This weekend marked the 10th anniversary of the death of Savita Halappanavar, the 31 year-old dentist who died in Ireland after being denied an abortion. Thinking about her quite a lot today.
In the states…
This one is going to really piss you off: When asked about Ohio’s abortion ban and the risk it poses to women, Republican state rep Bill Dean told the Dayton Daily News that “there’s no great risk of dying from pregnancy.” When taken to task over the comments by his Democratic opponent, Rep. Dean doubled down:
“Pregnancy is a natural thing that women are made for. That’s the way God made them. The myth is that it is dangerous; it’s no more dangerous than living every day. I’m not a physician. But I would imagine, a lot of times, it’s the lifestyle of the lady that’s having the pregnancy. We also have the most obese people in the whole world. It’s just individual cases.”
Don’t know what else to say besides, fuck this guy.
An anti-abortion group in Kansas is urging voters to oust five state supreme court justices after they ruled that abortion was a fundamental right in the state constitution.
In Iowa, a district court judge will soon decide whether a blocked state ban will go into effect. Legal Director ACLU of Iowa says, “This is a draconian and inhumane law that bans abortion at the earliest stages before many people know that they are pregnant.”
And Democrats in Michigan are nervous that abortion won’t be enough to bring home the midterms, so they’re pointing out that a vote for abortion rights is a vote for the economy—and that abortion bans are bad for business. From Rep. Elissa Slotkin:
“Are we going to be an open-minded state that believes in equality and rights? Or are we going to be a backwards-looking state? Businesses don’t like backward-looking states. That doesn’t help them attract young people. That doesn’t incentivize kids who go to U of M for four years to stay in the state when they graduate.”
The Detroit Free Press reports that more than $42 million has been spent on the fight over Michigan’s ballot measure, and The Guardian’s coverage of the campaigning (and how even Republicans are pissed about abortion bans) has given me some hope.
Meanwhile, abortion rights activists and providers in the state are doing their best to mobilize voters ahead of the midterms. OBGYN Dr. Audrey Stryker says, “This is literally the most important election of my life.” And Amanda Mazur, a volunteer with the campaign to get abortion rights enshrined in the state constitution, says, “No other issue has had a greater impact on my life and the life of my family.” Mazur had to end a wanted pregnancy at 20 weeks after a tragic diagnosis:
“I might not be here today if I wasn’t able to access safe legal abortion care, and I have a 3-year-old who wouldn’t be here had I not been able to safely and compassionately end the pregnancy.”
Wisconsin activists are also trying to get out the vote; one Planned Parenthood organizer in the state calls it “the most important thing that we can do at this point in Wisconsin.” She also notes that the turnout and interest in abortion rights since Roe was overturned as been heartening: “I was very shocked by just the sheer response that people had in this area.” Keeping my fingers crossed.
Republican Bob Stefanowski, running for governor in Connecticut, says he “misspoke” in a debate last week when he said that “abortion should be limited to the first trimester.” Stefanowski insisted that voters in the state don’t need to worry that he would limit abortion rights despite the words that came out of his fucking mouth.
Leaders at the First Unitarian Church in Utah wrote an op-ed at The Salt Lake Tribune in support of abortion rights, making plain that they “do not believe in a god that would punish women with pregnancy and childbirth.”:
“We believe that access to all needed reproductive health care is necessary to respect the inherent worth and dignity of persons who can become pregnant and to respect equity in human relations. If individuals are forced to give birth against their will, their ability to participate in public and political life as equals will be severely limited.”
Also in Utah, a woman has come forward to speak out against her own sister’s anti-abortion bill, sharing her story of being sexually assaulted and how her sister’s legislation would hurt rape victims.
California leaders are fighting back against false Republican claims that the ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution would legalize ending a pregnancy until the moment before birth (I am so tired of this); NPR looks at abortion rights activists in Kentucky; Texas Monthly has a great piece on candidate for Attorney General Rochelle Garza; and North Dakota Republicans say they’re trying to ‘fix’ their anti-abortion legislation that could put women’s lives at risk (they’re not really).
In the nation…
Since Roe was overturned, at least 10,000 people weren’t able to get the legal abortions they wanted. The data, which comes from #WeCount, a research project from the Society of Family Planning, doesn’t account for abortions that women may have procured on their own without a doctor’s help. The anti-abortion movement will paint this as a win, but less abortions isn’t a good thing (despite what the old ‘safe, legal and rare’ adage says). We know that when women are denied abortions, they’re more likely to live in poverty and stay in an abusive relationship, for example. This is thousands of people who needed care and didn’t get it.
Vice President Kamala Harris had a conversation about abortion rights with actress Sophia Bush at Bryn Mawr, where she hit the nail on the head: “There's another issue that is very much at play here that I think has to also be spoken, which is the long-standing judgment associated with women's sexuality.”
An anonymous spokesperson from the FDA says that the agency is concerned about doctors who are providing advance provision of abortion medication—where doctors prescribe the pills as a preemptive measure in case someone should need it (especially when they live in an anti-abortion state). But the agency’s policy is at odds with what doctors recommend: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists wants the FDA to remove all restrictions on mifepristone, and Dr. Daniel Grossman of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health says, “I’ve talked to providers who have done this for years where the patient was going someplace where they were going to have difficulty accessing care.” Abortion medication is safe—what’s not safe is being denied an abortion.
Over at Vulture, Steph Herold, who studies the portrayal of abortion on television, talks about the disconnect between pop culture references to ending a pregnancy and reality:
“Abortion is one of the safest outpatient procedures in the U.S. Less than a quarter of one percent of abortions result in any kind of major complication. But on TV, about 18 percent of abortions result in a major complication — over 70 times the actual complication rate. Also, the type of characters who have abortions on TV are very different than real-life abortion patients: white, wealthy, not raising kids. It’s a big departure from reality, where the majority of abortion patients are people of color, struggling to make ends meet, raising kids.”
American health care workers are looking to leave the country in the wake of Roe being overturned—with many looking to New Zealand as a possible answer. One medical recruiter there says, “We’ve got nurses, physios, OT’s, general physicians, family physicians, psychiatrists...they’re frightened, they’re terrified at work, and I think they’re looking for an out.”
USA Today looks at Republican disagreement over a national ban—and how the debate amongst themselves is heating up as we get closer to 2024. Honestly, reading this made me want to throw up.
Speaking of making my stomach turn: Republicans are still furious over the Pentagon policy to give days off and travel expenses to troops who need to leave the state for abortion care. The policy only covers abortions for rape and incest victims and those who need to end a pregnancy to save their lives and health. Still, the GOP are being fucking assholes about it.
I love this piece from The Guardian on Elevated Access, a network of volunteer pilots who fly women who need abortions out-of-state when they need care. One of the benefits of the group is that flying with them is anonymous: “When you go to any normal airport, you have a lot of issues you have to deal with, one of which is identification and not everybody has a valid ID. We can take people who are undocumented,” a spokesperson with the group said. What’s extra amazing is the cost of the flights are covered by the volunteer pilots themselves.
And always read Dahlia Lithwick at Slate, who writes about the current political messaging that says women voters don’t care about abortion rights as much as they do the economy (even as those issues are inextricably linked). Every word is gold, but this slayed me:
“Women were told that their worries and concerns were distractions for so long that we forget that it’s not just abortion but also birth control, cancer drugs, in vitro, surrogacy, and other privacy rights we are being told to shelve in the coming weeks. If you accept the framing that women’s rights will always be lesser, you are pretty much signing up to guarantee that women’s rights will always be lesser in the future.”
CNN has a roundup of short opinion pieces on abortion, including thoughts from law professor and author Mary Ziegler, abortion storyteller Renee Bracey Sherman, and activist Ai-jen Poo. (There’s also some anti-abortion stuff in there that you should skip unless you don’t want to develop a rage migraine.)
Monica Lewinsky wrote a terrific op-ed for abortion rights in Vanity Fair; the Associated Press has a piece on how state-level elections will impact abortion access;ABC News points out that Republican victories this November could restrict or ban abortion in 6 new states; POLITICO looks at underground networks to distribute abortion medication in the U.S. and Europe; and Smithsonian Magazine looks at the group that inspired the movie Call Jane.
Listen up…
Here’s a quick Texas Public Radio segment on Latino voters and abortion, The Los Angeles Times has a segment on the same thing.
What conservatives are saying…
Fox News ran a piece recently about prosecutors who refuse to pursue abortion cases, quoting dipshit Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who called the prosecutors “little individual dictators.” It gets worse—and pay attention to the quotes from Paxton that Fox chose to highlight: “That's a real serious threat to freedom in America…a breakdown of the rule of law [and our] constitutional republic.” Say what now? They’re going to try to make it seems as if anyone who won’t go along with criminalizing women and doctors are a threat to freedom.
You love to see it…
If you happen to live in Chicago, some star chefs are getting together to host a dinner for abortion rights on November 15th. Book your seat here. And I LOVE this comic from The Washington Post about how there’s no ‘typical’ abortion story.
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