Abortion, Every Day (10.23.23)
Republicans' new name for emergency contraception? "Morning-after abortion"
In the States, anti-abortion activists gear up for a new ballot measure fight in Missouri. In the Nation, how Republicans’ war on PEPFAR is hurting the global health community. A Mississippi Republican calls emergency contraception “morning-after abortion” in The GOP’s War on Birth Control. In Stats & Studies, hospital websites are burying information on abortion care. Ohio medical students speak out against Issue 1 in The Care Crisis, making clear that they’ll leave the state if an abortion ban passes.
In the States
Just a reminder that today’s Ohio news went out in a separate special edition newsletter a few hours ago. You can find it here:
But what’s happening in Ohio isn’t limited to the state: conservatives are exporting the lessons they’ve learned there to the other states fighting to pass pro-choice ballot measures. And the anti-abortion groups who have been leading the charge in Ohio have set their sights on their next big battleground state: Missouri.
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, who has spent more than $6 million to defeat Ohio’s pro-choice amendment, is now partnering with with the four Catholic dioceses of Missouri and other anti-abortion groups to fight against a pro-choice ballot measure. A representative from SBA Pro-Life America spoke to anti-abortion activists in Missouri recently about what kind of tactics they should use—and what she said speaks volumes.
Susan Liebel told the audience at the Respect Life Conference, “We cannot assume that we’re going to have enough pro-life voters to vote ‘no’.” Essentially, these groups know that voters don’t want abortion to be banned, so they want to keep the measure from getting to voters to begin with. (Remember when a Missouri anti-abortion activist was caught on tape admitting exactly how they’re working with Republicans to keep voters from the measure? I sure do!)
Liebel told the anti-abortion audience that they should be urging people to “decline to sign” the petition that would get the measure in front of voters, and that the priority should be stopping the amendment rather than defending their position. “Right now is not the time to win hearts and minds,” she said.
It’s just another reminder that Republicans and anti-abortion groups do not care what voters and their communities want.
More in ballot measure news: In Florida, a pro-choice amendment is being held up because the state Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on a challenge to the 15-week abortion ban yet. The measure needs a cost estimate in order to move forward, but the people in charge of putting that together say that it’s impossible to do so without knowing the Court’s ruling. Vince Aldridge, staff director for the House Ways and Means Committee and one of the four people putting together the estimate, said, “The 15-week [ban] might be current law today, but we don’t know where the law would be at the time the voters vote on this.”
It’s worth mentioning that Missouri’s pro-choice ballot measure was held up for months over the cost estimate—the state Attorney General claimed the amendment would cost the state billions, and had to be forced by the state Supreme Court to stop stalling the measure and to move forward with a real estimate.
Really frustrating and shitty news out of Colorado today: Over the weekend, a federal judge blocked the state’s ban on ‘abortion reversal’. U.S. district court judge Daniel Domenico—a Trump appointee who has blocked the law before—ruled that the law infringes on the first amendment rights of the anti-abortion center that challenged the ban, and that the regulations “burdens religious exercise.” The good news is that the injunction is temporary as the law gets battled out in court. The bad news is that it could take years.
Abortion is still center stage in the Virginia election, with candidates at all levels focusing on the issue. For the most part, Republicans have been lying about their extremism. But Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Scott Parkinson, let it slip on a radio show last week that he would support a national abortion ban.
Meanwhile, two recent polls show that Virginians don’t want to make abortion laws stricter. A poll earlier this month showed that 72% of voters in Virginia don’t want any further abortion restrictions, with 54% opposing Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s ban, specifically. A poll from The Washington Post/Schar School shows similar numbers—with 49% of voters wanting the law to stay the same, and 24% wanting abortion restrictions loosened. Sixty percent of voters also say that abortion is “very important,” up 14 percent since 2019.
And if you want to know how important women voters are this election, consider this: 70% of women rated abortion as a very important issue to their vote, up from 47% in 2019.
The News & Observer in North Carolina has a vital piece on state funding for religious organizations—including the nearly 20 million that goes to anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. Remember, the money going to these groups is notoriously hard to track (by design), and in North Carolina that funding is literally being sent to people’s private homes and empty store-fronts. (If you missed this video of state Sen. Natasha Marcus breaking it down, it’s an absolute must-watch.)
One of the thing that’s been striking (but not surprising) since Roe was overturned, is how important abortion rights has become in red state elections. Abortion is a major focus in Kentucky politics, for example, with the gubernatorial candidates attacking each other over their position on the issue. And in Tennessee, more and more women are running for office because of their fury over the state’s abortion ban—which is one of the strictest in the nation.
Meanwhile, two more areas of Texas are set to vote on whether to pass anti-abortion ordinances that would restrict travel for out-of-state abortion care. Lubbock County officials are voting on the rule today, and the Amarillo City Council will meet on the mandate tomorrow. I can’t believe that we’re talking about Republicans trying to trap women in their anti-choice states just a year out from Dobbs—but somehow, I’m not at all surprised, either.
Quick hits:
Connecticut Planned Parenthood clinics have seen a 59% increase in out-of-state abortion patients since Roe was overturned;
A reminder from Michigan that it’s still difficult to access abortion in pro-choice states;
A Florida judge denied an anti-abortion group’s request to remove a Clearwater clinics’ buffer zone while their legal challenge against it moves forward;
And Rolling Stone reports that TikTok billionaire and libertarian megadonor Jeff Yass is pouring millions into anti-abortion Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania races.
In the Nation
Yet another casualty from the chaos over the House speakership race and the looming government shutdown? The future funding of PEPFAR, the highly successful global AIDS program. It’s almost been a month since the funding provisions expired for PEPFAR—and its reputation among the international community has already dimmed as a result of Republicans’ abortion-related attacks on the program’s funding.
As you may recall, anti-abortion Republicans have been working to block PEPFAR funding reauthorization over allegations that its money is going towards abortions (which is not only false, but illegal). The Heritage Foundation, along with Family Research Council and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, are threatening lawmakers over the program—saying that if they vote to reauthorize, they’ll be docked on the organizations’ scorecards (an important part of anti-abortion politicians’ reelection campaigns).
Although House Republicans passed a one-year extension of the PEPFAR’s authorization, it wasn’t part of the stopgap deal that funded the government into November. This means that the future of the program could be pushed into the annual appropriations process, which would open it up every year to amendments that could further jeopardize PEPFAR and make it even more vulnerable to right-wing politicians trying to strong-arm the program.
HIV and AIDS advocates worry that further politicization of PEPFAR could gut its trust within the global health community and diminish its successes abroad. And abortion rights advocates question if this framing pushes the conversation around abortion further to the right: energy is being spent on defending how these funds are not being used to fund abortions, instead of interrogating why there’s a distinction in the first place.
More global politics news: Last week in Geneva the UN’s Human Rights Committee grilled the U.S. over the post-Roe state of abortion rights. The committee asked U.S. delegates about future Biden administration plans to ensure a national right to abortion, including questions about federal courts, state courts and the rights of pregnant workers.
The United Nation’s Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) released a statement in honor of the International Day of the Girl Child—saying that the most important factor for the well-being and development of young girls is abortion. They argued that unless girls have access to abortion, any discussion on any other rights is moot. They singled out the U.S. in their statement:
“Hampering girls’ access to safe termination of unwanted pregnancies conflicts with States’ obligations to guarantee the rights of girls to equality, autonomy, privacy, and reproductive freedom, the fundamental right to safeguards from hazardous health situations, as well as their freedom from gender-based violence and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
Quick hits:
Vox on how the states battling over abortion will shape 2024;
Ballotpedia has a piece looking at the history of abortion-related ballot measures in different states;
And more on the celebrities who’ve publicly shared their abortion stories.
The GOP’s War on Birth Control
Remember my piece on how Republicans are trying to redefine birth control as abortion in order to ban it? Well, a Mississippi Republican just made my point for me.
Earlier this month, the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus announced that they’d be filing a bill in January to protect the right to birth control. Today, the Mississippi Free Press reports that state Sen. Joey Fillingane—who wrote the state’s abortion ban—is preemptively opposing the legislation, claiming that it will legalize “morning-after abortions”:
“I think this is, again, a very cynical ploy on behalf of very woke Democrats across the country now trying to infiltrate here into Mississippi saying that our very strict law—they’re looking for exceptions, they’re looking for expansions of how to get around it, an end-run around, if you will, to allow morning after abortions.”
Obviously, there is no such thing as a “morning-after abortion.” Fillingane is presumably referring to emergency contraception, which would be protected in the bill that Democrats plan to introduce.
This is exactly the kind of bullshit I was warning about in my piece, and what we can expect to see a lot more of. They’re going to whittle away at our right to birth control bit by bit—and redefining it is just the the beginning.
Stats & Studies
Yet another example of how restricting abortion isn’t just about legislation: A new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine shows that 80% of hospital websites don’t list abortion care as available procedures within their systems despite their actual policies on abortion.
The study, led by researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine, not only found that the vast majority of hospital sites didn’t include information about abortion—but that when they did, it was buried.
For example, when hospital websites mentioned the fact that they provide abortion care, it was often listed lower in their search engine results than information information about colonoscopies. Researchers also found that sites described abortion services only 6.3% of the time, but for colonoscopies it was 85.6%.
This is just one of the many ways abortion care gets stigmatized and made distinct from other kinds of healthcare. And, of course, in a time when abortion care is harder-to-get than ever, it’s vital that hospitals are giving patients the most accurate and helpful information possible.
In related news, The New York Times has a big piece today on the role that hospitals are playing in abortion care post-Roe. As we’ve reported here before, for example, hospitals in pro-choice states like Illinois are seeing more out-of-state abortion patients than ever who have complicated health conditions or dangerous pregnancies—women who were unable to get care at home.
Dr. Jonah Fleisher, an OBGYN who provides abortions in a Chicago hospital, said, “I know that a certain number of my patients—if they are unable to access abortion—are not going to survive their pregnancy.”
The piece is worth a read, especially its focus on the new (really impressive) program for patients who need hospital-based abortion care—Complex Abortion Regional Line for Access (CARLA).
Quick hits:
The 19th on a new study showing that abortion rights top the list of issues that queer women care about;
Researchers at Washington State University found that over 40% of women and girls of reproductive age have to drive more than 30 minutes to access an abortion provider;
And more on the study showing that 28% of large American companies have limited or zero abortion coverage for employees.
The Care Crisis
I should have included this in today’s Ohio email, but hopefully you’ll forgive me. ;)
Every state with an abortion ban has seen an exodus of OBGYNs—with hospitals shuttering maternity wards and reproductive and maternal health deserts rapidly expanding as a result. Now, with the future of abortion rights in Ohio at stake, medical students are making clear that they’ll leave the state if Issue 1 fails and an abortion ban is enacted.
In a letter to the Ohio Capital Journal last week, more than 500 students signed onto a letter urging voters to support Issue 1 and protect abortion rights:
“Let us be clear: if an abortion ban goes into effect in Ohio, we may not be able to continue to practice in this state. Abortion bans endanger patients. Many of us have taken, or will take, the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm to our patients. The patient-provider relationship is sacred and built on trust. Should an abortion ban go into effect, we will be unable to live up to the very promise that is the basis for our work as health professionals.”
Ohio Capital Journal reporter Marty Schladen also points out that when third year medical students the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine were asked last week whether the failure of Issue 1 would lead them to leave the state, most said yes.
The news in the NYT this morning (10/25) is that abortion has gone up in the U.S. since Dobbs. If the goal of abortion bans is to actually reduce the number of abortions, they are not working. Instead they are making it more difficult for pregnant women to get care, forcing many to travel out of state. "new bans and restrictions have had far-reaching effects. Many women, especially in the South, have turned to methods outside the U.S. medical system or carried their pregnancies to term, researchers said. These women are likely to be poor, teenagers or immigrants and to have young children or jobs that don't give them time off."
Whoops! the work you are doing