Abortion, Every Day (3.7.24)

Missouri bill would ban medical schools from teaching abortion

Click to skip ahead: What I’m looking out for in tonight’s State of the Union. In Stats & Studies, 1 in 8 Americans say abortion is their top 2024 issue. In the States, a Missouri bill would forbid medical schools from training doctors in abortion care. In the Nation, some quick hits. And in A Country of ‘Walking Coffins’, the latest in the GOP’s quiet campaign to force women to carry doomed pregnancies.

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State of the Union

President Joe Biden’s State of the Union is tonight at 9pm, and you can be sure there will be a lot about abortion rights—a far cry from his middling 30 second support in last year’s SOTU.

First Lady Jill Biden invited Kate Cox to the speech as her guest. As you know, Cox was denied abortion care in Texas despite her health being endangered and her fetus having a fatal abnormality.

In POLITICO, president of Reproductive Freedom for All Mini Timmaraju, says Cox being there is “a big deal.”

“You don’t want to just talk about policy and codification of a federal right — that’s going to go over the heads of some folks. You want to talk about something real that happened to someone who they can empathize with: a mom, who already had kids, who was in a crisis.”

Cox has been doing some interviews with her husband and OBGYN today in anticipation of the speech tonight. I’ve gotta say, listening to Cox recall her experience is just devastating. It’s incredibly brave of her to come forward, but I’m just so furious that this woman has to lay her pain bare. Is that what it takes for us to be considered humans?

It sounds like Cox herself is pretty over it, as well:

“How many women have to tell their most heartbreaking journey publicly? How many have to speak out before something changes?”

Watch her CNN interview below:

More on the SOTU: As I mentioned yesterday, Biden also invited Dr. Austin Dennard tonight. Dennard, like Cox, also went public after being denied vital abortion care. U.S. Sen. Patty Murray invited an Idaho woman, Kayla Smith, who had to travel to Washington for an abortion. And Sen. Tina Smith is bringing Tammy Kromenaker, director of Red River Women’s Clinic in Minnesota.

Some other abortion-related guests tonight: Rep. Katherine Clark is bringing Amanda Zurawski, who went septic after being denied an abortion in Texas. Rep. Judy Chu has invited Dr. Caitlin Bernard, the Indiana abortion provider who helped a 10 year-old rape victim from Ohio, just to be harassed by Republican leadership in her state. And Rep. Joyce Beatty has invited Brittany Watts, who was arrested for ‘abuse of a corpse’ after her miscarriage.

Name after name after name really is a stark reminder of how many people have been harmed by these bans. (And these are just those who’ve come forward!)

All of which is to say: it’s clear that the speech will be very much about abortion rights—specifically, abortion rights as freedom. The Biden-Harris’ campaign’s ‘restore Roe’ framework is also sure to be mentioned, despite the fact that abortion rights activists aren’t crazy about the messaging.

As I said yesterday, what I’m going to be watching out for is whether or not Biden can stay on message, and resist the temptation to say something about ‘abortion on demand’—or anything else that reveals just how ambivalent he is about the issue. And as Susan Rinkunas writes today at Jezebel, it would really nice to see Biden bring up the criminalization we’ve seen post-Roe, and the danger of the Comstock Act.

Meanwhile, the anti-abortion movement thinks that they can make Biden look bad by claiming his focus on reproductive rights is extremist or in bad taste. The legislative director at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, for example, told the National Catholic Register that by hosting Cox, Biden is going to “exploit [a] tragic situation” in order “push abortion on demand, for any reason, at any time, through all nine months of pregnancy.”

And the organization’s vice president, Stephen Billy, said Biden is going to lie about abortion in order to push a radical agenda. Which is a rich accusation coming from Billy, who—as I reminded you all yesterday—gave Tennessee Republicans advice about when to go after contraception and IVF.

What’s more, Republicans are using the SOTU to push out a strategy I flagged last month: personal stories. The GOP can see that the post-Roe horror stories are resonating with voters, so they figured they’d start to share some of their own. But as I’ve said before, the anti-abortion stories they’re highlighting are not really all that compelling.

For example, U.S. Rep. Bob Good of Virginia is bringing an ‘abortion survivor’ to Biden’s speech—an anti-abortion activist who was placed for adoption after his mother was raped. (The identifier ‘survivor’ is doing a lot of work there, I know.) Ryan Bomberger says, “I’m the 1% used to justify 100% of abortions.”

Again, not super compelling, but Republicans know that they need to connect with voters on a personal level. Because right now, Americans are seeing them as they misogynist extremists they are—which does not bode well at the ballot box.

Stats & Studies

Speaking of how American voters are feeling these days about Republicans and abortion: A new KFF Health Tracking Poll finds that about 1 in 8 voters (12%) say that abortion is the most important issue for them in the 2024 elections.

KFF reports that the issue is especially resonant for Democratic women, about 22% of whom are ‘abortion voters’, and for Black women, 28% of whom say abortion is the most important 2024 issue for them. Seventeen percent of women of reproductive age (18-49 years old) also identify as abortion voters.

Meanwhile, even 43% of Republicans say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. I was also glad to see that despite the Data for Progress numbers last month showing that less than a quarter of Americans blamed Donald Trump for Roe’s demise, KFF found that two thirds of voters (65%) reported that he holds at least some responsibility for the decision.

In the States

This is absolutely bananas: Missouri Republicans are pushing legislation that would ban medical schools in the state from providing abortion training. HB 2621 would even forbid partnerships with out-of-state medical schools who teach students how to provide abortion care.

As you know, medical schools in anti-choice states like Missouri have been sending their residents out-of-state for abortion training, since they can’t get adequate abortion education in their own state.

Learning abortion care is a necessary part of being an OBGYN—whether it’s for ending an unwanted pregnancy, miscarriage treatment or more. In fact, learning abortion is required in order for OBGYNs to be accredited!

But Rep. Justin Sparks, who introduced the legislation, says there’s “no need” for abortion training. And he wants to do whatever he can to stop doctors from knowing how to save women’s health and lives. Under Sparks’ law, for example, any medical school that sends their residents out-of-state to learn abortion care would be fined. As if the reproductive and maternal health care crisis wasn’t bad enough!

A new anti-abortion bill advancing in Wyoming would mandate that women get unnecessary and invasive transvaginal ultrasounds before being able to obtain an abortion.

Republicans claim that House Bill 148 would protect women—as they tend to do with all of their onerous regulations. But OBGYN Dr. Giovannina Anthony tells WyoFile that mandating these kinds of ultrasounds can be traumatizing and anxiety-inducing, especially for young patients or abuse victims.

“The objective is to make it impossible to do telehealth abortion,” she said. “Their objective is not to keep women safe.”

Abortion rights activists and providers in Ohio want the state’s 6-week ban repealed, now that voters have enacted Issue 1—which protects abortion rights in the state constitution.

What’s especially great about this is that the lawyers for the clinics are pointing to a quote from Republican Attorney General Dave Yost, who said before the Issue 1 vote that if the proposed amendment passed, the 6-week ban “would not exist.”

In short, while lobbying against Issue 1, he admitted that the ballot measure would automatically make the ban unenforceable. Attorney Jessie Hill said Yost “publicly conceded that S.B. 23’s six-week ban is unconstitutional,” and therefore there shouldn’t be any legal disputes from the state. Love to see it.

This is cool: A grant program being considered in Maryland could provide funding for abortion clinic security—a serious concern as violence and harassment against providers has sky-rocketed since Roe was overturned. The program would be run by the state health department, and would provide money for security infrastructure and staffing.

Legislation that would require health insurance companies to fully cover birth control is headed to Virginia Gov. Glenn Younkin’s desk. Democrats in the General Assembly fast-tracked the legislation to Youngkin, who has until the end of the day tomorrow to decide whether to approve or veto it.

In Idaho, a reminder that misogynist legislation doesn’t stop with abortion bans. Republicans in the state are pushing bills to loosen regulations on adoption, framing the move as ‘pro-family’. But as I’ve written before, this is part of a broader conservative effort to control women—just in a different way.

We’ve seen this happening for months in other states, where Republicans are trying to make it easier for people to adopt babies—often to the detriment of pregnant women. That’s because decreasing adoption regulations makes it easier for private agencies—which are often religiously-affiliated—to take advantage of vulnerable pregnant women. (Consider over-funded ‘maternity homes’, like this one in Idaho.)

One of the bills in this package of Republican ‘adoption-friendly’ legislation, for example, would mandate that adoption is taught about in sex education classes in the state—targeting young teen girls. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

Quick hits:

• Colorado Public Radio with a piece on the long-lost history of Colorado women who died trying to get abortions before it was legal;

• Flatwater Free Press on the last procedural abortion clinic left in Nebraska;

• Finally, Ohio won’t be one of the states where mifepristone can be dispensed in pharmacies, but I’m wondering if Issue 1 could change that.

A Country of ‘Walking Coffins’

If you’re a regular reader, you know I’ve been tracking the quiet campaign to force women and girls to carry nonviable pregnancies to term. It’s a nightmare initiative, run by some of the biggest and most powerful anti-abortion groups in the country. This week, in the Washington Examiner, one of the leaders behind this effort laid out exactly the tactics I’ve been warning about.

Gary Thome, a board member of Heartbeat International—the world’s largest network of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers—wrote a column that was ostensibly about Kate Cox’s attendance at the SOTU. In reality, Thome was sending out messaging test balloons, focusing on all of the cruelties I outlined in my two-part series.

For example, Thome claims that “parents who receive a prenatal diagnosis are frequently told their child’s condition is hopeless and treatment futile,” and that it’s wrong for doctors to use words like ‘lethal’ or ‘fatal’. This aligns with what I reported in October: that the anti-abortion movement wants to force doctors to replace terms like ‘nonviable’ with ‘potentially life-limiting.’

I’ve been raising the alarm about how anti-abortion lawmakers and activists are targeting prenatal testing—because the best way to force women to carry nonviable pregnancies to term is to ensure they never find out there’s a problem to begin with. That’s why Republicans have been pressuring the FDA to look into the regulations around prenatal tests, why anti-choice groups claim that pre-natal tests can’t be trusted—and why they want doctors to tell patients they same.

In his piece, Thome writes that prenatatal tests “are known to have very high false positive rates,” which result in “the tragic abortion of healthy babies.” This kind of shaming is also par for the course in conservative ‘prenatal counseling’—which Republicans want to force onto women who’ve been given devastating diagnoses.

I’ve also warned that the anti-abortion movement is lobbying for mandated waiting periods—even for those with nonviable pregnancies—using the lie that women are too traumatized after a diagnosis to make a good decision. Lo and behold, Thome writes that getting a diagnosis can be “traumatizing,” and that parents “deserve accurate information on options, time to make clearheaded decisions, support, and hope for the future.” (Emphasis mine.)

I could go on: Thome mentions how crisis pregnancy centers have “developed specialties” in the area of nonviable pregnancies and should be able to advise women, and tells the story of a woman who received the same diagnosis as Cox and chose to carry her pregnancy to term:

“Baby Grace died naturally and peacefully in her mother’s womb a few weeks later. At her funeral, her parents celebrated her life with friends and family. Even in her short time, Grace’s life had meaning and value. She was loved.”

The implication, of course, is that Cox’s baby was not loved—and that their life didn’t have meaning or value. There is no bottom of the barrel for them.

Again, this campaign is making its way into state houses across the country. I’ve been tracking bills, for example, that contain language about ‘prenatal counseling’ or ‘perinatal hospice care’—which are popping up more and more.

Just today, Democrats in Kentucky walked out of a legislative committee meeting on HB 467, which would require all hospitals, midwives, etc to make referrals to a ‘perinatal palliative care program’ when a patient has a nonviable pregnancy.

As I’ve outlined so many times before, these so-called programs are just crisis pregnancy centers using a different name. Republican state Rep. Nancy Tate, of course, called the bill “a very compassionate piece of legislation” that supports women and families.

Kentucky Democrats knew better, and the Lexington Herald Leader reports that Reps. Lindsey Burke, Adrielle Camuel and Rachel Roarx stood up and walked out. Rep. Burke said the bill shamed parents who need to make difficult decisions, and it was “an insult to grieving parents everywhere.” Indeed.

I’m glad that Democratic legislators are seeing these bills for what they really are—because Republicans are hoping that using innocuous-sounding language will mean that their cruelty can skate by.

In the Nation

• The New Republic has an investigation into the anti-abortion group behind the attack on mifepristone;

• HuffPo has advice for students heading off to college (and their parents) on how to prepare for the worst if they’re going to school in an anti-choice state;

• The Atlantic on the anti-abortion movement’s attack on wanted pregnancies;

• Salon on the difference between the new over-the-counter birth control pill being legal and being accessible;

• And Miriam Becker-Cohen writes at Slate about one of the biggest anti-abortion lies that’s heading to the Supreme Court: the myth that these groups give a shit about women.