In the states…
Walgreens has caved to a conservative intimidation campaign: After Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach sent the company a threatening letter over abortion medication, Walgreens says it won’t be dispensing or shipping mifepristone in the state. A reminder that abortion—including abortion medication—is legal in Kansas. Kobach’s office called the letter from Walgreens “a significant victory for the pro-life cause.” I have to assume similar letters to other conservative states will follow. (You can find info on the leadership team of the company here and here.) Naturally, Kobach is now going after CVS.
Content warning for explicit descriptions of fetal abnormality. You’ve likely already read this story from The Washington Post about a Florida woman who has been denied an abortion despite a fatal fetal abnormality: Deborah Dorbert found out at 23 weeks into her pregnancy that her fetus had Potter syndrome, which not only means there’s no chance of survival—but that “those that survive the birth process typically suffocate within minutes or a matter of hours.” Still, Dorbert was denied an abortion and—in an act of unbelievable cruelty—is going to be forced to carry her doomed pregnancy to term.
If you haven’t, please make the time to read the whole thing—it’s another harrowing example of the suffering abortion bans cause. I did want to flag this, however: Dorbert’s husband, Lee, told the Post, “We have never really understood. We were told there was an exception.”
That’s why I’ve written about exceptions so many times over. The vast majority of Americans do not realize that abortion ‘exceptions’ are a Republican PR stunt—not something people can actually use. The fact that Democrats aren’t talking about this every single day is unbelievable to me.
Lots happening in Alabama right now. Firstly, Republican Rep. Ernie Yarbrough says he’s going to introduce legislation that will classify abortion as a homicide. (Which has become a bit of a trend lately—similar bills were proposed in South Carolina and Kentucky.) The bill would repeal the state code that precludes abortion from being included in the state’s homicide law. The legislation comes from an anti-abortion group, End Abortion Alabama (more on them soon—very shady business). The organization’s founder DJ Parten says women will prosecuted for abortion under the law: “Women who intentionally terminate their child should not be granted blanket immunity….women openly boasting about abortions, using that language, those women are not victims.”
Meanwhile, Democrats in Alabama are trying to repeal a decades-old law in the state that could also open the door for prosecuting women who have abortions. Robin Marty of the West Alabama Women’s Center told the Alabama Reflector that even though most Republicans claim they don’t want to target women, she believes them keeping the 1951 law on the books is a deliberate move:
“They are going to end up going after these people because there are too many places now outside of this state, outside of this country, for people to be able to access medications and independently manage their own abortions with no provider involved. They don’t want to lose that tool.”
Speaking of Alabama, please make the time to read this story from a woman who was denied care despite her fetus being nonviable:
In Ohio, pro-choice groups working on that ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state have filed the proposed language to amend the state constitution. The amendment would declare that “every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion.” Executive Director of Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, Dr. Lauren Beene, said, “Ohioans are perilously close to losing access to safe, legal, comprehensive reproductive medical care.”
Tennessee anti-choice groups are still battling it out with Republican legislators who want to add an exception for life-saving abortions. Once again, this is all theater: We already know this exceptions don’t mean shit. But it does go to show just how extreme Tennessee Right to Life is: They even sent out a mailer telling their supporters that the bill would allow doctors to perform abortions “to prevent a condition that may never happen.”
Meanwhile, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox says he supports the legislation seeking to ban abortion clinics in the state. (The bill would prohibit abortions from being performed anywhere but a hospital.) Utah House Democrats released a statement about the legislation, saying, “Forcing clinics to close and requiring people to seek all abortion care at Utah's hospitals will not only limit access to abortion, but also other types of reproductive health care.”
A Montana bill seeks to establish abortion as a part of religious freedom. Last week, bill sponsor Rep. Ed Stafman—who is also a Rabbi—argued that “both sides should be permitted to have equal protections for their religious conscience.” The Associated Press points out that Montana’s Republican controlled legislature makes the future of the bill iffy, but Rep. Stafman told reporters that some of the members of the House Judiciary Committee that heard testimony on the bill are members of the Montana Freedom Caucus, whose focus is religious freedom.
And a Nevada legislative panel heard testimony on an abortion protections bill, and of course anti-choice groups in the state claimed that it would make it easier for…sex traffickers. They really are desperate.
Since Roe was overturned, so many people across the country have stepped up to help—it’s been one of the things keeping me hopeful. This story about abortion navigators like Heeva Ghane in California is no exception. Abortion navigators help out-of-state women find travel, lodging, and funding to get to California for care, and provide emotional support along the way. Ghane, who is also a nurse, told the San Fransisco Chronicle about her work helping women, some of whom have never even been on a plane before. One patient, she says, had never traveled out of Texas: “So not only did she have the anxiety of being able to have this service, she had the anxiety of having to travel across state lines to go to a state she had never been to before.”
Another woman ended up stuck at the airport because she didn’t know how to get an Uber—she had never used a taxi app before and didn’t have a credit card. (The abortion navigators took her through each step.) Many, Ghane says, are terrified of being arrested: One woman, for example, asked for help to clear her internet search history because she feared it could be used against her. It’s heartbreaking, but it also makes me so incredibly grateful for the activists who are out there every single day helping women.
Quick hits:
A Virginia House panel defeated a proposed constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights in the state;
Montana Republicans voted down bills that would have further protected abortion rights;
Colorado Republicans introduced several anti-abortion bills that were quickly defeated, including one that would ban abortion and classify it as homicide;
North Carolina OBGYNs gave a press conference about how dangerous further restrictions would be in the state;
And a new poll shows that New Jersey voters overwhelmingly support abortion rights, with 62% of respondents calling themselves as “pro-choice” versus only 29% who define themselves as “pro-life.”
In the nation…
All eyes are on U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who could come down with a decision this week on whether to ban abortion medication. The only new info so far is that yesterday Kacsmaryk denied a request from the anti-abortion groups who brought the case to set an accelerated trial schedule. Obviously, I’ll keep you all updated as I find out more.
Poppy Noor at The Guardian spoke with Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, founder of Aid Access, about that upcoming decision on abortion medication. Gomperts says, “People should know we will continue to provide medication abortions this way, whatever the ruling is.” Good for her.
As you know, doctors across the country have been preparing for the possibility of prescribing a misoprostol-only protocol to end a pregnancy (normally women take mifepristone followed by misoprostol)—with some using Gomperts’ own research to show that the second drug can be nearly as effective on its own. But Gomperts says, “You cannot just say it’s OK. It’s not.”
“As a doctor, you have to give the best treatment that’s available. And we know that the best treatment possible is the two drugs combined.”
Mother Jones has a big profile piece on the religious leaders fighting for abortion rights. Recently, that means suing over the right to religious freedom. Rabbi Susan Talve, a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Missouri’s abortion ban says, “We all support abortion because of our faith, not in spite of our faith. Because of our faith.”
I’ve written before about how medical students and residents aren’t able to get adequate training in abortion care due to state bans—some are having to travel out-of-state for abortion education, while others work on models. Some, as Teen Vogue reports, are even learning on papayas. Incredibly, the papaya—which is similar to the size and shape of a uterus—works well for those learning how to perform MVA (manual vacuum aspiration) abortions. I also wanted to flag this quote from Claire Saux, vice president of Medical Students for Choice and medical student at LSU Health New Orleans:
“We don't have access to abortion in Louisiana right now unless you've had a miscarriage, and even then people are having trouble getting the procedure. [As a student] you’re not going to be seeing this procedure very often. You're not getting enough practice in that procedure. So, when I’m faced with an emergency situation, will I feel confident in my training?”
This is so important: We are going to have a generation of OBGYNs who haven’t gotten the best training possible. Obviously, these are doctors who are going above and beyond to ensure they know how to help women—but it’s shocking, especially given this country’s maternal mortality crisis, that we are making it this difficult for doctors to know how to do their jobs.
Quick hits:
Governors from twenty states have formed the Reproductive Freedom Alliance, a coalition to protect abortion rights which California Gov. Gavin Newsom says will be a “firewall to fight for and protect providers and patients”;
The Congressional Budget Office says they believe Roe being overturned will only cause a “modest increase” in births because of abortion medication and women seeking abortions out-of-state;
Rolling Stone on the conservative effort to limit birth control for teenagers;
And new policies from the Department of Defense give service members and their dependents three weeks leave and travel expenses if they need to leave the state for abortion care.
Listen up…
Utah public radio has a segment on Republicans’ bill to ban abortion clinics in the state, where they speak with Planned Parenthood of Utah president Karrie Galloway and the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Karianne Lisonbee. (If her name sounds familiar, it’s because she’s the Republican legislator who said women should “control [their] intake of semen.”)
Updates & Corrections
You may remember the photographs published in The Washington Post that were part of an art piece showing various ways that women have illegally ended their pregnancies. Last week Media Matters researcher wrote a letter to the editor that took issue with the photos including abortion medication as part of what the paper called the “dangerous” ways women have self-managed abortion:
“[P]lacing depictions of abortion pills directly alongside coat hangers that have harmed countless abortion-seekers without clarifying the drugs’ safety obscures the current health-care landscape. As states restrict abortion, it is crucial to accurately depict abortion medication without using misleading and stigmatizing language.”
You love to see it…
I cannot think of anything better: The amazing organization Shout Your Abortion has opened a storefront in Seattle! Shop runner Stella Harvey says that she wants the space to bring a little bit of much-needed joy and community to the conversation. “I think for folks who’re fighting for reproductive justice and access to abortion, it can be super easy to fall into doom-scrolling and feeling anxious and scared,” she says. She hopes the store will remind people “that even though the courts are not protecting abortion in the way we wished they would, we don’t need their permission to have abortions and help one another.” Love it.
Today’s newsletter was compiled with the help of researcher Grace Haley.
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