Abortion, Every Day (1.4.24)

Vivek Ramaswamy claims Kate Cox's pregnancy was viable

Click to skip ahead in the newsletter: In Criminalizing Care, we’re waiting for the grand jury decision on Brittany Watts, and Texas abortion funds are under attack. Ballot Measure Updates include news out of Florida and Arkansas. In the States, good news, bad news, and an interview with one of our favorite pro-choice candidates. In New Abortion ‘Exception’: Preserving Fertility, I flag how Republicans may be broadening their (fake) exceptions. In the Nation, Grace writes about the likelihood of a government shutdown and the GOP’s 2024 fears. The Asshole of the Day is Vivek Ramaswamy, for reasons that will have you *fuming*. And in Stats & Studies, new data shows that women are increasingly buying abortion medication “just in case.”

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Criminalizing Care

All eyes are on Brittany Watts’ case in Ohio, as we wait for a grand jury to decide whether to indict her on ‘abuse of a corpse’ charges. You can read Abortion, Every Day’s background on her case here, but the short version is that Watts miscarried at home after being denied care at a religious hospital, and was subsequently arrested for flushing the fetal remains. (She was also turned in by a nurse—someone meant to care for her, the of which still turns my stomach.)

As Watts’ lawyer, Traci Timko, told Abortion, Every Day, this is a woman “being demonized for a common experience many women share.”

“No one should be criminalized or punished for their miscarriage. Brittany should be able to focus on taking care of herself after losing her pregnancy, but instead she is being forced to to defend her actions in a moment that should have never been made public.”

Watts’ case epitomizes the cruelty, racism and misogyny at the center of criminalization—and shows that when you enshrine fetal personhood or pass abortion restrictions, women can be targeted for any pregnancy outcome.

If you want to tell the prosecutor in Watts’ case exactly what you think about women being arrested for having miscarriages, If/When/How has contact info, scripts, and ways to help.

More criminalization news—this time out of Texas—where a San Antonio anti-abortion group has subpoenaed the records of multiple abortion funds. The San Antonio Family Association (SAFA) has spent months attacking Texas funds, who they’re accusing of aiding and abetting abortions and attempting to use taxpayer funds for abortion care. All because the groups supported a “Reproductive Justice Fund” allocation in the San Antonio budget.

Why SAFA would need abortion funds’ records for such a case is unclear, but the move comes just two months after the groups were served a similar subpoenas by Jonathan Mitchell, the anti-abortion lawyer responsible for Texas’ bounty hunter mandate.

I warned about growing attacks against abortion funds in my overview of criminalization in 2023. For more information, read it below:

The Year in Abortion: Criminalization

Ballot Measure Updates

With abortion rights ballot measures winning across the board in 2023, multiple states are considering amendments in 2024. (States Newsroom has a roundup of the 11 states that might decide on a pro-choice amendment, from Arizona and Missouri to Florida and Montana, if you want a quick rundown.)

I’m paying close attention to Florida at the moment, where pro-choice activists say they’ve collected enough signatures to get abortion in front of voters. They need 891,523 signatures in total; the state Division of Elections website shows 863,876 signatures have been verified thus far.

The big news from Florida, though, is that the state Supreme Court—which needs to approve the proposed amendment’s language—set a date to hear arguments on the measure next month. Remember, Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody has petitioned the justices to reject the measure based on its language over ‘viability’, arguing that it’s deliberately misleading. What’s scary is that the Court is stacked with appointees from Gov. Ron DeSantis.

What happens in Florida won’t just impact the millions of people who need care in the state—but in the entire region. As abortion access has been decimated across the South, patients have increasingly traveled to Florida for care, even with the state’s 15-week ban in place. So fingers and toes crossed for Florida pro-choice activists.

Slate has a big (and important) piece on the ballot measure effort in Arkansas, where the proposed amendment would offer less protections than Roe did: it would only protect abortion rights up until 18 weeks. As has been the case across the country, there’s been a conflict between those who want to get any kind of access protected, and those who see that kind of ‘compromise’ as a defeat. (You know where I stand on all this.)

Gennie Diaz, the executive director of Arkansans for Limited Government, the group pushing the measure, says that she’s trying to reach a broader swath of Arkansas voters and that 18 weeks is a “reasonable, sensible cutoff.” But as Slate reporter Susan Rinkunas points out, polling increasingly shows that voters don’t want any government interference in reproductive health decisions. Also, we’ve seen that word ‘reasonable’ before when it comes to abortion—and it never leads anywhere good.

As all of these initiatives move forward, Abortion, Every Day will continue to track not just the measures—but the accompanying Republican attacks on democracy. (Which we saw plenty of in 2023.) The GOP is desperate to stop voters from having a say on abortion rights because they know that Americans overwhelmingly want abortion to be legal.

In the States

In case you missed it, I wrote a column about the news that Texas can deny women life-saving emergency abortions. I’m still absolutely vibrating with anger over it all.

For more reading on that 5th Circuit ruling, check out Vox’s explainer and this piece from Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, who writes that when the Supreme Court ultimately weighs in, they have a chance to admit that they got it wrong:

“[T]hat overturning Roe did not remove the judiciary from the abortion debate, but shifted life-or-death decisions about pregnancy into the hands of judges who know nothing about the practice of medicine.”

A similar case is moving forward in Idaho, where the state is fighting the federal government for their right to deny emergency abortions. As I said yesterday, of course they want us dead.

In better news, California’s shield law has gone into effect. That means doctors who ship abortion medication to states with bans will be protected from out-of-state prosecutions.

More good laws enacted this week: In Illinois, law enforcement is now banned from sharing license plate reader data with other states that might want to target abortion patients. And a new Maine law went into effect that ends out-of-pocket costs for abortion care.

You know Abortion, Every Day is a big Allie Phillips fan: The Tennessee mother and small-business owner was denied an abortion for a doomed pregnancy and decided to run for office as a result. If you want to hear Phillips talk about her experience and campaign, ABC News has more:

Finally, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch points out that one of the pre-filed pieces of legislation in Missouri includes a bill that would make abortion punishable as a homicide. This is the legislation I told you about last month that would charge abortion patients with murder.

I’m anticipating seeing more bills like this across the country. While some Republicans are running scared or focusing on ‘exceptions’, others are giving up on any pretense of moderation to just go for what they really want.

Quick hits:

• Nebraska lawmakers have introduced legislation to repeal the state ban on abortion and gender-affirming care;

• Amarillo, Texas is still debating their abortion travel ban;

• Wisconsin Planned Parenthood employees say they want to unionize;

• And a columnist slamming Idaho’s Republican Attorney General for selling out voters by allowing Alliance Defending Freedom to represent the state.

New Abortion ‘Exception’: Preserving Fertility

Sometimes I come across a piece of news that’s so telling I just can’t believe it’s real. A Republican legislator in Tennessee wants to add an exception to the state’s total ban that would allow women to have an abortion ban if her future fertility would be impacted. Sen. Richard Briggs is calling it the Freedom to Have Children and a Family Act.

The law would allow those with nonviable pregnancies or pregnancies that would “cause women to be sterile” to get abortion care. “I just think that’s a basic human right, the freedom to be able to have children and to be able to have a family,” Briggs said.

I have so much to say about this but so little space to do it! Obviously, of course, we want people in Tennessee to be able to have abortions in cases like this. But it’s so striking to me that in the face of so many stories of women going septic and their lives being endangered, that it’s our fertility that sparks action.

This is what makes me feel so ill about ‘exceptions’. Not only do they almost entirely function as a PR tool for Republicans trying to seem more reasonable on abortion—they also categorize patients as those who are deserving of care and those who aren’t. Women who want to have babies adhere to what it means to be a ‘good’ woman, and are worthy of protection.

What’s more, legislation like this says the quiet part out loud: what makes us valuable isn’t our humanity or lives, but our ability to have babies.

Is this really the only way we can allow for more abortions in Tennessee?? I feel sick to be in the position of hoping that a law like this does pass, because maybe just maybe it will stop some suffering.

This news also left me wondering—especially in the wake of Kate Cox’s story getting national and international attention—if we’re about to see a new strain of abortion ban ‘exceptions’: those that claim to protect women’s fertility. Will rape, incest, health and life turn into rape, incest, health, life and motherhood?

Oh, and in case you were wondering: Tennessee Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson made clear he wouldn’t support this bill, saying, “I fully support the law that we have on the books right now relative to abortion.”

In the Nation

The Senate and House are set to resume session next week, facing a tight deadline to avert a government shutdown. Prospects for the House to pass either a full-year or temporary spending deal seem dim—the GOP majority shrunk to just 2 votes due to last-minute Republican retirements, a notable shift since the near-shutdown in November. Given the dispute in the GOP over anti-abortion and anti-trans riders that Speaker Mike Johnson and the right-wing faction of the party keep trying to add to spending bills, experts say a shutdown is likely.

Meanwhile, Democrats plan to make abortion a defining issue in the 2024 election, but Politico reports that it’s more complicated than pro-abortion turnout from ballot initiative votes. Data shows that ballot initiatives outperform Democratic candidates in elections, so leaning exclusively on abortion rights amendments isn’t enough. Candidates need to make abortion front and center in their campaigns—and continue to make abortion unavoidable for Republicans running for these seats. 

Groups of moderate Republican pollsters and strategists have been sounding the alarm over abortion, arguing that GOP candidates can’t start the year by losing their appeal with women voters. Some want to focus on a “pro-birth control” message to win back voters, but as Abortion, Every Day pointed out last month, conservatives have spent years laying the groundwork to ban contraception. So it’s not a strategy with broad support on the right.

Powerful anti-abortion groups like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Students for Life continue to argue that the GOP’s losses boil down to a lack of a national abortion ban vision. Essentially, they say that the pro-life vote hasn’t come out in full force yet because candidates haven’t promoted a national ban. (A dubious take at best.)

Finally, because there’s never not news about the Pentagon’s abortion policy: Gil Cisneros, the former undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, warns in a recent op-ed that the travel policy could be rescinded on the first day of a new administration if anti-abortion opponents win key seats. And Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders petitioned the Defense secretary this week to rescind the policy.

Quick hits:

• The Guardian reports that since Roe was overturned, at least 16 states have agreed to give more than $250 million in taxpayer dollars to anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers;

• Roll Call on how Latina candidates are planning an abortion rights push;

• NPR on how the fight for abortion rights went from women coming forward anonymously—like ‘Jane Roe’—to patients sharing their stories using their real names;

• And the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights is expected to finalize a rule to prohibit medical providers and insurance companies from disclosing patient information to state officials seeking to prosecute abortion patients.

Asshole of the Day: Vivek Ramaswamy

I might have to make this a regular thing, but I’m not sure if anyone will ever beat out Vivek Ramaswamy and what he said on NBC about Kate Cox. When asked about Cox’s story and whether or not he believes women should be forced to carry doomed pregnancies to term, Ramaswamy gave this unbelievable quote:

“With due respect, you are overlaying a lot of assumptions to say that’s not a viable pregnancy. That’s not a correct characterization, the facts are still out. And I’m not first hand in the room with her and her doctor, but I don’t think that’s an accepted fact at all that that was not a child who was going to be born. That child absolutely could have been alive if that pregnancy was taken to term.”

This is what happens when the worst fucking men in the world think they know better about your body than you do. Just jaw-dropping.

When reporter Brianne Pfannenstiel followed up by saying that Cox’s doctors had testified that the pregnancy wasn’t viable, Ramaswamy doubled down—saying that the term ‘viable’ is vague.

I don’t need to tell you how dangerous this is—and how much Ramaswamy’s message has been clearly by the anti-abortion movement. This is exactly the kind of language and argument I reported in my “Calculated Cruelty” investigation, and the direct result of the language shifts I’ve been writing about here and at The New York Times. (Remember: they are moving away from ‘viable’ and ‘nonviable’ in an attempt to change medical language and force women to carry doomed pregnancies to term.)

Stats & Studies

Women are proactively securing abortion medication by the thousands for “just in case” scenarios, according to a new analysis of  ‘advanced provision' requests from Aid Access data. The analysis found that Aid Access averaged 118 advanced provision requests per day, with noticeable surges following breaking abortion news like the Dobbs decision and updates to the mifepristone lawsuit. For obvious reasons, rates were highest in states with existing abortion bans and those expecting more restrictive measures.

From Dr. Abigail Aiken, a co-author of the study, at Mother Jones:

“Every time we’re seeing potential legislation coming, that’s when people seem to be reacting most. They see the writing on the wall—and that seems to be the biggest motivator.”

The study indicates that most patients said that they were “ensuring personal health and choice” and “preparing for possible abortion restrictions” when requesting the pills for advanced provision. Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, director of Aid Access, also attributed the increase to growing awareness of abortion medication.

That said, there’s still work to be done: Women from marginalized or lower-income communities were less likely to use advanced provision requests, or even know that the option exists for patients in the first place.

If you need abortion medication now, or want to have pills on hand for the future (advance provision), here are a few trusted groups that can help: Aid Access, Plan C Pills, Abortion Finder, I Need An A

Thanks to Abortion, Every Day researcher Grace Haley for writing today’s In the Nation and Stats & Studies.