Abortion, Every Day (11.23.22)

Teen rape victim in Mississippi couldn't get abortion despite state exception

In the states…

Terrible news out of Georgia: The state Supreme Court has reinstated the 6-week abortion ban, overturning a lower court’s block while they consider an appeal. The court’s order didn’t contain an explanation for their decision, and justices also denied a request from abortion providers and activists for a 24-notice before allowing the ban to be reinstated. Nightmare.

Center for Reproductive Rights @ReproRights

🚨#BREAKING: The Georgia Supreme Court has allowed the state’s 6-week abortion ban to take effect again while litigation continues. Today, people in waiting rooms across Georgia are being turned away, forced to seek care elsewhere or else continue pregnancies against their will.

Also in Georgia, Senate candidate Herschel Walker made an…interesting gaffe on Fox News when he said, “This election is more than Herschel Walker—this erection is about the people.” (Emphasis mine) This happened just a few hours after Walker’s ex released audio tapes to bolster her account that the Republican forced her to have an abortion.

I told you yesterday that Tennessee Republicans are considering adding an exception for women’s lives into their total abortion ban (again, a sentence I cannot believe I have to write). The Chattanooga Times Free Press spoke to a few of these legislators and anti-abortion activists—like Tennessee Right to Life—who said they won’t support any law “that downgrades the affirmative defense” mandate. In plain language: They won’t agree to an exception for women’s lives. You may remember that leaked audio of a strategy session between these same activists and state lawmakers showed that they pushed Republicans to keep the ban as is, and advised them on how long to wait before going after birth control and IVF.

A young teenage rape survivor in Mississippi was unable to get an abortion in the state despite the state ban including an exception for victims of sexual assault. Her mother says, “Being in the room where she was at, explaining how she got pregnant, was where my world really shattered.” The girls’ parents couldn’t find a doctor to help—you may recall that like most rape exceptions, the one in Mississippi is completely useless, no doctors will provide abortions in the state. So the family had to drive over 7 hours and spend thousands of dollars to take the teen to Illinois. “The funds were the hardest to come up with,” her mother said. I don’t have words anymore.

Also from Mississippi: The state has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the U.S.—which will only be made worse by the state’s abortion ban. A new report from the ACLU shows just how bad it is: the maternal morality rate is twice the national average (even higher for Black women), and more than half of the state’s counties are maternity deserts.

The executive director of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), Erin Heaney, wrote for The Nation on how her group helped to bring home the ballot measure win in Kentucky:

“To break the power of the religious right and those at the economic top extracting from working people’s communities, we must provide new ways for people—including white rural people, currently registered Republicans—to have belonging and purpose that is rooted in solidarity, not judgment and scarcity.”

In the nation…

Since Roe was overturned, I’ve been warning that colleges in anti-abortion states would see a marked decrease in female students. After all, why would any parent send their daughter, or any young woman want to go, to a state where they quite literally have less rights? And so I was glad to see that The Washington Post had a big interactive piece on what it’s like to be a college student post-Roe. But here’s the thing: The vast majority of young people, nearly 75%, believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But this sweeping piece from the Post makes it seems as if there’s equal disagreement among college students—and doesn’t mention how overwhelmingly popular abortion rights are among younger people. I am over this both sides bullshit; mainstream media’s obsession with making it seem as if abortion is a controversial issue—as opposed to something the majority of Americans agree on—is downright dangerous.

The Centers for Disease Control released new abortion data today, showing that 51% of abortions were performed with medication at or before 9 weeks into pregnancy. The CDC also reported that 80.9% of abortions happened at or before 9 weeks, and that 93.1% happened at or before 13 weeks. Which means it’s a good time to share these pictures of early pregnancy again.

Speaking of medication abortion: You already know about the group that is suing the FDA in order to get the agency to reverse their approval of mifepristone. Well, another organization—Students for Life America—is petitioning the FDA over mifepristone, and you’re going to love their argument: The group claims that women using abortion medication at home and flushing the products of conception is a risk to the environment. So they want the FDA to require any doctor who prescribes the pill to tell their patient to bag what they call the “remains” and treat it like medical waste.

Jenny Ma, a senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told POLITICO, “It’s a pretty egregious argument that really shamelessly co-opts the environmental movement for their own agenda.” She says, “Not only are they not citing actual science here but they’re trying to shame and stigmatize abortion and separate it from other medical care.”

It’s also about punishment: One of the reasons women are more likely to choose abortion medication over surgical abortion is so they can end their pregnancies at home where they feel more comfortable. And anyone who has had an early abortion or miscarriage knows that there is no way to distinguish embryonic tissue from general bleeding. So this group wants to take away the comfort and privacy medication abortion provides, and force women to bag up any and all of their bleeding. It’s obscene.

NPR has more on doctors weighing whether or not to break abortion laws in order to provide adequate care to their patients. From Dr. Matthew Wynia of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado, who published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine urging doctors to participate in civil disobedience around abortion:

“I have seen some very disturbing quotes from health professionals essentially saying, 'Look, it's the law. We have to live within the law.' If the law is wrong and causing you to be involved in harming patients, you do not have to live [within] that law.”

NPR also reports something I missed when I covered the American Medical Association’s new abortion guidance: The organization is going to create a task force that will start a legal defense fund for doctors prosecuted for providing abortions. Great news. The more institutional support that doctors have, the better.

Quick hits: Ms. magazine has more on the group suing the FDA; the ACLU put out a mini-guide on how to talk to your family about abortion at Thanksgiving; Ars Technica looks at the various ways law enforcement could access data to prosecute abortions; and the Associated Press looks at Democrats’ post-midterms strategies on abortion.

What conservatives are saying…

Anti-abortion and evangelical groups are not so sure about Donald Trump in 2024. Rolling Stone says anti-choice activists, in particular, are pissed at Trump for not mentioning Roe in his announcement, and shying away from abortion in general as the polls paint a clear picture of how deeply unpopular state bans are. One activist said, “Pro-life voters will not take a back seat or be treated like a second-class constituency.” Boo fucking hoo.

You love to see it…

Love this profile from The 19th of Bonsitu Kitaba, the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan. Kitaba not only cast her first ever vote as an American citizen in the midterms, but got to vote for a constitutional amendment that she wrote—Proposal 3, which enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution. Kitaba says, “I think that’s an ultimate career highlight. I don’t think I could top that again.”