national hotline with information on abortion and other pregnancy options—and even then, only if a patient asked. What’s more, those with religious objections could opt-out.

Still, Republican leaders in these states chose to throw away contraception access for low-income residents rather than lose a political fight.

But with Trump in office, his administration could reverse that rule and restore the millions in funding to anti-abortion states that don’t give a shit about women’s health. There’s also concern over Title X funding more broadly because Project 2025 calls for gutting the federal family planning program and diverting the dollars to anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers.

Something else to flag in post-election nightmare news: Most of the coverage around Donald Trump’s nominations have focused on Matt Gaetz and RFK Jr. Reasonably so, because they’re terrifying. But we can’t let appointment madness overshadow the fact that Trump announced Karoline Leavitt will be the White House press secretary.

This is a woman who parrots the disgraced former president’s lies without blinking. It wasn’t so long ago, for example, that Leavitt repeated Trump’s ‘post-birth’ abortion bullshit—claiming that Democrats support “abortion up until birth and even after birth, and forcing taxpayers to fund it.”

Linda Greenhouse at The New York Times wrote today about the “astonishing” legal challenge against mifepristone brought by the Attorneys General of Idaho, Kansas and Missouri. Specifically, she focuses on the argument that abortion medication causes “a loss in potential population or potential population increase,” and that “decreased births” constitute an injury to the states:

“So now we find ourselves in a new pronatalist moment when the top lawyers of three states feel free to call openly on the federal courts for help in making women have more babies.”

Whew. You may remember this suit because Abortion, Every Day broke the news about it last month. If you didn’t read the breakdown I wrote at the time, you should—it is truly bananas.

Quick hits:

• Ms. magazine on the college students fighting for abortion access on campus;

• The Markup breaks down how to protect your privacy if you’re seeking an abortion;

• And Jia Tolentino writes at The New Yorker about the young men telling women online and off, “your body, my choice.”

Anti-Abortion Strategy

The Supreme Court is set to decide this week whether or not to hear a legal challenge against abortion clinic buffer zones—a case that could determine whether or not anti-abortion protesters are allowed to harass and intimidate patients up close and personal.

For those who need a reminder: Buffer zones are rules that keep anti-abortion protestors a certain number of feet away from clinic property in order to protect patients and staff from harassment and violence. But anti-abortion activists claim that they have a First Amendment right to get up in patients’ faces.

They’ve launched multiple lawsuits across the country in the hopes of getting SCOTUS to overturn Hill v. Colorado, which determined that limiting harassment in front of a clinic isn’t a free speech violation. The case we’ll hear about this week is one I told you about last month: A group of anti-abortion activists, represented by the powerful Thomas More Society, are suing Carbondale, Illinois over its buffer zone.

St. Louis Public Radio has a good breakdown of how this all came to be, but the short version is that Carbondale is a border town close to anti-abortion states like Tennessee; it’s become a vital abortion access hub for those in the South. Unfortunately, it’s also become a hub for anti-abortion harassment and protests. In the months after Roe was overturned, anti-choice activists showed up and were aggressive, used a ladder to peek into the clinics over a security fence, and even told patients that they were clinic staff in a effort to reroute them elsewhere.

Understandably, the city council made it illegal to come within 8 feet of a person within a 100-foot radius around an abortion clinic. Then came the lawsuit. Anti-abortion protestors insist that they’re peaceful (they’re not) and that they need to get close enough to “make eye contact” with women in order to effectively change their minds about abortion.

In other words, they want to have a constitutional right to harass women. If SCOTUS decides to take up the case, there would be massive national implications. Anti-abortion violence has already been on the rise since Roe was overturned—imagine what would happen if there were zero buffer zones outside of clinics?

What’s more, this is part of a broader strategy outlined in Project 2025: In addition to doing away with buffer zones, conservatives want to repeal the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act—which makes the obstruction of abortion clinics and violence against them a federal crime.

The hope is to allow people to harass and attack abortion patients and clinic staff with impunity and without consequence.

In Better News

• Amanda Zurwaski, the Texas woman who sued the state after nearly dying of sepsis, isn’t ruling out a run for public office;

• Michigan is giving out free contraception as part of the state’s Take Control of Your Birth Control program;

• Salon on how Maryland is training more abortion providers;

• And Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body and one of the most brilliant reproductive rights thinkers in the country, gave a lecture at Harvard Law School that you can watch online: