In the states…
Well this is wild: A bill in North Dakota would require any sex ed classes in the state to show students a “high-definition ultrasound video” of a fetus and a “high-quality, computer-generated rendering or animation showing the process of fertilization and every stage of human development inside the uterus.” Something tells me that we can’t count on those ‘renderings’ to be very accurate—and that Republican legislators wouldn’t be as keen to show students images of what early pregnancy and abortion actually look like.
South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace says that her party is going to alienate and lose voters if they don’t adopt a more ‘centrist’ agenda on abortion—a sort of hilarious take from someone who just proposed a bill that would create a website to collect the data of pregnant women and share it with crisis pregnancy centers. That said, she’s not wrong; when Mace says that “millions of women, millions and millions” were outraged over Roe being overturned, she’s absolutely dead on. And Republicans’ denial (see ‘In the nation’ below for the latest) is going to continue to cost them. But while Mace’s vision for “common ground” may help the GOP with their public image, it will do absolutely nothing to help women. Because—and you know what I’m going to say next—abortion exceptions aren’t real.
Also in South Carolina, Attorney General Alan Wilson filed a petition for the state Supreme Court to reconsider the state’s abortion ban, saying, “The framers of our privacy provision did not conceive this provision as creating a right to abortion.” (This comes as Republicans across multiple states are making the argument that their state constitutions’ right to privacy don’t include the right to abortion.)
This weekend, Minnesota codified abortion rights via the PRO Act. Abortion is already legal in the state, but the legislation adds an extra layer of reproductive rights protections—a smart move in a time when Republicans across the country are trying to circumvent the courts and voters to restrict abortion.
In Idaho, House Republicans passed a bill to withhold sales tax revenues from any city that won’t enforce or prosecute abortion ‘crimes’. What’s fascinating is that the bill was originally only about abortion—but Republicans changed it to say the law would apply to cities that refused to prosecute any felonies, because of the outcry over the focus on abortion. And when Democrat Rep. Lauren Necochea brought up how the bill came to be—and what it was really about—House Speaker Mike Moyle “repeatedly told her to only discuss the bill currently being discussed.” They don’t want Americans reminded of what they’re actually up to.
New Hampshire Republicans are pushing legislation that would require reproductive health clinics to do an extra audit of how they spend public funds to make doubly sure they’re not using any of that money towards abortion care.
And in Vermont, where legislators have been enacting extra abortion rights protections, there’s a fear that those laws may only be good inside state lines—and that they won’t do much from protecting women and providers from out-of-state prosecutions and civil cases. Law professor David Cohen testified to lawmakers that “the interjurisdictional abortion wars are coming.” He said, “Without the national right, you're going to have these interjurisdictional battles.”
And here’s an op-ed out of Montana, where Republicans are trying to redefine what constitutes ‘medically necessary’ for women seeking reimbursement for their abortions from Medicaid:
“Isn’t it interesting that these bills keep being introduced by these male legislators, who will never have to make this truly personal decision? Why? Because, at the end of the day, it is really all about control and imposition of their patriarchal and authoritarian right-wing agenda on all Montana women.”
Quick hits:
Massachusetts launched a hotline to connect people seeking abortions with legal advice and resources to help them get care;
There will be a public hearing in Nebraska this Wednesday over Republicans’ push to ban abortion at 6 weeks;
The Illinois man arrested for setting fire to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Peoria faces up to 40 years in prison, with a minimum sentence of five years if he is convicted;
Legislation in New York that would make birth control pills available over the counter continues to move forward;
And another piece digging into abortion rights and the state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin.
In the nation…
Conservatives keep telling us they’re not coming for birth control, yet they don’t do much to hide what a total and complete lie that is. Last week, I spoke to a Georgia woman whose health insurance denied her coverage for an IUD because of the “sanctity of life.” Here is Lindsey sharing her story on TikTok:
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The 29 year-old mother gave birth two months ago, and had an appointment for an IUD insertion—but a few days before her appointment, she got a call from her OBGYN. Her doctor told her that her insurance company, Guidestone, wouldn’t cover the IUD unless it was medically necessary. When Lindsey called Guidestone, she asked them what qualified as medically necessary. “I feel that it’s necessary to not have any baby. It was mentally, physically and emotionally very challenging and I cannot do it again. Why is that not necessary?” They responded by telling her it was a “sanctity of life” issue—and that Lindsey would have to pay out of pocket. The cost for an IUD without coverage? Two thousand dollars. Lindsey told me she decided to go on birth control pills—which Guidestone does cover—even though she had been hoping to avoid the hormonal contraception because of how it made her feels years earlier.
It turns out Guidestone was in a years-long lawsuit—that they won!—fighting for the ability to deny women coverage for contraception that they considered ‘abortifacients’ like IUDs and Plan B. We’re seeing more and more lawsuits from conservative groups (falsely) claiming that common forms of birth control cause abortion.
For example, you may have seen some articles about a former CVS employee who filed a lawsuit after being fired for refusing to give customers birth control. What isn’t talked about nearly enough is that the reason this employee refused to dispense the contraception was because she thinks that all forms of birth control are abortifacients—and that her lawsuit lays the groundwork for others to argue the same thing.
Meanwhile, The New York Times has a big piece on Republican efforts to restrict and ban abortion by focusing on state constitutions and Supreme Courts—both by trying to seat and unseat judges, and by moving to redefine state rights to liberty and privacy as not including abortion. And The Washington Post looks at what Democrats are doing in pro-choice states to further protect reproductive rights—including codifying abortion rights.
And a new poll from Planned Parenthood Federation of America shows that the vast majority of Americans are concerned about the criminalization of those who have and provide abortions. The research showed that 81% of people are worried about medical professionals being charged with a felony if they give a life-saving abortion that a prosecutor disagrees was necessary; 80% are concerned that the fear of prosecution will make doctors less likely to give life-saving care; and 80% are concerned that law enforcement will investigate people who have miscarriages or stillbirths.
Despite American voters’ clear opposition to abortion bans and their fear the consequences of such laws, Republicans are doubling down on their anti-abortion policies. Today, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution to “go on offense [on abortion] in the 2024 election cycle.” In addition to doing their normal dance about Democrats having an “extreme” agenda on abortion (you know how I feel about that), the resolution is an exercise in misinformation and denial.
The RNC, for example, claims that “polling consistently shows that a majority of Americans support national, state, and local limits on abortion”—which is a sneaky way of getting around mentioning that 61% of people want abortion legal in all or most circumstances. The resolution also tries to make it appear as if their midterms losses were a fluke driven by Democrats’ overspending and their “mischaracterizing and vilifying pro-life Republican candidates.”
Here’s the thing; if Republicans want to convince themselves that Americans aren’t actually pro-choice and that their extremism on abortion will be received well in elections, they should have at it. We’ll keep telling the truth about what their laws do, and voters will continue respond accordingly.
Quick hits:
The Dallas Morning News looks at the lawsuit against abortion medication being heard by a Texas judge;
TechCrunch looks at how law enforcement uses digital data to prosecute abortion cases;
And FiveThirtyEight reports on whether pro-choice states will loosen restrictions on later abortions.
What conservatives are saying...
Conservatives are absolutely desperate to make it seem as if the anti-choice movement is under dangerous attack—even as abortion clinics are firebombed! Today, for example, conservative media went on an absolute tear about scary, dangerous protesters demonstrating outside of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s house. (I don’t want to give the right-wing outlets any traffic, but you can search on Twitter and find all the hysterics there.) When you actually take the time to check out what the protest looked like? It’s about five or six people walking back and forth on her block. Truly terrifying!
This is all part of a huge conservative effort to paint themselves as victims while their laws are putting women in the ICU with sepsis. Also today, for example, the huge conservative group the Catholic League called on the House Judiciary Committee to launch an investigation into “Jane’s Revenge”—conservatives’ latest bogeyman that no one is even sure actually exists. They are going to keep harping on these largely-imaginary threats to try to distract Americans from the actual real life suffering abortion bans are causing.
Keep an eye on…
I want to flag something in this piece on the ramping up of anti-choice protests outside of pharmacies (a response to retail chains starting to carry abortion medication):
“Her Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising describes itself as left-leaning; its members use the language of the left — they refer to an abortion ‘industrial complex’ and to ‘Big Pharma’ as preying on ‘pregnant people.’”
For years, anti-abortion groups rejected feminism and the language of the left—but as feminism as built more mainstream cultural power, that’s started to change. We’ve seen groups like ‘Feminists for Life’ and the shift from calling women who have abortions ‘murderers’ to saying ‘women deserve better than abortion’. I think we’re going to see this kind of co-opting of feminist language more and more—especially as we hear more horror stories of women suffering and being denied care. This is a movement desperate to seem as if they give a shit about women. So definitely pay attention to the kind of rhetoric conservatives start using.
This newsletter was compiled with the help of researcher Grace Haley
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